Scientists Qnravel Galactic FSM

Scientists unravel galactic spaghetti monster
Magnetism maintains his noodly appendages
By Lester Haines
Published Thursday 21st August 2008 13:10 GMT

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Scientists believe they have deduced what sustains the noodly appendages of a galactic "spaghetti monster" - actually Galaxy NGC 1275 in Perseus - which displays "a mammoth network of spaghetti-like gas filaments around a black hole", as New Scientist puts it.

NS explains: "As the black hole sucks in gas from its surroundings, it powers jets of matter that produce bubbles of energetic particles in the surrounding cluster gas. As these bubbles grow and rise, cooled gas from NGC 1275's core gets drawn into long tendrils in their wake, like the strings that trail behind balloons."

Fair enough, although until now no one had been able to work out why these delicate filaments weren't destroyed by the immense magnetic power of the galaxy. Cue a close perusal of Hubble snaps of NCG 1275 by Andrew Fabian and colleagues at Cambridge University.

They noted that the filaments - extending 300,000 light years - are actually comprised of "a number of thin threads" measuring 20,000 light years. These are "so tenuous that magnetic fields are the only thing that can protect them from being destroyed", according to Fabian.

The fields are believed to "get their start" close to the black hole, and while the researchers estimate they're a mere "0.01 per cent as strong as the field on the Earth's surface", they're able to "hold onto" the filaments by acting on charged particles (protons, electrons, etc) in the filaments' gas.

The result of this influence is to prevent the gas, weighing in at a modest few hundred degrees Celsius, from "evaporating away into the 40 million °C sauna of surrounding cluster gas".

Although the filaments appear to lead a fairly precarious existence, their speed indicates they've been resisting evaporation for more than 100 million years, during which the sustaining magnetic fields may also have prevented their gas collapsing to form stars.

If so, this could help scientists resolve a cosmology poser: why there are "fewer high-mass galaxies than models predict". Astronomers reckon some massive galaxies are prevented from expanding further by black holes which are "devouring their surroundings and spewing out jets".

These jets heat up the galactic gas to such a degree that it simply expands out into the ether, preventing star formation. Patrick Ogle of Caltech suggested that gas filaments such as those demonstrated in NCG 1275 might also be a contributory factor in some cases in explaining "why these galaxies don't grow bigger than they do".

The latest NGC 1275 finding can be found in Nature (vol 454, p 968).

Makes Me Feel Much Safer

They can't protect their own PBX systems. How are we to have faith they can protect the entire country?

Seriously, a default password hole? That game was old hat 35 years ago.

Phreakers seize government phone system
Department of Homeland (in)Security
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco → More by this author
Published Thursday 21st August 2008 18:41 GMT

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Information technology workers at the US Department of Homeland Security are busy scraping egg off their collective faces after unknown hackers broke into their telephone system and racked up $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia.

The hackers made more than 400 calls by accessing the voicemail system of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a subagency of DHS, according to the Associated Press. The system had recently been upgraded, and it appears a "hole" was left open by the unidentified contractor who performed the job. A spokesman didn't identify the hole but said it has been closed.

One of the older tricks in the annals of so-called phone phreaking is breaking into private branch exchange systems by using passwords that are set by default during initial setup. Security-minded admins will see to it that those passwords are changed, but bureaucracy and inertia being what they are, that doesn't always happen.

Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, India and Yemen were among the countries that received calls from the hacked FEMA account. Most of the calls lasted for about three minutes, but some were as long as 10 minutes.

Ironically, DHS, which is responsible for securing US infrastructure against terrorists, issued a warning in 2003 that unsecured PBXes were wide open to intruders.

"This illegal activity enables unauthorized individuals anywhere in the world to communicate via compromised US phone systems in a way that is difficult to trace," the bulletin read.

The AP story is here. ®

What IF...

What if the Democratic VP Prospects IMed?

I Wonder...

I wonder what 281 22nd Ave in the Richmond neighborhood (SFO) looks like these days?

Any guys in The City willing to send me pictures? (This Name at Gmail)

WTF?

What the hell is it with these idiot N. Dallas businesses that keep referring to Central Expy aka US Hwy 75 as "I-75" as in "Interstate 75"?

I-75 runs from Sault Ste. Marie through Detroit, Dayton, Cincinnati, Lexington, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, terminates at an interchange with SR924 and SR 826 in Hialeah, FL (a Miami suburb). I don't see any TX cities in that list.

If it's anything it's a northern extension of I-345 (commonly referred by traffic reporters as the "I-45 overhead").

Not sure?

According to ABC News, that's John McCain's dilemma du jour.
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Gosh, I hate when that happens!

"If you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising that you might think the economy is fundamentally strong." -- Senator Barack Obama