back to article NASA sniffs little black hole's 20-million-MPH wind

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has caught a whiff of the fastest ever wind blowing from the gases around a stellar-mass black hole. High speed winds from a stellar-mass black hole Illustration of high-speed winds from the stellar-mass black hole. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss The wind, which is moving at an awesome 20 million …

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  1. Evil Auditor Silver badge
    Joke

    ...winds from a black hole... hot gas...

    Space flatulence?

    1. Version 1.0 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: ...winds from a black hole... hot gas...

      I wonder if NASA releases some of these bulletins just to see what kind of "butt" joke El Reg will come up with? Did El Reg poach all of the headline writers from Viz?

  2. Graham Wilson
    Thumb Up

    Holiday resort!

    Sounds like an excellent holiday resort for politicians and certain Denialgate climate scientists.

    1. annodomini2

      Re: Holiday resort!

      Don't forget the management consultants and marketing specialists! ;)

      1. Code Monkey

        Re: Re: Holiday resort!

        We could make a special ship for their holiday. How about we call it the "B Ark"?

      2. Graham Wilson

        @annodomini2 -- Re: Re: Holiday resort!

        Sorry, I had a bad mental lapse (it's late here).

        ;-)

    2. Silverburn

      Re: Holiday resort!

      Don't forget the ID'ers and Creationists.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    strong winds..

    Sounds like that's where they should build a wind farm..

  4. frank ly
    Happy

    Are you local?

    "...is found in the bulge of the Milky Way galaxy,.."

    (Just wondering if the author is a recent immigrant.)

  5. Khaptain Silver badge

    Anal fixation

    In the last week or so there is a definate "anal" trend in the titles. Is there something going on at ElReg that we don't know about or maybe don't want to know about..

    1. jubtastic1

      Re: Anal fixation

      And a tendency to illustrate anything with "hard" in the title with a buxom lass, not that I'm complaining, it's just that to a casual observer the home page of the reg can look like the adult classified ads some days.

      1. Gordon 10

        Re: Re: Anal fixation

        There's been a definate increase of the fnarr factor of el regs headlines and subheadlines of late.

  6. the-it-slayer
    Trollface

    A great crap hole...!

    Can we chuck Facebook and Zuckerburg into it?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Space FARTS

    Flung

    Away

    Really

    Titanically

    Swiftly

  8. NukEvil
    Mushroom

    A better sub-heading..

    "Flatulence in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCE!!!"

    Could have at least tried...

    1. Intractable Potsherd

      Re: A better sub-heading..

      Good, but "Faarts in Spaaaaaaaaaaace" scans closer to the Muppet version!

  9. TheRaj

    Must have been an oversight

    I didn't see the word "boffin" appear anywhere in this article. The reg must have run out. Finally!

  10. Steve Foster
    Flame

    Subtitles....

    Boffins Blown away by Belching Black-hole

    (flame icon for obvious reasons!)

  11. The Grump
    Flame

    Let's go...

    and check this baby out. We'll just jump in the Space Shuttle and...wait...there is no more Space Shuttle, thanks to President O'Bumma. Sorry guys, the extreme wind surfing will have to wait.

    Obama - proof that Americans CAN be as stupid as the French think Americans are.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Let's go...

      You do know what "low earth orbit" means, right, kook?

      And you do know that King Shrub did nothing to help the space program, right, kook?

    2. hplasm
      WTF?

      Space is big- really big.

      Even bigger than Texas.

  12. Wombling_Free
    Boffin

    'Black' holes... Does high school physics say they shouldn't be black?

    Er... I know everyone keeps drawing black holes as a little black orb sitting in a swirling disc, but doesn't basic high-school physics tell you that's bunk?

    The BH will severely bend light from behind the event horizon, so there will be no black sphere to silhouette against the accretion disc, right?

    If the BH is spinning the light from behind is getting frame-dragged, so it would look swirled - if anything it would look like a dull chrome sphere, right?

    Matter circling the hole in the accretion disc is hot enough to emit x-rays, so it would likely be blindingly bright, obscuring the event horizon, right?

    Said blindingly bright matter falling into the event horizon will red-shift as it accelerates, so if anything, the event horizon should appear red, right? OK, theoretically black as velocity approaches c, but red will be the 'last light' we see - by definition the 'black' (no light) will already be INSIDE the event horizon, yes?

    From all of that, we can surmise that a black hole looks like a reddish-coppery-mildly-reflective sphere sitting in a blazing bright ring, with eye-watering bright red swirly patterns close to the hole. The part of the event horizon facing directly at you might be close to black, which would give it a weird reverse-anisotropic look - I guess there would be some strange diffraction produced by whirling masses near light-speed. It would NOT be a simple black orb.

    My high school physics runs out there, can a friendly wandering physicist provide a more detailed hypothesis?

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: 'Black' holes... Does high school physics say they shouldn't be black?

      Pictures or I can't picture it!

      1. The Original Cactus
        Thumb Up

        Re: Re: 'Black' holes... Does high school physics say they shouldn't be black?

        It sounds like the Eye of Sauron to me.

    2. Crisp
      Boffin

      Re: 'Black' holes... Does high school physics say they shouldn't be black?

      They aren't black. They radiate like any other black body.

  13. Mephistro
    Alien

    Terrance&Philip's "Alien, the eight flatulence"

    "In space, no one can hear your farts"

  14. Silverburn
    Happy

    20 million mph!

    That's almost as fast as a London courier...

    1. SDoradus
      Boffin

      20 million mph = about 50 x c

      ... that would be a bit over 13 million metres per second or getting on for fifty times the speed of light. Something is wrong with that picture, regardless of the frame of reference.

      1. annodomini2
        FAIL

        Re: 20 million mph = about 50 x c

        C = 670,616,629 mph

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

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