
Some numbers, please?
My bath water is hot at 40 degrees C, and cold at 20.
What "hot" and "cold" values are we talking about when referring to "space gas"?
Astronomers working at the Atacama Large Millimetre Array radio telescope in Chile have observed black holes swallowing up cold dense clouds for the first time, according to new research published today in Nature. Although the idea of black holes feeding on cold gas was theoretically predicted it has never been observed, …
"Cold gas raining in . . " sounds like a purely radial flow which makes me wonder what conditions give rise to gas with no angular momentum?
Also, as the gas gets closer to the super-massive black hole presumably it is accelerated and compressed and so becomes 'hot'. So wouldn't any gas actually seen falling into a black hole be hot and, if so, how can anyone know that previously observed infalls weren't cold gas as well (originally). What criteria are being applied here?
"Cold gas raining in . . " sounds like a purely radial flow
The speaker is probably someone from the Outer Hebrides, where any angle between 30 and 80 degrees from vertical is called 'raining in', and between 80 and horizontal is 'swept'. There's no term for less than 30, for obvious reasons.
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ALMA consists of 66 mirrors of 8.2 meter diameter working as one interferometer at (sub)millimeter wavelengths. The 66 heterodyne receivers operate at 4K (-269 °C). ALMA is located at the uninhabitable Chilian Atacama desert at 5000 meters above sealevel. The operations Support Facility (OSF) where the primary observations are done, is located at 2,900 meters.
of exactly how "Black Hole Sun" comes to "wash away the rain."
I just love it when science explains song lyrics, don't you?
> three massive clumps of cold gas flowing toward the supermassive black hole at a speed of about a million kilometres per hour. Each cloud contains as much material as a million Suns and is roughly the size of tens of light-years across, and were observed by the billion-light-year-long "shadows", they cast on earth.
Sometimes it just has to be said... Space is just mad.