Tuesday, October 9, 2012

New surveys peer through dust to reveal giant supermassive black holes

ScienceDaily (Oct. 8, 2012) ? Scientists at the University of Cambridge have used cutting-edge infrared surveys of the sky to discover a new population of enormous, rapidly growing supermassive black holes in the early Universe. The black holes were previously undetected because they sit cocooned within thick layers of dust. The new study has shown however that they are emitting vast amounts of radiation through violent interactions with their host galaxies.

The team publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The most extreme object in the study is a supermassive black hole called ULASJ1234+0907. This object, located in the direction of the constellation of Virgo, is so far away that the light from it has taken 11 billion light years to reach us, so we see it as it appeared in the early universe. The monster black hole has more than 10 billion times the mass of the Sun and 10,000 times the mass of the supermassive black hole in our own Milky Way, making it one of the most massive black holes ever seen.

The research indicates that that there may be as many as 400 such giant black holes in the part of the universe that we can observe. "These results could have a significant impact on studies of supermassive black holes" said Dr Manda Banerji, lead author of the paper. "Most black holes of this kind are seen through the matter they drag in. As the neighbouring material spirals in towards the black holes, it heats up. Astronomers are able to see this radiation and observe these systems."

"Although these black holes have been studied for some time, the new results indicate that some of the most massive ones may have so far been hidden from our view." The newly discovered black holes, devouring the equivalent of several hundred Suns every year, will shed light on the physical processes governing the growth of all supermassive black holes.

Supermassive black holes are now known to reside at the centres of all galaxies. In the most massive galaxies in the Universe, they are predicted to grow through violent collisions with other galaxies, which trigger the formation of stars and provides food for the black holes to devour. These violent collisions also produce dust within the galaxies therefore embedding the black hole in a dusty envelope for a short period of time as it is being fed.

In comparison with remote objects like ULASJ1234+0907, the most spectacular example of a dusty, growing black hole in the local Universe is the well-studied galaxy Markarian 231 located a mere 600 million light years away. Detailed studies with the Hubble Space Telescope have shown evidence that Markarian 231 underwent a violent impact with another galaxy in the recent past. ULASJ1234+0907 is a more extreme version of this nearby galaxy, indicating that conditions in the early Universe were much more turbulent and inhospitable than they are today.

In the new study, the team from Cambridge used infrared surveys being carried out on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) to peer through the dust and locate the giant black holes for the first time. Prof. Richard McMahon, co-author of the study, who is also leading the largest infrared survey of the sky, said: "These results are particularly exciting because they show that our new infrared surveys are finding super massive black holes that are invisible in optical surveys. These new quasars are important because we may be catching them as they are being fed through collisions with other galaxies. Observations with the new Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile will allow us to directly test this picture by detecting the microwave frequency radiation emitted by the vast amounts of gas in the colliding galaxies."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

  1. Banerji, Manda; McMahon, Richard; Hewett, Paul; Alaghband-Zadeh, Susannah; Gonzalez-Solares, Eduardo; Venemans, Bram. Heavily Reddened Quasars at z~2 in the UKIDSS Large Area Survey: A Transition Phase in AGN Evolution. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2012 (in press) [link]

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/AA2bWAJP01o/121008091546.htm

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Jill Kirby: The benefits of a family-based social policy Conservative ...

When the Tory faithful last met in Birmingham, two years ago, an audacious announcement by George Osborne on breakfast TV dominated the headlines. In a bid to show that the middle classes would share the pain of a fiscal squeeze, the Chancellor declared that any family with a 40% taxpayer would cease to receive child benefit. The sting in the tail of this particular cut was that it would spare many comfortably off dual-earner households whilst penalising families with just one breadwinner. Coming from a party that once promised to introduce transferable tax allowances and remove the ?marriage penalty?, this was a startling turn of events.

Amid the resulting furore, the Treasury agreed to lift slightly the threshold for the child benefit withdrawal, but the one-earner penalty remains. As the policy comes into effect this tax year, all taxpayers earning ?50,000 or more must be quizzed on their family circumstances, to find out if they are living with someone in receipt of child benefit, which will then be clawed back through a new tax charge. This is fraught with problems, particularly in cases where families break up or new relationships are formed. All couples living together with children will be obliged to disclose their financial affairs to each other, and the tax system will take on complexities and hidden penalties formerly confined to the welfare system. One thing is clear: married couples will be first in line to suffer the clawback, because their relationship is on the record. Just as in the welfare system, looser forms of relationship will be much more difficult to define and capture.

How did a supposedly pro-family Conservative party find itself advocating a new form of marriage penalty? We have come a long way since David Cameron put marriage at the top of his personal policy agenda. And it's too easy to blame the constraints of coalition government for the failure to assert a distinctive family policy as part of the Conservative worldview. Conservatives in government have simply failed to identify and promote this building block of the strong society.

Of course the coalition's record on social policy is not all bad. It has taken some important steps to improve children's lives: insisting on higher standards in schools, speeding up adoption, reducing bureaucracy for social workers to give them more time on the front line, demanding better value for money from Sure Start spending. Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms should create better incentives for families to work their way out of poverty - although the couple penalty in welfare will largely persist in the new system. But one of the most important predictors of children's life chances is growing up in a stable family. As the Centre for Social Justice pointed out in its recent ?report card?, the government has failed to introduce any policies to help keep families together, or to support that most important factor in determining family stability, the decision to marry.

When Nick Clegg makes one of his speeches characterising marriage as an outmoded institution, conjuring up images of 1950s housewives at the kitchen sink, he makes clear his disdain for the marriage-based family. Despite his own happy marriage, he prefers to ignore the weight of evidence showing how marriage improves children's lives, and how this institution remains the most popular lifestyle aspiration for young people. But the curious thing is that David Cameron never seems to feel the need to rebut the Deputy Prime Minister's assertions with a more positive narrative of his own. Back in the early days of Mr Cameron's leadership, as he sought to define himself in the public eye, I had a conversation about family policy with one of his closest allies, now a senior minister. He told me there was no chance that David Cameron would waver in his support for marriage. It was, he insisted, a defining issue, something he would stand by even if it made him unpopular in some quarters. Voters would see that he felt passionately and personally about it.

What happened to that passion? It's still abundantly clear from the Prime Minister's demeanour, his evident attachment to his wife and children and his prioritisation of home life, that his marriage and family are the most important things in his life, providing him with resilience and enabling him to cope with personal tragedy. Yet in government he has seemed unable to articulate his earlier beliefs, least of all to apply them to a programme of policy. The only occasions on which he has spoken with passion on the subject of marriage have been when he has pledged to redefine the institution in order to include gay marriage. But in terms of repairing the social fabric and giving children a better start in life, the ability of gay couples to marry rather than enter civil partnerships is irrelevant. It is therefore baffling, as well as disappointing, to many Conservatives that the Prime Minister has chosen to expend so much energy, and to court controversy, on this issue. Rather than building support, it has created unnecessary divisions: setting up antagonism between family campaigners and gay people, alienating many Tory voters and party workers, and setting churches and faith groups at odds with the Conservative party.

In the meantime, the party lacks a distinctive and coherent social agenda. Apparently lacking ideas of its own, the coalition has chosen Tony Blair's respect tsar Louise Casey to supervise a ?450m scheme to transform the lives of Britain's 120,000 ?Troubled families.? Her report on the problems besetting these households is depressingly familiar: shifting relationships, family breakdown, dysfunctional parenting, teenage motherhood, drug and alcohol abuse. But a long line of reports on the causes of the broken society, including Oliver Letwin's Conveyor Belt to Crime back in 2002 and the CSJ's Breakdown Britain in 2006, had set out precisely the same problems. Unlike the authors of those reports, however, Ms Casey has made no policy recommendations for stemming the tide of family breakdown or breaking the cycle of casual relationships. Her proposals for intensive intervention with a small number of families may briefly staunch the wounds of the most damaged families but will not stop the conveyor belt, or cut off the routes into delinquency. For as long as welfare payments continue to pave the way to young single motherhood, to relieve families of the need for a father's support, and attach no conditions to the use of those payments, children will continue to be raised in chaotic homes.

One theme which quite clearly unites the coalition partners is the desire to promote social mobility. It is an issue to which the Deputy Prime Minister frequently returns. Yet the single biggest factor in determining educational success is parental input; research shows that it is the time, commitment and involvement of parents that most influences a child's level of attainment. School reform is vitally important, but its effects will be limited unless attention is paid to strengthening families.

The benefits of a family-based social policy do not stop with children. Daunted by the cost of looking after an increasingly elderly population, the government is understandably reluctant to make expensive new commitments on social and residential care. But a pro-family tax policy, such as the transferable allowance proposed by Allister Heath's 2020 Tax Commission, could be used to help families? care for their elderly relations. Indeed, almost any measure taken to strengthen family relationships will carry a pay-off through to old age.

David Cameron has long understood that his party must offer much more than deficit reduction if it is to win the country over to Conservative values. But the messages he has sent out from Downing Street on social policy issues, from saving the NHS to building the Big Society, have been sporadic and disconnected. Recovering his confidence to talk about strong families, as the heart of a strong society, would enable him not only to connect up a range of government initiatives, it would also enable him to connect with an audience who still don't know where a Conservative government might lead them.

Source: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thecolumnists/2012/10/jill-kirby-the-benefits-of-a-family-based-social-policy.html

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Check out UFC on FX 5 in pictures

Check out the latest set of pictures from photographer Tracy Lee. The UFC on FX 5 pictures cover Antonio Silva's big win, John Dodson's knockout and more.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/check-ufc-fx-5-pictures-162654954--mma.html

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Monday, October 8, 2012

10 Things to Know for Monday

The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket stands on space launch complex 40 ready for launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012. Launch is scheduled for 8:35 PM Sunday on a supply mission to the International Space Station. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket stands on space launch complex 40 ready for launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012. Launch is scheduled for 8:35 PM Sunday on a supply mission to the International Space Station. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

FILE-In this March 17, 2008, file photo, Henry Marckres holds a maple sample up for viewing in East Montpelier, Vt. Vermonters have grown accustomed to their ?fancy? ?amber? and ?grade B? types of maple syrup but new consumers may not be so sweet on the terms. So the country?s largest producer of the pancake topping is thinking of doing away with those terms and adopting new international names with flavor descriptions to help consumers delineate between four different colored and flavored syrups and to match new worldwide terms. The four classifications would be golden color, delicate taste; amber color, rich taste; dark color, robust taste; and very dark color, strong taste. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Monday (times in EDT):

1. ONE BIG FEAR WHEN NATO LEAVES AFGHANISTAN

The battle-scarred country could again fracture along ethnic lines and even erupt into civil war after 2014.

2. THE STAGGERING PENSION COSTS LOOMING OVER U.S. STATES

They'll need $1.4 trillion to fulfill current obligations, and only tax hikes or deep cuts can begin to fill the hole.

3. THE POPE'S MISSION TO BRING CATHOLICS BACK TO THE FOLD

Benedict XVI urges the world's bishops to seek out those who have left, to re-evangelize parts of the globe.

4. HOW DOLLARS LIMIT THE DAMAGE OF IRAN'S CURRENCY COLLAPSE

The rial's stunning free fall is unlikely to pose an immediate threat to the centers of Tehran's power still flush from oil sales.

5. PRIVATE ROCKET HEADS TO SPACE STATION

California-based SpaceX launches its unmanned Falcon rocket containing a capsule holding 1,000 pounds of cargo, including chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream for the space station crew.

6. PYONGYANG IS A WORLD OF FUN COMPARED TO THE REST OF NORTH KOREA

Electricity to spare, government jobs and fancy restaurants for those with a bit of money. Elsewhere, power comes on for just a few hours, shelves are half-empty and side streets resemble dirt paths.

7. WHAT'S AHEAD FOR JERRY SANDUSKY

The convicted sex abuser, to be sentenced Tuesday, probably will be able to work a 30-hour week to make a few dollars in the prison where he'll likely live out his days.

8. WHY GREETING CARDS ARE SAYING GOODBYE

With Americans more likely to receive birthday wishes in a text or on Facebook, Hallmark is shuttering a main factory.

9. A SINGLE GRADING STANDARD FOR MAPLE SYRUP COULD BE A SLIPPERY SLOPE

Vermont is considering joining with other states and Canadian provinces, triggering fears the state's brand won't stand out.

10. 'TAKEN 2' TWICE AS POPULAR AS THE ORIGINAL

Critics may not like Liam Neeson's action sequel. But it movie led the U.S. weekend box office with $50 million, boosting sagging Hollywood revenues.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-10-07-10%20Things%20to%20Know-Monday/id-ee94f240624e4deb8eacd44966113161

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