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Unanswered Questions

185 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
10 votes
0 answers
214 views

How well conserved is etendue in extreme gravitational lensing scenarios?

This excellent answer to Could dark matter exist in the Universe in the form of sufficiently dense objects? includes the following image and description: Light from the background galaxy circles a ...
7 votes
0 answers
256 views

Get the expression of probed volume between 2 redshifts

1) I can't manage to find/justify the relation (1) below, from the common relation (2) of a volume. 2) It seems the variable r is actually the comoving distance and not comoving coordinates (with ...
6 votes
1 answer
189 views

Do narrow lines in the spectra of O- and B- type stars always indicate magnetic fields?

I was reading a paper on the differential emission measures of a set of hot O- and B- type stars. As the authors discuss in Section 3 (page 959), two stars, $\tau$ Sco and $\theta^1$ Ori C, have ...
6 votes
1 answer
293 views

Why did the Event Horizon Telescope take so long to take a photo of a black hole?

The Event Horizon Telescope is in the news now because they are about to release the first ever picture of a black hole. They have been working on this since 2006. Why did it take 13 years to produce ...
5 votes
0 answers
70 views

Do all the accretion disks around a compact object (black hole or neutron star) emit astrophysical jet outflow?

Do all the accretion disks around a compact object (black hole or neutron star) emit astrophysical jet outflow? I mean is it mandatory for a jet to be emitted from an accretion disk? If so, then why? ...
5 votes
0 answers
91 views

Time dilation if an asteroid and a small black hole entered a larger black hole?

For an outside observer, everything moves slower the closer it is to a black hole's event horizon, even photons, due to the black hole's time dilation. We also know that when two black holes collide, ...
5 votes
0 answers
56 views

What scales and types of EM and gravitational radiation do we expect to be given off by a black hole, in the final stages of evaporation?

In theory, black holes of all sizes eventually evaporate, due to quantum processes close to the event horizon that result in net emissions that appear to come from the black hole (but actually ...
5 votes
0 answers
186 views

What are some good books/online resources for astronomy problem sets?

I am currently studying for the international olympiad for astronomy and astrophysics (the syllabus can be found here: https://www.ioaastrophysics.org/syllabus/). I am currently using Carroll Ostlie's ...
5 votes
0 answers
82 views

How is angular momentum transferred between a neutron star and its accretion disk?

Accreting neutron stars can either gain or loose angular momentum via interaction with their accretion disks. This leads to either spin-up or spin-down. Which of the two is the case, depends on the ...
5 votes
0 answers
188 views

Why isn't the relativistic jet visible in the image of the M87 black hole?

I'm referring to the infamous relativistic jet, which consists of matter being accelerated to near the speed of light, originating at the poles of the black hole: But in the image of the black hole ...
5 votes
0 answers
62 views

Strength of core-envelope coupling in stars

For a star with a given Zero-Age Main Sequence (ZAMS) mass, as a function of metallicity how strongly is the star's core coupled to its envelope? I understand that the core-envelope boundary is only (...
4 votes
0 answers
60 views

Explanation for Planck 2018 temperature fluctuations strongest peaks

As it can be seen from Plank 2018 Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations data- There are 3 sharp peaks at multipole expansions $\ell \approx 250, 550, 800 $. Also as multipole expansion ...
4 votes
0 answers
113 views

How much more mass would Mars need to currently have enough pressure for liquid water and oxygen?

My question is whether Mars just about failed to meet the threshold or missed it by a lot. It's been dry for 3 billion years. How much bigger would it have needed to be to buy it that extra time? Let'...
4 votes
0 answers
51 views

Astronomical resources helpful for creating an animation in the browser of the movements of an astronomical object in the sky?

Background I would like to create a website that shows an animation of the path of Sagittarius A* (or any other object in space) during one day for a specific location. So that the user can see where ...
4 votes
0 answers
65 views

Charged black holes selective eaters

We have a charged black hole which is negatively charged. For this simple case the black hole is not rotating. If a negatively charged particle approaches the singularity the electromagnetic repulsion ...

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