Black hole radio jet 'pointed directly at Earth

[UM-Bot]

The supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way seems to be pointing a radio jet directly towards us.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/325037/black-hole-radio-jet-pointed-directly-at-earth

[Space Commander Travis]

And I suppose all you hear on it is Muse.

[rock joke]

[the above joke I mean, not Muse.]

[Piney]

15 minutes ago, Vlad the Mighty said:

And I suppose all you hear on it is Muse.

If it's the album Resistance, it wouldn't bother me. 

Of course I am completely mad. 

[toast]

Target recognition, I tell ya!

[moonman]

Makes some of that 2012 woo about earth aligning with the cosmic center and gravity wells seem almost plausible.

I wonder how long we have been in the target zone? Are we talking days, years, millons of years? If millions of years, how long until someone says that's why we have life on Earth? Do we enter it and leave it in cycles?

Edited January 23, 2019 by moonman

[Talion78]

Could it some how be....that if the radio waves are directly hitting the earth, could they have somehow enabled life to be kick-started on the planet???

 

@moonman - just read your comment after posting this.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Talion78

[bison]

They never found evidence of this radio beam before, in radio surveys of wide swaths of the sky including this area, or focused ones of the galactic center. It's either so weak that it couldn't be detected before, or it just started beaming ~ 30,000 years ago, so it's just reaching us now.

In any case, it doesn't seem strong enough to have any bearing on the origin of life, or any effect on present life. They say the beam is 1/300 of a degree wide, only about 12 arc seconds. That seems very narrow  for a beam that's traveled 30,000 light years to reach us, naturally spreading out all the time. The odds of it happening to point in our particular direction seem very long. 

[Silver Surfer]

I think the black hole has better taste in music than muse. Its probably AC/DC.

[zep73]

49 minutes ago, bison said:

They say the beam is 1/300 of a degree wide

That doesn't sound like much, but according to my calculations, 1/300 of a degree covers 2,314,814 stars.

250,000,000,000 (stars) / 360 x 300 (1/300 of a degree) = 2,314,814 stars

Edited January 23, 2019 by sci-nerd

[L.A.T.1961]

1 hour ago, bison said:

They never found evidence of this radio beam before, in radio surveys of wide swaths of the sky including this area, or focused ones of the galactic center. It's either so weak that it couldn't be detected before, or it just started beaming ~ 30,000 years ago, so it's just reaching us now.

In any case, it doesn't seem strong enough to have any bearing on the origin of life, or any effect on present life. They say the beam is 1/300 of a degree wide, only about 12 arc seconds. That seems very narrow  for a beam that's traveled 30,000 light years to reach us, naturally spreading out all the time. The odds of it happening to point in our particular direction seem very long. 

The source looks to be much smaller than 1/300 degree measuring 300 millionth of a degree. 

If the signal is a jet then the black hole must be rotating on it's side, relative to the galactic plane, and it's poles rotating with the galaxy ? which would be unusual, to say the least.  

http://astronomy.com/news/2019/01/radio-jets-from-the-milky-ways-black-hole-could-be-pointing-right-at-earth   

[bison]

Yes, my error. Thank you, L.A.T. 1961.   300 millionths of a degree, not 1/300 of a degree. That seems to make it very much more against the odds that the beam would happen to be pointed our way.

Edited January 23, 2019 by bison

[smokeycat]

Black hole radio jet pointed 'almost directly at Earth' should be the title...

[TripGun]

Its' more like a 2 gauge shotgun pointed at us...
I think we need to point some ICBM's at it to be on the safe side.

[WelshRed]

If it's pointing directly at us I would guess that this means this radio 'jet' is almost certainly pointing in every direction so wherever you are in the galaxy you would pick this up and therefore assume it's pointing directly at you relative you your position in the galaxy unaware that it is actually in every direction.

Edited January 25, 2019 by WelshRed

[bison]

If it's an actual black hole radio jet, it should be quite narrow. That such a thing is apparently pointing almost directly at us is remarkable. Such narrow jets are the way that black holes normally release large amounts of energy. That's probably what's happening.

If it goes against the norm, and the radio emission are from matter falling toward the black hole event horizon, then a sizable area around the star could be involved, over a relatively wide angle. It may eventually be possible to definitely say which of the two scenarios is the correct one. 

[bmk1245]

14 hours ago, bison said:

If it's an actual black hole radio jet, it should be quite narrow. That such a thing is apparently pointing almost directly at us is remarkable. Such narrow jets are the way that black holes normally release large amounts of energy. That's probably what's happening.

If it goes against the norm, and the radio emission are from matter falling toward the black hole event horizon, then a sizable area around the star could be involved, over a relatively wide angle. It may eventually be possible to definitely say which of the two scenarios is the correct one. 

Just out of curiosity, how narrow do you think it is?

[bison]

Almost laser-like, judging from some of the artists interpretations of black hole jets, intended to be scientifically accurate. An interesting problem here, mentioned by L.A.T. 1961, above, is the fact that the jet would be expected to point upward and downward, at right angles to the galactic plane. To reach us, it would have to point along this plane, instead.

 

Edited January 26, 2019 by bison

[Nnicolette]

On 1/26/2019 at 10:48 AM, bison said:

Almost laser-like, judging from some of the artists interpretations of black hole jets, intended to be scientifically accurate. An interesting problem here, mentioned by L.A.T. 1961, above, is the fact that the jet would be expected to point upward and downward, at right angles to the galactic plane. To reach us, it would have to point along this plane, instead.

 

Something doesn't add up. We are at such an odd angle for this to happen that the probability of it is too miniscule to ignore. So what kind of emmissions are coming? 

[bison]

The radio emissions are anticipated to occupy a very wide range of frequencies. The ALMA radio telescope, and a network of others received them at a frequency of 86 GigaHertz, wavelength 3.5 millimeters. Plans to observe the phenomenon at 230 GigaHertz are being considered.  

The whole situation is a strange one. The oddity of a narrow beam pointing just our way is remarkable. A way of getting around this problem is to posit that the emissions are not a true radio jet, but that they come from matter falling into the blackhole. This would project radio waves in many directions at once, and so remove the 'pointing' problem. This would not match the behavior of blackholes in the centers of other galaxies, though.  Both of these possible mechanisms for the the radio emissions are currently the subject of intense debate in scientific circles. 

Radio waves can be reflected and refracted, just as light can. It may be the something is modifying the radio jet, sending it in our particular direction, about 90 degrees from the expected direction. Why or how that might be happening isn't clear.