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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 1998)
EDITOR Erin Gibson OPINION EDITOR Cliff Hicks EDITORIAL BOARD Nancy Christensen Brad Davis Sam McKewon Jeff Randall Bret Schulte I Quotes OF THE WEEK “I’m a hawk-but I’m a cheap hawk. I believe we should reduce the Pentagon to a triangle.” House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in his speech supporting 2nd district congression al nominee Lee Terry “Students are the ones that pour their hearts into the campaign. We love our volunteers.” Kristi Klein, volunteer coordinator for gubernatorial candidate Bill Hoppner, on student support “Working together was the key to recovery.” Mayor Mike Johannes, looking back on the one-year anniversary of the October 1997 blizzard “We get zero percent student fees, zero percent institutional funding. That’s nothing.” NUAthletic Director Bill Byrne, on where the athletic department gets its find ing “We just can’t monitor every time somebody passes gas, but we want to remain vigilant (about conduct).” Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity alumni board member Rob Otte, on the arrest of an ATO member for making fake IDs for minors. “While the adjectives strange, weird, graphic, unnecessary, distasteful, inde cent and offensive are applicable to Harrold’s video, it is not legally obscene.” Judge Richard Sievers, in the ruling that dismissed the charges against Scott Harrold “ _ _ ku’reaM'ih ner, you m’t accept losing at all. That was a team we could have beat and prob ably should have beat, but offensively, we lost the game.” MU running back Devin West, on the results of the NU-MU game “With four seconds left I turned to their huddle and asked them if they remembered anything like this.” NU rush end Chad Kelsay, on the simi larities of this years NU-MU game to last > - ^The vintage instruments have a lot jjj to do wiilk our sound.” John Helwick, Radio King s vocalist, on how the band stays true its style “The real question is what the audi ence is going to think, and I hope they like this and maybe go away thinking that opera isn’t just for older people and serious stuff - that opera can be a lot of fun.” Professor Randall Snyder, on his one act comic opera, "Divine Madness” “Personally, I feel like I can go out there and lead this team, whether it be starting or just coming into whatever role it is.” Senior NU quarterback Monte Christo on his role on the team ■■ ■ ^ r-\- ' . y ,-■ - - .-T ..-Ti Editorial PaUcy Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Spring 1998 Daily Nebraskan. They do ndt necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Lincoin, its employees, its student body or the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of its author. The Board of Regents serves as pubfisher of the Daily Nebraskan; policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. The UNL Publications Board, established by ihe regents, supervisee Jhe production of thepaper. According to policy set by , the regents, responsibltv for the editorial cordent of the newspaper lee eolety in the hands of ife studentemployees. Letter Policy The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief §2 v letters to the editor and guest columns, £ > but does not ouarantee their publication. The Daily Nebraskan retains the rigtit to edit or reject any matehal submitted. Submitted material becomes property of Nebraskan and cannot be Anonymous submissions will not be published. Those who submit letters must identify themselves by name, year in school, major and/or group affiliation, if any. Submit materia to: Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Lincoln, NE. 68588-0448. E-mail: Mtors@uninio.unl.edu. ' ' ' Mook's VIEW I«TDK Sll*a 15 f H fCQSTOKE mi TatMlj No milky center Great Annihilator reigns at heart of galaxy AARON COOPER is a senior English major and a Daily Nebraskan colum nist For years, we have spent immeasur able amounts of time and money in hopes of answering the question of whether or not life exists on other plan ets or within other galaxies. Underneath our fascination with the possibility of life outside our world, a separate galactic mission has existed with a fraction of the publicity: the attempt to determine what lies at the center of the Milky Way. - For a long time, scje^ists qouldnot discern the nature ofthe’center because of vast, dense clouds of dust and fnm dreds of millions of stars concentrated in and around the core, blocking the view. A rr»rvr»rr rxru* fnlliAn nliAt-Anc aPirici * ble light aimed toward a telescope on Earth, only one will make it If die sun’s light was filtered in this manner, it would not be visible to the naked eye. As early as the 1930s, scientists * discovered that photons of much lower frequency cannot be as easily blocked by dust. They began detecting a hiss and cackle of apparently dense stores of hydrogen and other elements present in the center of tiie Milky Way. In die 1950s, they distinguished an abnormally powerful source of radio noise within the center. It became known as Sagittarius A since the noise comes from the direction of the con stellation of Sagittarius, and scientists thought it might be the remains of a supernova, a star that had exploded. If so, that would make it hard to support the previous idea of a dormant and seemingly uninteresting core. Scientists were even more fascinat ed that much of the central energy was coming from an even narrower region within Sgr A which was named Sgr A* (or the “A star”). It wasn’t until 1997 that astronomers finally reached a consen sus on the makeup of Sgr A*, thanks to research conducted by two independent I groups of investigators* j / Andrea Ghez led one of the groups from UCLA in this crucial research. For five years, she ventured annually to MaunaKea, Hawaii, for the use of a telescope allowing the clearest view on Earth of Sgr A*. She helped develop a technique for the needed resolution, 20 times greater than ground-based telescopes and three times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, which involved taking a rapid seriesof snapshots that could be averaged to cancel out distorting effects caused by our atmosphere. This led to the determination that the closer the stars were to the very center of the galaxy, the faster they orbited, up to 900 miles per second. Whatever was keeping stars in an orbit that fast had to have the mass of 2.5 million suns, all packed into a den sity at least a trillion times that of its galactic outer regions. Only one scientific entity harbors those specifications and adheres to those laws of physics. A black hole. Sgr A* became known as the Great ' Annihilator. It crams the entirety of its multiraiilion-staf mass into a space smaller than one atom; infinitely small according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Rlar*lr hnl« rmrpcMit a tnio micftt of science because they spawn the most luminous objects in the universe, which result from a phenomenon known as accretion. When matter is propelled into die Mack hole and pulled by the hole’s all powerful gravity, the matter heats up and radiates that heat away as light until it disappears past the “event horizon” - the point beyond which nothing (not even light) can escape the hole’s violent gravitational pull. The Milky Way’s Great Annihilator provides for temperatures approaching 10 billion degrees, cataclysmic winds, searing radiation, magnetic fields that roil and squeeze atoms until they shine, and vast fountains of hot gas. Perhaps the most interesting prop erty of the Great Annihiktor is its abili ty to split a star in half. When a star gets i, too close to the Mack hole, die hole’s gravity suc& in half the star while the other half careers ahead in its natural high speed orbit These immense discoveries have led scientists to debate over the specific classification of die Milky Way. The most controversial way to categorize galaxies is by the activity displayed by their cores. Quasgrs rule supreme as very yoHPg arid extremely distant gafax jes winch produce as much tight as the entire Milky Way from a core only a millionth of the Milky Way’s diameter. Seyfert galaxies are next in line as forms of miniquasars. They produce a great deal of radiation from their core that is less than a quasar’s but still spec tacular by general standards. After that, starburst galaxies come into the picture. These galaxies harness a brilliant stream of light produced by the rapid burning and eventual explo sive death of millions of massive young stars. The Milky Way previously has fall en into a fourth and unnamed category of galaxies that have no known immensely radiating core or swarm of superheated stellar studs packed tightly into die center. For a galaxy harnessing a core such as the Great Annihilator, the ensuing emissions of light should be 100,000 times as bright as they are, according to Boston University astronomer John Mattox. This, he says, essentially keeps the Milky Way from being classified as a starburst galaxy. Other scientists concede this and theorize that the Milky Way may once have resembled a starburst galaxy, but now it does not possess the brilliantr supernova activity typical of starburst galaxies and perhaps may again some time in the distant future. You’d think with a name like the “Great Annihilator” the Milky Way would merit a step up in galactic stan dards. Harvard astrophysicist Ramesh Narayan has developed a theory based on the idea that matter pulled toward a black hole radiates away its heat only when the particles composing the mat ter have a chance to interact with one another, thus allowing radiating pho tons to be coaxed horn particles by other particles to be emitted as light If the particles don’t come close enough to each other, they won’t entice one another to release the photons and therefore won’t radiate as much, thus explaining the inhibitory nature of the Great Annihilator. Cooper’s Law: Every truth about the universe is relative. When we can’t find any “right" answers, we must pur sue the best ones. It seems evident that solving this mystery surrounding our “ordinary’’ galaxy is far from over, but the journey has been taken much farther than ever before. Now we know that the center of the Milky Way is not a vat of nothingness hiding behind clowkofdust and mil lions ofstars.lt is » Mack hole, one of the most mysterious scientific phenom ena lmown to humans. ’ ■