Cool Stories From The Hot Universe

The Chandra EPO group has put together the following list of cool Chandra stories, realizing that if too many people agree that they're cool, they may cease to be cool. The list is not in any order of priority because we suspect that would be uncool.

	Dark Energy Found Stifling Growth in Universe Most of the energy in the universe is in some form that no one understands.

PSR B1509-58: A Young Pulsar Shows its Hand The "hand of God" stuff about this image probably got out of hand, but the idea that a 12-mile -diameter neutron star produces a nebula 150 light years in diameter definitely makes you wonder.

Crab Nebula: Fingers, Loops and Bays in The Crab Nebula Those rings in the center, and the jet are thought to be produced by electrons and antimatter electrons – real antimatter, not Angels and Demons fantasy.

The Galactic Center: Light Echo from the Milky Way's Black Hole, and, Milky Way's Giant Black Hole Awoke from Slumber http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/08_releases/press_041608.html These stories illustrate how not looking at an object can sometimes provide valuable information about the object.

The Bullet Cluster: NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/ The best proof yet that most of the matter in the universe is in some mysterious form that astronomers call "cold dark matter," so this discovery is beyond cool.

NGC 4696: Black Holes Found To Be Green By NASA's Chandra http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/bhcen/ ...if a car was as fuel-efficient as some black holes, it could travel more than a billion miles per gallon!

SN 2006gy: NASA's Chandra Sees Brightest Supernova Ever http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2007/sn2006gy/ This cool story provided evidence for a new type of supernova, based on just 4 X-rays detected by Chandra.

Westerlund 1: Neutron Star Discovered Where a Black Hole Was Expected http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/wd1/ http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/wd2/ ...cool collections of very massive stars, and at least one puzzling neutron star that according to a simple interpretation of stellar theory, should have been a black hole.

Saturn: Saturn's Rings Sparkle with X-rays http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/saturn_rngs/ Nothing very profound, but there’s something about this image that’s cool.

Cygnus X-1: "Iron-Clad" Evidence For Spinning Black Hole http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/bhspin/ No cool images here, just X-ray spectra, which reveal what’s going on just a few dozen miles from a black hole, much closer than the distance of Boston from New York City. Not that we're implying that New York City is a black hole!

For more information on the elusive nature of "cool" and why we think stories about the "hot universe" are cool, see "Cool Stories From The Hot Universe" and "Chandra's Top Ten Scientific Discoveries".

- Wallace Tucker