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RE: A: Could heavy elements be created in a black hole accretion disk?
I think I watched a Vsauce episode once talking about these accretion disks and how they are so much brighter than the biggest suns. I think he also mentioned that if the vertical ray were to hit earth directly, we'd be rekt by radiation in like 10 seconds.
I'm a noob at space stuff though, does the vertical ray appear on all black holes or is it just when a bigger one eats up a smaller one and a "supernova" occurs? I'm guessing the accretion disks appear both when there's two black holes and when one is just a star?
First, those radiation jets are indeed created within accretion disks, so that it occurs for very dense objects like black holes, neutron stars or pulsars. We only need one of these objects and not a pair or a merging phenomenon.
A pair of back-to-back energetic jets is produced from the accretion disk and emitted along the symmetry axis of the emitter. We however don't know why and how. Whilst there are several explanations on the market, more research is needed to get the full picture.
Astrophysical jets have huge energies, but I doubt the energy is large enough to destroy the planet. it is huge at the particle physics level. I don't find any evidence of anything that could have any consequence at the human level, except their detection if we are lucky due to the atmospheric shower they induce. There are actually many experiments scouting the sky for that (and many cool and intriguing observations are already there).
That new telescope they were creating looked insane, I can't wait to see what we get out of that one.
I always wondered, if we're already able to create these now and have space rockets. Imagine how life on other planets could already be observing us, just from a rocket they've sent out which is sending back data but it just takes a really long time for it to get back to their planet the further the rocket with the telescope is. Is there a possibility that could happen, or are telescopes in space impossible due to something?
Considering how good certain satellites have become where they can see a text written on a piece of paper, if they're technology is a lot further ahead they could potentially see the same details from light years away, kinda creepy. Maybe they've already located us but can only watch for now.
I'll go with this one. :)
Yes, they are possible. Very expensive but we gather so much information with them, not even comparable to earth's observation.
You need to distinct different "types" of the light (depending on energy we use different methods to observe - gamma, X-ray, visible, infrared, radio). Atmosphere blocks most of the gamma and x-ray radiation and we have may X-ray telescopes already operating in space. Visible and radio things are pretty observable from earth too, but as you know we have Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler, and for radio we have less known Russian interferometry radio spektr-R telescope.
Revolutionary stuff that is awaiting a GO is James Webb Space Telescope, here is a video about it youtube link.
And images of all telescopes and the part of wavelength they observe - photo.
So, to cut it short - yes they are available, but they cost a lot. Luckily some people think that it is important enough to understand physics instead of spending money on guns. :)
Oh yeah, nice that's the telescope I was talking about in a comment earlier, it's gonna be interesting.
In terms of revolutionary mission, we may want to also quote the proposed eLISA mission. In terms of superlatives, it is not that bad :D
There are like two questions in one here. I will try to answer as much as I can (am not too sure to get it right).
There are missions and future projects in space. For instance, the future eLISA mission that may be built for hunting gravitational waves, or AMS that is run from the international space station.
Now to go back to the question, we have no idea how evolved other civilizations could be and if they are already observing us, but we are free to dream. On the other side, we (as humans) are building missions to find them. It is not clear if we will ever meet anyone, but those telescopes built for astrophysics will not be the right tools to find them. They are tuned to other very specific purposed.
Creepy indeed, and highly likely, especially considering how enormous space actually is, as well as the fact that some galaxies out there are billions of years older than ours. However I believe that a highly advanced civilization would probably avoid contacting us. For the very same reason I never try to explain quantum physics to my dog.
Who knows? We are allowed to dream (personally, I don't care much about being reached out by aliens :) ).