Publications by authors named "R L Blandford"

The existence of a "knee" at energy ∼1  PeV in the cosmic-ray spectrum suggests the presence of Galactic PeV proton accelerators called "PeVatrons." Supernova remnant (SNR) G106.3+2.

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In conventional gases and plasmas, it is known that heat fluxes are proportional to temperature gradients, with collisions between particles mediating energy flow from hotter to colder regions and the coefficient of thermal conduction given by Spitzer's theory. However, this theory breaks down in magnetized, turbulent, weakly collisional plasmas, although modifications are difficult to predict from first principles due to the complex, multiscale nature of the problem. Understanding heat transport is important in astrophysical plasmas such as those in galaxy clusters, where observed temperature profiles are explicable only in the presence of a strong suppression of heat conduction compared to Spitzer's theory.

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The innermost regions of accretion disks around black holes are strongly irradiated by X-rays that are emitted from a highly variable, compact corona, in the immediate vicinity of the black hole. The X-rays that are seen reflected from the disk, and the time delays, as variations in the X-ray emission echo or 'reverberate' off the disk, provide a view of the environment just outside the event horizon. I Zwicky 1 (I Zw 1) is a nearby narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy.

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There is a supermassive black hole of mass 4 × 10 solar masses at the centre of the Milky Way. A large reservoir of hot (10 kelvin) and cooler (10 to 10 kelvin) gas surrounds it within a few parsecs. Although constraints on the amount of hot gas in the accretion zone of the black hole-that is, within 10 Schwarzschild radii (0.

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The gamma-ray sky has been observed with unprecedented accuracy in the last decade by the Fermi -large area telescope (LAT), allowing us to resolve and understand the high-energy Universe. The nature of the remaining unresolved emission [unresolved gamma-ray background (UGRB)] below the LAT source detection threshold can be uncovered by characterizing the amplitude and angular scale of the UGRB fluctuation field. This Letter presents a measurement of the UGRB autocorrelation angular power spectrum based on eight years of Fermi-LAT Pass 8 data products.

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