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Hubble Delivers Indications Of Black Holes
tomorama writes: "Working with the Hubble Space telescope, Ohio State University astronomers studied the most central 1000 light years -- or 6 quadrillion miles -- of 24 spiral galaxies. Associate Professor Richard Pogge and graduate student Paul Martini discovered a distinct swirling pattern in 20 of the 24 galaxies, indicating that huge masses of dust were being sucked into gigantic black holes." The link is worth visiting for the enhanced photo of a black hole at feeding time alone.
Steven Hawking calculated that black holes
have temperature and eventually evaporate after
unimaginable periods of time. (By virtual
particle pair creation on the horizon and one half
escapes, leaking energy.)
The book in the heading, postulates what the
universe would be like where the main source
of energy is the evaporation of black holes.
This would be after the era of thermonuclear light
(current) and after all hadrons (protons, etc.)
had distintigrated. The universe would immensely
larger, older, colder, darker, and slower than it is now
(where immense is defined by multiplying/dividing
all current scales by @10E50.) Yet it might even
be able to sustain organized patterns- life, intelligence- but immensely slow compared to current such.
Scientists are people, natch.
So when a scientist discovers something, it automatically means that people(individually or not) make the discovery. As opposed to engineers(who are also people), chemists, physicists, astronomers, etc. It's just using a detailed term instead of a more general term.
Nothing to get all PC over...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I think the previous post had it right.
When you do scientific research, you *don't* know what returns you're going to get out.
In this case, studies of astrophysical objects is useful because it's studying the extreme cases of our current model of physics. The more we can explore, understand, and expand our current model, the more we can take advantage of strange phenomena that arise out of the model.
Studying black holes, quasars, stars, etc, give us some knowledge about what happens under very extreme gravitational, electromagnetic, and other strange physical effects. What other laboratory do we have to understand quantum/relativistic/gravitational/strange stuff, except our universe? How else do we expect to find out about the nature of quantum reality, and from it the advances that result from said understanding, if we don't try to model it?
IE, your previous post mentioned we should concentrate on HDTV. Our corporations are doing fine without the goverment in terms of practical advances; market forces and competition take care of that aspect. But 100 years from now, how are our corporations going to create the next Big Thing if we don't have the basic research accomplished in how the universe works? How can they exploit quantum pheonomena, without supercolliders, observing black holes, and playing with Bose-Einstein condensates?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Well, if we really didn't like our scientists, we could kill them.
We don't have that luxury with God, I don't think.
But seriously, God is an unproven requirement for advancement in the moral and ethical area.
Science is a provem requirement for advancement in the physical area. Science improves our lives. God/Religion hasn't.
Of course, the reality is that people wield science and people wield religion. The people who are scientists have made life better, on the whole. Have the people who are religious done the same?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I'll agree that much of Western science is a direct result of Christians; Christianity itself is a different issue. Perhaps it's a misuse, but the term Christianity seems to indicate the Church and the power structure that goes along with it, and I don't think the Church has been very helpful, other than unintended side effects.
Being Christian is not being anti-science. Being religious is not about being anti-science. I don't doubt your last point, but for very many, bein religious and being Christian is often seems related to an anti-science and anti-progress model.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
In short - this universe will never become one huge black hole ... very long time. We may see (okay, we won't see, but you know what I mean) a time when the universe consists of nothing but black holes. These will eventually evaporate, and matter may result from this explosion. But that won't last long either. If you take a long enough time frame, everything will decay, and there'll be nothing left but radiation. In the long run, we are all radiation.
To take the long view: assuming the universe will expand forever, we'll all end up not in black holes, but as radiation.
Black holes don't live forever, just a very, very, very,
Personally, I find this rather depressing, and would rather believe that we're all going to crunch, and perhaps form another universe. That'd be nice.
i mean we all get sucked into it right?
we all heard the assumption that at the center of the galaxy is a black hole, well, what if at the center of our culture is another black hole: the Internet.
it just sucks us (and all (that) matter around it) into some never ending online universe
;)
Yes, but if we really wanted to, we could examine these scientists claims in every detail. However, it is not possible to verify most of the claims in the bible (in fact, it is easier to contradict most of the bible, often using other parts of the bible). Same thing goes for open-source software - sure, we all *believe* linux is more secure than Windows, but how many people have the expertise and time to examine every bit of the code for bugs or trojan horses? The point is, if you wanted to you could, whereas with Windows, you have to put you trust in Bill.
---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
Yup, this and other pointless research. I mean, look at the useless "scientific" studies Faraday and Maxwell performed over 100 years ago. Electromagnetism? What the hell is that going to do to improve our world? Yup, this kind of research was simply of no use to us. We should have spent that research money on slide rules for education, and Civil War era weapons for the military. What the hell will someone do with these obscure electric and magnetic fields? Now excuse me as I go listen to the radio, solve some finite element calculations on my computer, mark some waypoints for my flight on my GPS, and surf the internet for information about laser light shows at the planetarium...
make world, not war
But a black hole DOES emit radiation!
It's odd, but here goes: Oftentimes, a pair of particles, one antimatter and one matter, will be spontaneously generated. 99.whatever percent of the time, they either collide with each other and with other particles, destroying themselves again and creating as much energy as it took to make then in the first place.
Occasionally, one of these pairs is created near a black hole. If one of the pair is sucked into the hole, but the other escapes, the net result is generation of a small amount of antimatter and a small amount of matter by the black hole. These particles eventually collide with other particles, generating X-rays, which is the radiation from a black hole that has been discovered, IIRC.
And actually, infinity is a bright flaming neon orange and yellow spinning spiral. That's why you go insane when you see it.
However, new theories suggest that there might be a slight break in this symmetry, in that you can break things like charge conservation, or other things like baryon number conservation. This would explaing why there is a lot more matter out there than anti-matter. If we lived in a universe which was not dominated by either matter or anti-matter then they would keep colliding, spewing forth radiation in from massive explosions, and you wouldn't get to read this somewhat rambling physics comment on a lazy Satruday afternoon from some wacko math guy. :)
Was they sure that was a hole in space? I theorize that they were pointed toward Micro$oft's headquarters. That seems to be where all the money is going......
The open-ended universe is a truly interesting proposition. Trillions of years (actually something like 10^40 years) from now, when the expansion is so great that new stars are no longer form, and those ancients of the universe, the red giants, have finally exhausted their fuel, the heavens will be lit only by the occasional collision of brown dwarfs fusing to become new starts, and the explosion of black holes. The notion of anything having ultimate permanence is inherently flawed. All fuel will be eventually exhausted. In the case of black holes, they are slowly shrinking due to attrition of mass, what makes black holes "fuzzy" and will eventually explode as a consequence. Particles are constantly popping into existence, something know as Plank radiation ("A theory is not accepted when it's critics are converted, but when they eventually die" - Maxwell Plank. Isn't that a cheery view of the physics community?), and annihilating themselves because they only pop into existence in positive and negative pairs. The only issue is that sometimes particles pop into existence close enough to black holes that one half of the pair is succeed into the black hole before it can destroy itself and sending the lonely particle zooming off into space (the fuzziness), using energy by separating the pair. Our friend Einstein said that mass = energy, so in it's attempt to gobble up more, the black hole has shot itself in the foot by loosing mass in the process of stealing the particle. As the black hole's mass decreases, this process speeds up, and the black hole eventually shrinks so small it explodes. Think supper nova, then think bigger. Now doesn't this all seem splendidly nihilistic? Not event the black holes will survive in a open Universe. Nah, it'll just be a cool light show.
-Frances
IM sn = CzarinaFH
Its a common misconception that black holes some how "suck" in matter. In fact black holes have exactly the same amount of gravitational attraction as a different object with the same mass. If we replaced our sun with a black hole of the sun's mass, the earth would continue to orbit.
Since black holes form and grow from matter which was already in the general vicinity, objects which were far away feel the exact same gravitational force, regardless of whether the mass is in star or black hole form.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
I have seen a lot of questions here about white holes and black hole decay. I thin kI should clarify some of the misconceptions.
...In trillions of pieces over trillions of years.
Many people have difficulty with the idea of a black hole sucking up matter for all eternity, and have thus looked for a way out, something which allows that matter to be reclaimed by the universe. This has led to some rather interesting theories regarding things like white holes. These theories have never been supported by any astronomical evidence, nor do they even make much logical or mathematical sense, at least not in a typical Einsteinian view of the universe. Fortunately, someone has found a "way out". This person is Stephen Hawking. He devised a mechanism by which a black hole could leak out matter and energy slowly over time. This so-called "Hawking radiation" is emitted proportionally to the size of the black hole at the event horizon. Thus, a large black hole would emit energy and matter much faster than a small one, but a small one could eventually decay to the point where it no longer had the mass to generate the gravity well required to contain light. Of course, this is a VERY slow process, and most black holes are gaining mass many orders of magnitude faster than they are losing them.
So, yes, if you went into a black hole, you would be able to get out...
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Hmm,
...
the more we look out into space, the more it seems that objects which were once considered extraordinary/rare, are acutally pretty common (quasars, black holes, neutron stars, etc.).
What are the implications of supermassive black holes in an open ended universe? Does that not suggest that eventually (in 10s of billions of years), everything will eventually be sucked into one of these black holes. Will we eventually have a universe populated by a few (or one) supermassive black hole(s) or am I being overly dramatic here? Are there any models on what the eventual state of such a universe would be? Inquiring minds want to know
Drop by NASA's gallery for better shots from space.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
In short - this universe will never become one huge black hole, unlike New York or Toronto, which already are.
You can't handle the truth.
The images produced by Pogge and Martini show material in the inner spiral arms of the galaxies. It's a stretch to refer to this as material "being sucked into gigantic black holes." Note the scale of the images: the resolution is a few hundred light years. The accretion disk around the black hole is less than one light year in radius; it is completely unresolved in thes pictures.
... but it's not really relevant under the circumstances.
e ctures/blackholes/blackholes.html.
The material shown in these images MAY be spiralling gradually in towards the center of the galaxies, but it may also be in relatively stable orbits around the center. Suppose that a small component of the total velocity -- which is several hundred km/sec -- is radially inwards. It would take tens of millions of years for the material to reach the black hole.
Writing that these pictures show gas which is
"being sucked into a gigantic black hole" is about as accurate as writing "and here's a picture of Angeline Jolie growing old and wrinkled at the Academy Awards ceremony." Sure, technically, she is growing oldER and adding a micro-wrinkle or two as she sits in the audience
By a curious coincidence, I just wrote up a lecture on black holes at the centers of galaxies
for the introductor astro course I'm teaching. Check out
http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/classes/phys240/l
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu