Giant Black Hole Found

paradox writes "Reuters is reporting that scientists have found a massive black hole 40,000 light-years away that could change the way scientists think about black holes. The mass of this particular black hole is 14 times the mass of the sun, compared to the typical mass of 3 to 7 suns."

Comments

Distance

[gandalf_grey]

It's worth noting that the center of the galaxy is 26,000 lightyears from us, see: space.com. So 40,000 LY is not exactly nearby, as the story seems to imply.

So, don't worry about being sucked into infinitely long strings of goo just yet.

I've always had doubts...

[fireboy1919]

...about extrapolated data.

How do we find stars and planets? We make assumptions about stellar phenomena and then predict other phenomena using those assumptions as long as they seem to work.

We do the same thing with everything we use. We've done the same thing with other stuff, but most of the time, we can observe a lot more dimensions of the data than we can with stellar phenomenon to make our predictions.

So I suggest that there are any number of reasons that could indicate why this answer makes sense: the model for detecting mass may be wrong, or the model of the formation of black holse, or somethinig else that I haven't considered.

At any rate, we have a long way to go to learn to understand stellar phenomena.

Re:I've always had doubts...

[LMCBoy]

"How do we find stars and planets? We make assumptions about stellar phenomena and then predict other phenomena using those assumptions as long as they seem to work."

Huh? We find stars and planets by stepping outside at night and looking up. What exactly are the "stellar phenomena" that we have a long way to go before understanding?

I suppose, since you're questioning the mass determination of the black hole, you must be saying that we don't yet understand Kepler's 3rd law of motion (that is the only theory needed for the measurement). Hmm...Kepler came up with that in 1609. In 400 years, his laws have been used to: construct the first accurate mathematical model of the solar system (still in use today), predict a planet beyond Uranus (Neptune was discovered exactly where Keplerian physics said it had to be), send humans to the moon, send probes to the outer planets and beyond, and determine masses of binary stars throughout our galaxy.

In short, there's nothing in this particular measurement that requires *any* understanding of stellar physics. It's a simple application of 400-year old Newtonian gravity. If you want to question the result, I suggest looking at the systematic errors of the observations (e.g., is the inclination angle of the system known? if not, the black hole could be more massive than measured).

Oh, and the process you describe (start with an assumption, make a prediction based on the assumption, test prediction by experiment/observation, refine assumption) is called the scientific method, not "extrapolating data".