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There's a Hole in the Middle of It All

Posted by michael on from the bang-caused-the-hole-in-the-middle-of-it-all dept.

Apparition writes "CNN is reporting that the star at the center of our galaxy is actually a super-massive black hole. The article then claims that it occupies a volume of space about 3 times that of our solar system. If my math is correct, about 230 million suns could fit into that same volume, so it doesn't impress me that the claimed mass of the black hole is only between 2.6 and 3.7 million times that of the sun. So what is up here? Since when do black holes occupy so much space (I thought they were points)? And how can something with a density only 1/100 of our Sun be called super-massive?" I think the article is talking about a maximum possible size of the object, due to limitations on the resolution of our instruments. Nature has a no-registration story about the research. Update: 10/16 23:44 GMT by M : There's an article with more information on space.com, and a press release from the European Southern Observatory.

18 of 572 comments (clear)

  1. ya harasho! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    gorovit meenya zavoot, syeka! Da!

    1. Re:ya harasho! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      shlunga pashtro mokoshtur maavrik!!!

    2. Re:ya harasho! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      www.goatse.cx

  2. Why, that's no hole! by Chagatai · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    It's CowboyNeal!

    --
    --Chag
  3. Achieve intellectual enlightenment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Stop being Taco's gamepiece!

  4. Re:So how long... by name_already_in_use · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I do not who Bob Saget is, but accroding to this he is God, so I'll take that as a compliment ;)

    --


    Rake Free + Mac Poker: CardCrusade
  5. Rickety by Phayyde · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I don't know. The whole thing just seems sort of rickety to me.

  6. The sniper has been identified ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    ... but why are they keeping it a secret? Presumably not to cause widespread panic.

    Why would this be? It's clear that there are only two possibilities as to who the murderer is:
    1. The sniper is a high ranking official in the US Army. This is the conspiracy theorist's favorite choice. Obviously, this is where the sniper would have received such training. And it is a convenient leftist myth that Uncle Sam's finest, faced with the possibility of fighting an unjust war, will be cracking up, fearing another Vietnam.
    2. The truth however is obvious. The sniper is a muslim. All muslims receive weekly training in the art of murder at their terrorist training camps (mosques). The reason why this fact hasn't been revealed is that it would cause the American public, as one, to rise up and eradicate the islamic filth from the country. And as the 'good guys', we don't want to appear to be racist.
    Personally, I believe, along with every heterosexual Slashdot poster, that it is ABOUT TIME we did something about these rag-wearing animals that pollute our welfare system.

    But alas, the leftists are in control of the media. A white kills a muslim on US soil, and it is declared a racist attack. A gang of muslims rape and murder a white woman in Saudi Arabia, and the same bullshit story of 'western alcohol bootleggers' is replayed. And our media, fearing even the slightest hint of political incorrectness, lap the story up.

    Saudi Arabia are NOT our allies. And mecca shall be in ruins before the decade is through.
    1. Re:The sniper has been identified ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      So what you're saying is, a muslim ran over your puppy when you were younger.

  7. Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    WHEREAS, the year since the terrible events of 9/11 has exposed the vacuity and moral confusion of all too many of the thinkers, politicians, and activists operating within conventional political categories;

    WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive anti-Americanism; by apologizing for terrorist acts; by propounding squalid theories of moral equivalence; and by blaming the victims of evil for the act of evil;

    WHEREAS, the Right has failed us by pushing `anti-terrorist' measures which bid fair to be both ineffective and prejudicial to the central liberties of a free society; and in some cases by rhetorically descending to almost the same level of religious jihad as our enemies;

    WHEREAS, even many of the Libertarians from whom we expected more intelligence have retreated into a petulant isolationism, refusing to recognize that, at this time, using the state to carry the war to the enemy is our only practical instrument of self-defense;

    WE THEREFORE ASSERT the following convictions as the basis of the anti-idiotarian position:

    1. THAT Western civilization is threatened with the specter of mass death perpetrated by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons placed in the hands of terrorists by rogue states;
    2. THAT the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attack, and its lesser sequels, are motivated by a combination of religious fanaticism and a smoldering resentment of the West's success and Islam's failures;
    3. THAT no adjustments of American or Western foreign policy, or concessions to the Palestinians, or actions taken against globalization, or otherwise worthy efforts to alleviate world poverty, are of more than incidental interest to these terrorists;
    4. THAT, upon their own representation, they will not by dissuaded from their violence by any surrender less extreme than the imposition of Islam and shari'a law on the kaffir West;
    5. THAT, as said terrorists have demonstrated the willingness to use civilian airliners as flying bombs to kill thousands of innocent people, we would commit a vast crime of moral negligence if we underestimated their future malice;
    6. THAT they have sought, and on plausible evidence found, alliance with rogue states such as Iraq and North Korea; states that are known to have active programs working towards the development and delivery of weapons that would multiply the terrorists' ability to commit atrocities by a thousandfold;
    7. THAT Saddam Hussein poses a particularly clear and present danger through his known efforts to develop nuclear weapons, his use of chemical weapons even on his own population, his demonstrated willingness to commit aggression against peaceful neighbors, and his known links to the Islamic terror network in Palestine and elsewhere.

    WE THEREFORE AFFIRM that both the terrorists and their state sponsors have made themselves outlaws from the moral community of man, to be dealt with as wolves are.

    WE FURTHER AFFIRM that the `root cause' of Islamo-fascist terrorism lies in the animating politico-religious ideas of fundamentalist Islam and not in any signicant respect elsewhere, and that a central aim of the war against terror must be to displace, discredit, and destroy those animating ideas.

    WE REJECT, as a self-serving power grab by the least trustworthy elements of our own side, the theory that terrorist depredations can be effectively prevented by further restrictions on the right of free speech, or the right of peacible assembly, or the right to bear arms in self-defense; and we strenuously oppose police-state measures such as the imposition of national ID cards or airport-level surveillance of public areas;

    WE REJECT the theory that `fairness' requires us not to notice and use the dominant gender, age range, ethnic character and religion of our terrorist enemies; and we urge the systematic use of such profiling to both make anti-terrorist screening more effective and reduce the overall intrusiveness of anti-terror measures on the majority of the population.

    WE SUPPORT the efforts of the United States of America, its allies, and the West to hunt down and and capture or kill individual members of the Islamic terror network;

    WE SUPPORT speedy American and allied military action against the rogue states that support terrorism, both as a means of alleviating the immediate threat and of deterring future state sponsorship of terrorism by the threat of war to the knife.

    WE SUPPORT, as an alternative greatly preferable to future nuclear blackmail of the West, the conquest and occupation of Iraq and other nations that combine sponsorship of terrorism with the possession of weapons of mass destruction, until such time as the root causes of terrorism have been eradicated from their societies.

    WE DEFINE IDIOTARIANISM as the species of delusion within the moral community of mankind that gives aid and comfort to terrorists and dictators operating outside it.

    WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Left -- the moral blindness that refuses to recognize that free markets, individual liberty, and experimental science have made the West a fundamentally better place than any culture in which jihad, 'honor killings', and female genital mutilation are daily practices approved by a stultifying religion.

    WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Right -- whether it manifests as head-in-the-sand isolationism or as a Christian religious chauvinism and bigotry that all but mirrors the Islamo-fascist fanaticism of our self-declared enemies.

    WE ARE MEMBERS OF A CIVILIZATION, and we hold that civilization to be worth defending. We have not sought war, but we will fight it to the end. We will fight for our civilization in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds.

    WE HAVE AWAKENED. We have seen the face of evil in the acts of the Bin Ladens and Husseins and Arafats of the world; we have seen through the lies and self-delusions of the idiotarians who did so much both to make their evil possible before the fact and to deny and excuse it afterwards. We shall not flinch from our duty to confront that evil.

    WE SHALL SHED the moral cowards and the appeasers and the apologists; and we shall fight the barbarians and fanatics, and we shall defeat them. We shall defeat them in war, crushing their dream of dominion; and we shall defeat them in peace, using our wealth and freedoms to seduce their women and children to civilized ways, and ultimately wiping their diseased and virulent culture from the face of the Earth.

    THIS WE SWEAR, on the graves of those who died at the World Trade Center; and those who died in the Sari Club in Bali; and those who died on the U.S.S. Cole; and indeed on the graves of all the nameless victims in the Middle East itself who have been slaughtered by terrorism and rogue states;

    YOU SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN.

  8. Re:Naked (and Petrified!!!) singularities by JimmytheGeek · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'd prefer naked and petrified celebrities.

    Imagine a beowulf galaxy cluster, though.

  9. Hole Finders, Inc. by Reziac · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    "And I'll make billions and billions from the book contract and the TV show with the government funding for looking for the nothing in the hole in the middle of it all..." -- Frank Hayes, DON'T ASK

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  10. Re:This is how it's gonna be. by porksoda · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Uh, I think every galaxy has one of these in its center. I further believe that every galaxy will consequently get sucked into its black hole. Once that has been carried out successfully, the now entirely too massive black holes will begin to attract each other, during which the universe will begin collapse in on itself, at which time everything will implode within a matter of mere moments (which will appear to stretch out for billions of years due to time dilation) so that everything becomes an infinitely small and infinitely massive point. At that time, time loops over itself and the big bang happens. (I feel like I've written this before... in another life perhaps.)

    TV: "a Hans Moleman productions present... Hans Moleman in... Man Getting Hit By FootBall."
    (boink)
    (man doubles over in pain, grabbing crotch)

    Homer: (hysterical laughter) "This contest is over, give that man the $10,000."

    sir i think you're on to something. i got a question - would two black holes attract each other, and move closer and closer together?

  11. Re:Diameter of a Black Hole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Check out the Heechee sage by Fred Pohl. Somewhere in there there's a black hole. I don't want to give away spoilers.

  12. Re:Diameter of a Black Hole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    sage=saga

    it's early...

  13. Bait? by BoBaBrain · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    [HUMOUR] There's a Hole in the Middle of It All

    You're just begging for the goatse.cx guy to rear his ugly "head", aren't you Michael? [/HUMOUR]

    --
    I am a Karma Library.
  14. Re:Event Horizon by lhdentra · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    No, that's nothing to do with the big bang - it's just a great way to relax.

  15. I wonder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I wonder if the mods know what the hell is insightful and what is a load of crap. I'm guessing, no.