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Two Black Holes to Merge
An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers have discovered two supermassive black holes that they predict will eventually collide.
As they say in bad SF, 'it could warp the fabric of space.'"
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But what will it do to the continuum of time?
I thought they said 'May the force be with you' in really bad SF...
If two objects which warp space so much that nothing can ever collide with them collide, what the bloody fuck happens?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I remember reading a book, I think it was part of the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter, where the premise of the story was that every few hundred million years a collision like this killed all life in the entire galaxy through a massive release of radiation.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Yea, right. I have several billion electrons right here warping the fabric of space.
Who the hell thinks this crap up?
EVERYTHING WITH MASS WARPS SPACE. The more massive it is, the more it warps space. Black holes warp space so much it "tears," for lack of a better term. Two black holes combining into one huge black hole isn't going to do anything that they wouldn't do otherwise.
They might *think* they're doing the right thing, but they're young now. Let's just hope they sign a pre-nup.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
What a Beowulf Cluster of these things colliding would do?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Keep in mind that the further out we look in space, the further into the past we are seeing. Since these black holes are 400 million light-years away, we are seeing them as they were 400 million years ago, and the researchers are predicting that they'll merge in a few hundred million years, which means they collided a hundred million years ago or so. Humans (or whatever species we evolve into) will most likely be extinct long before the light from the collision reaches us hundreds of millions of years from now.
Astronomers think that most galaxies in the universe, including the Milky Way, harbor black holes at their cores. But they have never before seen two such weird creatures inhabiting a single galaxy.
Wierd!?!?!? O K
Each of the smaller galaxies brought its own black hole, ranging from 10 million to 100 million times the mass of our sun, to the wedding
WTF!?!?!!
PUT THE CRACK PIPE DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
I know a few black troll and unfortunately I've seen them collide, relax people. The result will be pretty dull and childish.
What articles say that?
As they say in lots of AC posts... STFU.
(Except that there's the weird possibility that the speed of gravity waves may not be equal to the speed of light. Gravity waves are what the article is presumably referring to when it talks about "warping the fabric of space". BTW, I don't even pretend to understand the "speed of gravity" debate, nor even am I equipped to assess whether it's a legitimate debate or fringe/crank science. I can't even sort out the terms that are used.)
Haven't read up on general relativity, have we?
no one else is reporting that AOL-TW and Microsoft are going to merge.
...two supermassive black holes collide in space...do they make a sound?
Also, how much synergy between the black holes can be leveraged to deliver greater shareholder value?
"The breakthrough came with Chandra's ability to clearly distinguish the two nuclei, and measure the details of the X-radiation from each nucleus," said Guenther Hasinger, also of the Planck Institute and the paper's co-author.
I find the use of the term nucleus to be interesting in light of the subject matter. When I think of a nucleus, I think of the particles at the center of an atom, not the remnants of multiple stars sucking in everything around them.
Yes, I'm aware the term is used in other ways, such as the 'nucleus' of a cell. It still jumped out at me a bit.
This is an ex-parrot!
Two black holes combining into one huge black hole isn't going to do anything that they wouldn't do otherwise. ...Except releasing gravity waves of strong enough magnitude to be detected from great distances.
Magnitude matters.
Two giant black holes have been found at the center of a galaxy born from the joining of two smaller galaxies and are drifting toward a cataclysmic collision that will send ripples throughout the universe many millions of years from now, scientists said today.
or, we will have destroyed ourselves or a meteor will destroy us by the time we see this.
Eventually, those ripples will hit Earth's galaxy and cause infinitesimal wobbling in all matter, though it would be far too tiny to be noticed by humans.
Even if we do survive long enough to see it, we won't care
"This is the first time we have ever identified a binary black hole. This is the aftermath of two galaxies that collided sometime in the past."
So it is not enough that we might be sucked into one black hole, now we can be split apart by two.
In about four billion years, astronomers believe, the Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda galaxy will collide and merge, fusing their black holes into one.
So in addition to meteors, magnetic reversal, volcanos, and sunspot we know have to worry about another galaxies offing us.
The Sun is expected to blow up into a nova in three billion years, and perhaps then collapse to form a small black hole of its own, he said.
But this doesn't matter because our sun will suck in our burned remnants long before that.
Now, why is it that we are so optimistic?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Dammit, there's no screeching tire sounds in World's Scariest Police Chases, ever! Stop watching fox on sunday night.
I wonder what happens when a black-hole starts eating anti-matter (if it finds some). Does this decreases its mass, since matter and anti-matter destroy each other?
...Tasha Yar is coming back?...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
This is also close the a background plot in Ringworld, only there the radiation was caused by a chain reaction of super novas in the galactic core.
You have to appreciate astrophysicists' short-term excitement and long-term planning.
..." :)
"Two black holes are going to merge! Two black holes are going to merge!
Of course, we'll be watching this very carefully over the next one hundred million years
They are just two infinetly small points merging together. You can't even see them.
But hey, maybe they are going to give birth to a third hole. Just the way I learned in biology class. The one goes in, and then... I gotta go... MAMMY!...
Now we know how other galaxies get rid of all their AOL disks.
Table-ized A.I.
Dr. Hasinger noted that humans on Earth would not have to worry about this galactic collision: they will not be around. The Sun is expected to blow up into a nova in three billion years, and perhaps then collapse to form a small black hole of its own, he said.
Um. No. The Sun is not massive enough to "blow up into a nova" or to collapse into a black hole. It will, most likely, expand into a red giant (and swallowing Mercury, Venus, and maybe the Earth). Whatever is left after that will shrink into a white dwarf.
make this more apropo :)
Dark Helmet:"What the hell am I looking at?
When does this happen in the movie?"
ColonelSandurz: "Now. You're looking at now, sir.
Everything that happens now is happening now."
Dark Helmet: "What happened to then?"
Colonel Sandurz: "We passed it."
Dark Helmet: "When?"
Colonel Sandurz: "Just now. We're at now, now."
Dark Helmet: "Go back to then!"
Colonel Sandurz: "When?"
Dark Helmet: "Now!"
Colonel Sandurz: "Now?"
Dark Helmet: "Now!"
Colonel Sandurz:"We can't!"
Dark Helmet: "Why?"
Colonel Sandurz: "We missed it."
Dark Helmet: "When?"
Colonel Sandurz:"Just now."
Dark Helmet: "When will then be now?"
Colonel Sandurz: "Soon."
Dark Helmet: "How soon?"
Technician: "Sir!"
Dark Helmet: "What?!"
Technician: "We've identified their location!"
Dark Helmet: "Where?!"
Technician: "It's the moon of Vega."
Colonel Sandurz:"Good work. Set a course and prepare for our arrival!"
Dark Helmet: "When?!"
Technician: "Nineteen hundred hours, sir!"
Colonel Sandurz: "By high noon tomorrow they will be our prisoners!"
Dark Helmet: "WHO??!!"
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
The earth's sun will burn it self out long before the few hundred million years, so the question is do two black holes really collide if no one is there to watch them????
AFAIK 'Gravity Waves' are not bound by the speed of light, they are instantaneous. This is coming from a dark corner in the back of my mind which I haven't visited in some time. I think I remembered something about gravity being above-and-beyond light and time in the cosmic pecking order. Also bear in mind that this collision would be nothing as the effect of it will decrease on the square of the radius (another dark corner of my mind) like light; Don't buy earthquake insurance yet folks.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
According to the article, it said that it will happen in a couple hundred million years. However, since the black holes are 400 million light-years away, and the scientists are therefore looking at 400 million year old data...doesn't that mean it will happen soon?
AFAIK 'Gravity Waves' are not bound by the speed of light, they are instantaneous.
Quote from this page: "Gravitational waves are a prediction of Einstein's general relativity theory which describes gravity as distortions, caused by mass, of the very fabric of the Universe - spacetime. They are ripples in the spacetime fabric that travel outwards at the speed of light."
However measurements are on the way to test this.
Aren't you all forgetting that we don't even know if black holes exist yet? For all we know, it's just 2 gravastars or neutron stars, after all, don't forget that no one has ever seen a black hole, and probably no one ever will.
You may not agree with what I'm saying but I'll kill you for my right to say it
Yeah, also i've always wondered how they get the sound of the skis/snowboards and stuff in the winter olympics, do they have the ski hills miced? Same with the ramps and stuff at the gravity/x games.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Indeed, if "gravity waves" conform to current theories (quantum physics, relativity, and I think string theory), they are essentially "virtual particles" having infintesimal mass, thus the fastest they can travel is assymptotically close to the speed of light. (see wave-particle duality in any quantum physics textbook).
Think about it a second. If gravitons moved slower than c, then by moving fast enough you could outrun them -- and escape from a black hole.
Think about this for a second.... ask any physicist, and they will tell you. Indeed I have taken many physics classes, as half my degrees entail physics... I have many physicist friends. All particles have math, even though they appear to be infinitesimal. Take an electron for example, its mass is 9.10939x10^-31 kg, rather small... rather small even compared to a protons mass of 1.67262x10^-27 kg. In indeed even photons have a slight mass, this is part of the paradox associated with the wave-particle duality. If no 'massy' particle can travel the speed of light (and any particle, due to being made of matter has mass), how can a photon travel at c (speed of light in a vacuum - 2.9979x10^8 m/s).
If massy particles could travel at c, then according to Special Relativity their mass would appear infinite to outside observers.
I have never heard that photons were ever thought to have mass. They have momentum of course, equal to Planck's constant times their frequency; but they have no mass.
Even if you were taught in your "physics classes" that photons had mass, a two minute search of Google shows that 99% of the website-producing population of earth disagrees. Admittedly, that is not necessarily proof - it's been said that any idiot can put up a web site, and many idiots have - but reading textbooks and the physics section of any bookstore will produce the same conclusion.
That is why it is indeed a paradox... quantum physics may not agree with this, however, relativity does. You must be suffering from brain damage to believe that an electron volt is synonymous with mass. As you stated, an electron volt is the voltage required to move an electron through a 1 volt potential... this is not a mass, as it can be converted to the SI standard unit for energy called a joule, which by the metric (SI) definition is defined as a newton x metre. So in essense, you are telling me that your power company is creating mass, which would break the conservation of mass law in physics, which is one of the most fundamental laws. So when you start believing something as idiotic as that, you are indeed setting yourself at the same supposed level as myself.... I dont profess to be a physicist, but I have gotten into debates with pysicist and post-doctural fellows, regarding massless particles. Yes they are essentially massless, that is because the mass is infinitesimal, and if you pull out that book labelled dictionary with all the dust on it (note, the dust may actually cover some or all of the letters), and look that word up, you may start to understand what I'm saying. Do I believe it entirely? No.... and if you read what I stated, you would note that I said modern theories state this... so when you start to flame someone, know what you're talking about, flame with tact, and couth.
I don't have time for this. You argue like a drowning man, grabbing at all sorts of verbiage and crap in an attempt to stay alive. Give me one web site, journal article, or book reference that expressly states "photons have nonzero mass" and I may continue this argument. Otherwise, have a nice life, preferably a few hundred kilometers away from me.
you need to adjust your panties, dude.... while your at it.... get laid... that'll releave some of the tension.