Slashdot Mirror
More Blackholes Discovered...
Lispy writes "Space.com has this story about the surprising finding of missing blackholes. There might be up to five times more blackholes in space than previously estimated.
"The European Southern Observatory in Munich, Germany reports that the black holes were all in "active" galaxies, meaning they were actively consuming large quantities of galactic matter.""
Black holes play hide and seek? I never saw that one coming.
Must have been a glitch in the matrix...
either its "blackhole" or its "black hole". Please decide.
"At the beginning there was
nothing but a big ball of
gases.
For a long time it just sat there
in the nothingness, getting hotter
and hotter.
Then it exploded."
Any thought you've ever had has already be
What if there are black holes being formed constantly, appearing in pen space even WITHOUT there having been a star there?
The universe could be collapsing, with black holes appearing faster and faster, exponentially more and more of them.
Well, I for one welcome our new black hole overlords.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Although some say that these black holes account for the "missing matter" that is needed for the universe to gravitationally collapse upon itself some hundreds of billions of years in the future, current analysis shows that the mass of all black holes are less than one trillionth of the mass of the universe.
Even if there are a thousand more times the number of black holes out there, it still won't account for the so-called "missing mass".
Of course, there could be many million times more black holes out there. Or some other large masses that we have yet to find. In any case, this 2-to-5 times the number of black holes isn't the (possible) mass we're looking for.
Does this make the theory of a "big crunch" any more likely than before? I'm guessing not.
The theory which I understood to be most prominent at present was one of an accelerating, expanding galaxy. Eventually, all galaxies would be moving away from one another so swiftly it would be impossible to see one galaxy from another. Every galaxy would sputter and die in a universe its inhabitants would perceive as utterly empty.
Does the discovery that black holes are more prominent than before just mean that the pace of destruction of said galaxies will only be any different? Or does it do anything to reverse the present theory? It's possible there's no change at all. Any galaxies like this that were seen (in the article) were behaving that way billions of years ago. Who knows what's going on now.
Also, I wonder what could trigger the Milky Way's black hole into an "active" state. Heck, it may already have happened, but it would take about 50,000 years for us to see it.
How can someone be surprised by this find? What we know about the universe is virtually nothing in comparison to what is out there.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
I've always wanted a blackhole as a pet ... but where would I hide it from my parents? ... let alone feed it? :P
The Zen Buddhist in me would love it if the expansionary universe became a cyclical big bang/crunch.
"If there was a God,"
Any thought you've ever had has already be
"This discovery means that surveys of powerful supermassive black holes have so far underestimated their numbers by at least a factor of two, and possibly by up to a factor of five,"
Souns like a fortune teller.
"Your success in life and love can be increased with numbers by at least a factor of two, and possibly by up to a factor of five!"
--
"Pimp, Pimp, Pimp, Pimp!" - Ice-T
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I was just looking for my black hole this morning. Thanks for the heads up - i called the researchers and they're sending it back to me Fed Ex.
ourpla.net is your planet
I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but there is other explanation for all the gravitational effects, missing matter, galaxies not expanding etc... There is a possibility of "antimatter" with antigravity property. This can explain why galaxies are not expanding as the theory would predict. Some says it's the mass of the neutrinos, some says it's the gravitational equation that bounds to a minimum, and some other explain that we simply live with a parallel universe (no SF here), wich can only interact with us by gravitational force. So, it's like the opposite of magnets : in that "world", everything is like the gravity we know in our world, but when a + encounter a -, it becomes like a gravity repulsion. If you speak french, you can have details of this theory (as well as a program prototype wich clearly demonstrate that galaxy form like what we see can come from such a model) at www.jp-petit.com This guy is very open minded, and have a very strong scientific career. Think what you want, but one aspect of intelligence is being imaginative and open minded. I actually prefer this theory as what we actually try to make us eat.
black holes were all in "active" galaxies, meaning they were actively consuming large quantities of galactic matter.
Black Holes are the first intergalactic corporation.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
of almost infinite
matter.
Then it exploded.
Thus began time and space.
"Or something like that."
"And you can make up history
from the present as easily
as I can.
For is this not the principal
gift of the education you
paid so many dollars to obtain?"
Any thought you've ever had has already be
"And so I say to thee:
:)
The universe was
created in order
to amuse us."
Or whatever
These black holes were not "missing" because nobody thought they existed. This /. article calls the report "surprising", but their existence would not be surprising if they were known to exist but had not been located.
In the beginning,
the Earth was without form,
and void.
But the Sun shone upon the sleeping Earth
and deep inside the brittle crust
massive forces waited to be unleashed.
The seas parted
and great continents were formed.
The continents shifted, mountains arose.
Earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves.
Volcanoes erupted
and spewed forth fiery lava
and charged the atmosphere
with strange gases.
Into this swirling maelstrom
of Fire and Air and Water
the first stirrings of Life appeared:
tiny organisms, cells, and amoeba,
clinging to tiny sheltered habitats.
But the seeds of Life grew,
and strengthened, and spread,
and diversified,
and prospered,
and soon every continent and climate
teemed with Life.
And with Life came instinct,
and specialization, natural selection,
Reptiles, Dinosaurs, and Mammals
and finally there evolved a species
known as Man
and there appeared
the first faint glimmers of
Intelligence.
The fruits of intelligence were many:
fire, tools, and weapons,
the hunt, farming, and the sharing of food,
the family, the village, and the tribe.
Now it required but one more ingredient:
a great Leader
to unite the quarreling tribes
to harness the power of the land
to build a legacy
that would stand the test of time:
a CIVILIZATION!
father physics and mother natures way of recycling or ....
there is only so much space so every now and then things need to be archived compressed....or..
astronomy is like the computer industry... where the user/observer can never get there from here... there is always something missing....or...
we still don't know what gravity really is.... or... maybe MS has the answer... make people need you... again and again and again.....
And on that note.... I have a few black holes up for sale.... they contain everything you need and want... and as soon as we figure out gravity then we can unpack them...
"We don't know if there are
Gods,
Or even one God,
Who made everything all by
himself,
Completely from scratch,
But we don't believe that everything
is just some big accident
either,
Because that's what a lot of
you think
And look at you."
Any thought you've ever had has already be
"Until the clever apes were
all alone on the earth, with the
exception of the other living
things and many, many trees
that could be turned into pointed
sticks."
Any thought you've ever had has already be
but he does do Enron style accounting. Where does all that matter go?
time passes
Well, the thing about grit is, it's black...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"But we take pride
:)"
in not knowing and not
implying that we must
know;
for believing that there
must have been something
before the universe
is an irrelevant belief:
it is impossible to know.
now look at me
"And which of you can show
show me a molecule of a single blade
of grass or gradon of sand that is
evil?
The molecules are not evil.
They are simply chemicals.
And chemicals are neither
good nor evil. They simply
are."
Any thought you've ever had has already be
Black holes are known to multiply - especially in spring, which is probably why we're seeing them now.
dumb dick
Astrophysicist 1: Why can't we understand foo?
Astrophysicist 2: I know! It's because foo is missing!
Layman: Duh. My taxes pay for this?
How can scientists know that there are blackholes if they cannot see them?
The ESO is not in Europe, rather in Chile. Hence the "Southern" in the name.
And it's actually far better than Hubble.
some neat pictures of blackhole surroundings on ... i mean i can't ... ... this is all just to outline ... if it ...
that space.com page.
just a question: let us say we're in spaceship
heading to the nearest blackhole. the closer we get
the stronger it begins pulling us in, thus
accelerating out little spaceship. soon we would
be moving at (or very very)near lightspeed. now
this is not possible (we're not a photon), but the
physical surrounding is trying to do do just that.
so, if i recall correctly, the faster i move the
more time seems to stand still
see myself moving sslloowweerr, but if i look out
the spaceship window, planets are rotating
around the sun at increadible speeds and i could
witness the birth, evolution and distruction
or a whole solarsystem in the blink of an eye
of course this is "wrong" since i'm moving away
from the solarsystem towards the blackhole and
the solarsystem would become very very tiny very
fast, just like moving away from any object makes
it appear smaller
the real question. would i every reach the event
horizon, befor the univers came to an end?
the solution to that question depends on if the
univers will expand forever, reach a "stasis"
point or collaps back. if the univers expands for
ever then i can pass the event horizon
colabses back, i cannot reach it, because at
lightspeed, everything happends in the blink of an
eye
then there is the question, if blackholes have
a superiority over gravity overall. i want to say,
if something IS a blackhole, can it still orbit
around something MORE massiv, or is it anchored
to its position. say we have a mini blackhole
here on earth, would this mini blackhole just stay
where it is, so to speak absolute in the univers
at the time of it creation, or would it revolve
around the sun in the maschine or whatever
created it on the surface of this planet?
also (just for fun!) imagine having a blackhole
in one hand and another in the other hand. now
you hold them as close together as you can, but
without letting them fall into each other,
and with a quick move sperate them. what DO YOU
think would haven to space-time between the two
black holes?
Depends on the language:
Basic: blackhole%
Fortran: BLACKHOL
Pascal: BlackHole
C: black_hole
Java: blackHole
Hungarian Notation: lpzBlackHole (a long pointer which terminates in null)
"In the beginning was the void,
and the void was all there
was, for a long time.
And then there was something
that was not the void,
Although maybe it still was,
Really,
And just looked like it wasn't,
Being an illusion,
And a pretty convincing one
at that,
To everything that was part of
the illusion,
Unless it wasn't an illusion,
But really separate from the void,
And actually came into existence
somehow,
Even though it's impossible
to know,
And wouldn't change anything
anyhow,
Because this was a long
long long time ago,
Before there were gods,
Before there were men,
Before there was life as we
know it,
Before there were planets,
And even before the very
first star exploded into existence,
or into the illusion of existence,
Which amounts to the same thing,
When all is said and done,
Because back then, there was
nobody to notice the difference,
Or pretend there was a difference,
Which makes it all pretty irrelevant."
Any thought you've ever had has already be
I'm currently working on my master's at the University of Cosmotology in Berkley, and I think black holes are great!!!
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
"so?"
Whoops, whack my third paragraph. Wikipedia says it all better and probably more accurately.
When we have warpdrives that bring us to the center of a galaxy within reasonable amount of time, we only have to jump through the blackhole to reach another galaxy. More blackholes means more locations to travel to!
This is yet another example of a non-story story. 99.9% of all astronomers would have told you before this story that these active galaxies had big black holes. We would have also pointed to other results (from Hubble) from the last 5 years or so that have clearly indicated that essentially ALL massive galaxies -- active or not -- harbor black holes in their cores about 1/1000 as massive as the bulge component of the host galaxy. I've been saying this to my classes and in seminars for years. I'm not saying this isn't a nice project, seeing the waste heat from the active core, but it's a confirmation not a "discovery of new black holes." Sheesh.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
The real cool thing with this story is the fact the black holes were discovered using the Astronomical Virtual Observatory (AVO). The AVO is a giant database of images take from a variety of telescopes including Hubble, Chndra, and the VLT in Chile.
Hubble for instance aquires about a terabyte of data every year. Some projects under development now will collect that much data every single day. Virtual observatories let anyone grab some of this data to work with it. There's a lot of new information being collected or digitzed every day which means just that much more data to mine for every region of the sky.
An excellent example of this (besides this recent discovery) is the research done on the KBO 2001 KX76. A team of European astronomers used a program called Astrovirtel based out of the European Southern Observatory to better map the orbit of the KBO. They were able to parse over data going back to 1982 which means they were able to watch almost 20 years worth of the KBO's orbit. One of the researchers was even able to perform some of the processing work on his home computer. The orbital mapping of 2001 KX76 gives credence to the theory that it is actually larger than Ceres and thus the largest space rock discovered in the solar system thus far.
Virtual astronomy can easily find information on just about any observed object that varies by some bit over time. Examining old plates has been a hallmark of astronomy for years but these new virtual observatory projects take the concept to a higher level. The discoveries of these black holes is a testament to how useful it is to be able to mine through years of observations from entirely different types of observatories. For some types of research it makes telescope time, which is typically hard to come by, a bit less important. It also opens the door for anyone to do astronomical research.
Virtual astronomy is really open source astronomy. The collective work of hundreds of individuals can be leveraged by just about anyone. These same people can also contribute back to the VOs for other people down the road to work with.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
blaqh blah blah why doesn't the Gubmint shut down this silly goo-gaah research and reduce my goddamn taxes or at least give it to poor people, puppies and unemployed shit-flinging artists.
Fuck knowledge, you can't pump it into your gastank.
Science build on small step, even "popularly" known one fact, as to have a stable basis. And it is ready to shed theory if the model are proven to be false , or a better model come out. Such "simplistic" verification are necessary. Every fact even small one is important. After all the check the european astronomer had made could have come with the contrary result, and THIS would have been another step in clarification of our universe because it begs questions (why so much/few baclk holes? Are the model false ? Can they be refined ?). Both parents post might try to look funny with their "this is evident" but nothing is taken as evident until it can be falsified and data verified. At best those are only two funny +5 posts.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No self-respecting physicist will ever say "the Universe is wrong". That statement is just pure nonsense. The universe is what it is, nothing more and nothing less.
.
Now, you can ask why do physicist still think the "theory" is correct. Well, the truth is that physicist never think the "theory is correct", it is only approximately correct.
Also, no theory predicy the amount of mass in the universe. The amount of matter measured by its gravitational effects (given to us by general relativity theory) is more than what we can account from our Particle physics model (given to use by standard model of Particle physics).
Both these theories are known to be inconsistent with one another. But, both of them are also verified to very high order of precision, given our current technological abilities
Now, why not invent theories that account for the missing matter? Well, there are a billion of those. Just check daily at arXiv.org for a sample . But none of these theories can
(a) Account for all the precision tests we have
(b) exactly predict (or even post-dict) the current measured universe
(c) do all the above "naturally", i.e. they have to solve all those problems without doing it by construction
That's why we physicists get the big bucks to try and figure it out.
Soooo, coming to my ad hominem statement : Next time, you accuse "missing matter" of being pseudo-science, I suggest you go and preuse some current literature about what science is first before blabbering off.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
In my kindergarten quantum field theory class they told me that since "gravity" is really the exchange of spin 2 particles (tensor bosons aka gravitons, which incidentally have never been experimentally observed), interactions between charges (masses) is universally attractive. that's opposed to spin 1 fields --like photons-- that give rise to attractive and repulsive forces.
One paradox that I have not seen adequately explained is how black holes can causally exist in our universe at all. Everyone says that black holes are formed from the collapse of a star. And, indeed, such collapses might actually occur. But, unless you are actually sucked into such a black hole, I believe there can be no such collapses that occur in the past, to any observer in the universe, at any time less than infinite time.
The reason is what appears to happen at the event horizon of a black hole to an observer situated outside of the event horizon. To someone outside the event horizon, the clock that relates to matter being sucked into the event horizon slows down. In fact, to someone outside, it appears to take infinite time for matter to cross the event horizon. Light coming from such matter also becomes red shifted, so the matter just seems to hang there and the wavelength of the light emitted or reflected from it gets longer and longer.
So consider what happens when a star collapses. The instant it becomes dense enough to just begin to form an event horizon, anything else falling into it takes an infinite amount of time to cross the event horizon. That prevents the collapsing star, if it ever forms a black hole, from ever increasing its mass and expanding its event horizon. To an observer outside the black hole, the event horizon may not ever be observed to actually form.
I think it is true that an observer actually falling into a black hole's event horizon has only a finite amount of time before being crushed at the singularity within. But that suggests that there are either exactly zero black holes or one black hole that actually causally exists to any observer in the universe -- and if that one exists, he is already inside of it and is doomed, without any possibility of communicating that fact back to the rest of the universe.
This paradox suggests that the only black holes that *might* causally exist and that can be observed would have to have existed from the beginning of the universe. (Of course, then they wouldn't be "causal," but I'm not sure what that means, exactly, in such a case.) Another way black holes might actually be formed is if the uncertainty principle and/or quantization of space and/or time created a situation in which, to an outside observer, it took a *finite* time for matter to fall into the event horizon. But I don't think anyone has presented an adequate theory of quantum space-time yet.
By the way, I believe it to be the case that, to an observer falling into a black hole, EVERYTHING that is going to fall in crosses the event horizon at exactly the same time, but in different places around the event horizon. Black holes are definitely weird.
"Let h stand for the summation
of all discrete events in the
entire course of human history,
And let p stand for progress,
Where p is a function of h
Such that p = f(h).
Now,
Can anybody calculate for me
the value of p?
Of course, the brighter ones
will already have figured it out,
Because it really quite simple:
p = 0."
Any thought you've ever had has already be
When a star meets a blackhole, it will be eaten, now what will happen when a blackhole meets another blackhole?