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First Science From A Virtual Observatory

Posted by timothy on from the we-think-therefore-it-is dept.

mindpixel writes "I first mentioned Virtual Observatories in my July 2000 Slashdot interview. Now, nearly four years later, Spacetelescope.org is reporting a European team has used the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) to find 30 supermassive black holes that had previously escaped detection behind masking dust clouds. The identification of this large population of long-sought 'hidden' black holes is the first scientific discovery to emerge from a Virtual Observatory. The result suggests that astronomers may have underestimated the number of powerful supermassive black holes by as much as a factor of five."

7 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. My first question by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Could this by any chance have anything to do with the Dark Energy "antigravity" effect that the universe appears to be experiencing? One would think that the black holes would actually help things collapse, but if they're at the outer fringes, might they be pulling things outward?

    Hmm... probably a stupid question, but it never hurts to ask.

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    1. Re:My first question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      it could be pulling things apart, but then the black holes would be pulling eachother together, causing an illusion of expansion while actually shrinking. (completely made up just for you.)

    2. Re:My first question by AstroAndy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Black holes are merely supermassive objects of "real matter". They are JUST pieces of matter that pull stuff that come close to it in. They cannot stretch out space by having a bunch of them on the "fringes of space" (which may not exist anyway, seeing as the Universe is most likely infinite). Dark Energy is one sick bastard. It has NEGATIVE pressure. THIS is the best explination to why the universe's expansion rate is accelerating. Black holes have nothing to do with it.

  2. Interesting research by SIGALRM · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The majority of the sources are so faint that it is currently not possible to take spectra of them and the VO techniques made it possible for the researchers to work seamlessly with images and catalogues from many different sources

    One question the AVO may answer is, in this view how do these black holes produce X-ray sources, similar to what we see from galaxies that are much younger?

    And (OT) is it just me or does that background hurt your eyes too?

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  3. Re:GenBank by CaptainAvatar · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Well, one major difference I can think of is that virtual observatories will include raw data (eg the AUS-VO has 13 years worth of raw observations made by the Australia Telescope Compact Array). So you can look for things in that data that wasn't dreamed of by the astronomers who took it in the first place. For example, those foreground stars may merely be an irritant to someone looking at that background galaxy cluster, but to a stellar dynamicist they might be very interesting.

    As I understand it, GenBank is just a catalogue of gene sequences, which is to say, the end results of data analysis. This is equivalent in the astronomy world to a catalogue of galaxies or stars or whatnot (which virtual observatories will also include). Of course you can get new science from such a database, but it's a very different kettle of fish to making available all the raw data that the geneticists used to derive the gene sequences in the first place, which could be even more useful (well, I imagine so, but perhaps it wouldn't be useful at all to other geneticists). So a virtual observatory is not mere hyperbole, IMHO, because it can be used to make what are effectively "new" observations of astronomical objects, as well as datamine previously compiled catalogues (a la GenBank, or in astronomy, NED or SIMBAD).

    Erm, well, I'm rambling a bit so I'll shut up now.

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  4. There's a mass of data out there... by syousef · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...and free software to do data reduction and analysis. Most of it is esoteric and somewhat unintuitive to use, but if you want you can get access to year old observations from

    That's exactly what some students chose to do in the internet-taught (distance education) astronomy masters I did a few years ago at the University of Wester Sydney (UWS) in Australia. Unfortunately they've killed off that course but there are courses - online masters degrees and doctorate courses being run out of James Cook University (JCU - http://www.jcu.edu.au) now in QLD Australia. This degree is taught by some of the same staff that created and ran the course at UWS, who left when support for Astronomy by upper management at UWS died in what I consider a disgusting way. They are a good bunch of people, very passionate and highly skilled.

    Of course you don't have to do a degree to get hold of the software, and books and try out some reduction yourself. The learning curve is high, but the resources out there on the net for astronomy are amazing.

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  5. Re:This was already speculated by Ckwop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am personally of the belief that black holes do not exist, as they suffer from the 'tree falling in the forest' syndrome. If you cannot see it, it does not exist.


    I agree, if you can't detect it then it doesn't exist since it has no detectable impact on the universe. However, this isn't true for blackholes in that we *can* detect blackholes. They have huge gravity and they're black. When they collide they cause a storm of gravitational waves which should be readily detectable.


    If these superdense things aren't blackholes as we understand them then they're something equally as weird.


    Simon