Second Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way

Tsalg pastes "A second black hole lurks at the centre of our Galaxy, according to astronomers who have watched a cluster of stars spinning around it. Just three years ago, astronomers confirmed that the Milky Way revolves around a supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A*, which is about 2.6 million times more massive than the Sun. But now a much smaller black hole, just 1,300 times our Sun's mass, has been found orbiting about three light years away from its supermassive cousin. placing it intermediate between the relatively small (stellar mass) black holes in the Milky way Galaxy and the supermassive black holes found in the nuclei of galaxies."

Comments

black hole collision

[i_should_be_working]

any astronomers know what to expect to see when two black holes collide? we have pictures of stars colliding or ripping each other apart. we have ones of whole galaxies colliding. but what about black holes?

Re:black hole collision

[benhocking]

And some very interesting gravity waves will be generated!

Re:black hole collision

[chenzhen]

Actually this is a pretty tough problem to solve. The computation was attempted by several leading numerical relativity institutions some years ago, but met with no success. The professor I work for is currently building up a code that will hopefully someday be able to handle the binary collision problem.

One of the major problems is that programs crash pretty quickly when the evolution develops a singularity. A good method for avoiding this is called excision, where the singularity is removed from the grid and replaced with boundary conditions. This was recently implemented in my advisor's group and applied to the binary neutron star problem. At the end of the evolution, a black hole forms, so it doesn't seem like there are too many steps before a full black hole collision is possible.

Tithing

[AtariAmarok]

"black holes are a popular myth like god"

So, if you give money to a church, it goes to God; and if you pay taxes to government, it goes down a black hole?

Re:Contradictory?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

That would be a movie effect, not reality. The spiral arms of the galaxy are a density wave propagating through the stars and dust of the galaxy's disk. Think of how sound can be described as a density wave propagating through the air. Same thing.