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Black Hole in Search of a Home

Posted by Zonk on from the don't-pick-up-that-hitchhiker dept.

jose parinas writes "Interesting news from the ESO observatory on Paranal about black holes that travel. From the article: 'For 19 of [the low redshift quasars], they found, as expected, that these super massive black holes are surrounded by a host galaxy. But when they studied the bright quasar HE0450-2958, located some 5 billion light-years away, they couldn't find evidence for an encircling galaxy. This, the astronomers suggest, may indicate a rare case of collision between a seemingly normal spiral galaxy and a much more exotic object harbouring a very massive black hole.'" More from the article: "Has the host galaxy been completely disrupted as a result of the collision? It is hard to imagine how that could happen. Has an isolated black hole captured gas while crossing the disc of a spiral galaxy? This would require very special conditions and would probably not have caused such a tremendous perturbation as is observed in the neighbouring galaxy. Another intriguing hypothesis is that the galaxy harbouring the black hole was almost exclusively made of dark matter." Update: 09/17 00:15 GMT by Z : Edited for clarity.

6 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. adoption by LiquidMind · · Score: 5, Funny

    I volunteer to adopt it, I think it would make a great companion plus the added perk of being an infinite power source.
    *rolls up newspaper* but if it starts behaving badly, we're gonna have a problem.

    --
    This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
  2. I'll never sleep again by Eradicator2k3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "...a much more exotic object harbouring a very massive black hole."

    This brings Uhura's "exotic" dance in Star Trek V to mind.

    --
    Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
  3. Oh sure.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You let one in and there goes the whole neighborhood!

  4. Re:Gotta say ... by Trip+Ericson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, it was much simpler when everything was just God's will.

  5. Why couldn't it have by geekoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    just 'consumed' the galaxy it started with? sure it would take a long time, but it's probably been there a long time.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  6. Dark matter? by bradbury · · Score: 5, Interesting
    An alternative explanation which is seldom discussed is that there could be a completely developed (mature) galaxy composed entirely of Kardashev Type II civilizations, also known as Matrioshka Brains. As was pointed out by Marvin Minsky at the Byurakan CETI conference in 1971 *advanced* civilizations, for thermodynamic efficiency reasons, will radiate their waste heat at slightly above the cosmic microwave background temperature. The VLT and HST which were used in these studies are incapable of detecting radiation at these wavelengths so any galaxies being managed by advanced civilizations would effectively be invisible.

    A reasonable person might well consider an explanation that included the natural evolution of advanced technological civilizations before they resorted to the invention of new particles and laws of physics (as is typically a requirement as soon as you mention 'dark matter').

    It is useful to keep in mind that several papers by Charley Lineweaver's group document that ~70% of the "Earth's" in our galaxy are significantly older than ours (perhaps billions of years older). It would not be that unexpected that from time to time we might encounter a galaxy where advanced civilizations had placed *all* of the reasonably available matter and energy "under management". (For the purposes of discussion we will assume that black holes do not constitute a "reasonably available" useful resource despite proposals from time to time that require rather creative physics to make them "useful".)