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Black Hole Cluster Spawns Massive Cloud

Posted by kdawson on from the excuse-me dept.

Shifty Jim writes in with an article at space.com reporting that a cluster of galaxies harboring black holes may be the source of a massive cloud millions of light years across. Quoting: "A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might be formed by the collective sigh of several supermassive black holes, scientists say. The plasma cloud... might be the source of mysterious cosmic rays that permeate our universe... The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away near the Coma Cluster and is spread across a vast region of space thought to contain several galaxies with supermassive black holes... embedded at their centers."

19 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing to see here?!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I know, it's a black hole!

    1. Re:Nothing to see here?!!! by beset · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It still boggles the mind that anything we see now will have happened 300,000,000 years ago.

      The system / actions we're only just seeing happen now might have already been destroyed by old age / a huge intergalactic war. My money is on Lrr from Omicron Persei VIII.

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  2. Not news by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Funny

    Cowboy Neal's black hole spawns a massive cloud of stink on a daily basis.

    --
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  3. I just read about this on AICN! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's Galactus!

  4. At least it's not SPAM by anss123 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But I'm totally clueless how a Black hole can spawn anything. I thought they were 'Black holes', or have that changed recently?

    1. Re:At least it's not SPAM by kennelly · · Score: 5, Informative

      Google "Hawking Radiation". (Thermal radiation thought to be emitted by black holes due to quantum effects - named after British physicist Stephen Hawking, who provided the theoretical argument for its existence in 1974.)

    2. Re:At least it's not SPAM by flyingfsck · · Score: 3, Informative

      Black holes actually do radiate - they are actually not black at all. The result is that small black holes will evaporate and disappear after a while. Bigger ones are probably indistinguishable from an ordinary star when viewed from a distance. The difference being their mass which would be disproportionate to their luminosity. Read Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" for illumination.

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    3. Re:At least it's not SPAM by Kandenshi · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, it's the *really* small ones(on the order of the mass of maybe half the moon, or smaller) that evaporate very quickly. The supermassive ones radiate at a very low rate and will last many, many, many billions of years. The temperature of the universe(eg: background radiation) will need to drop before they'll be "hotter" than their surroundings. Currently the big black holes are soaking up more radiation than they're emitting(hence, black)

    4. Re:At least it's not SPAM by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 3, Funny

      Get with the times. White is the new black.

    5. Re:At least it's not SPAM by owlstead · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yesss, but I've just read some books on that, and I wonder if there would be enough Hawking Radiation to create an enormous superheated gas cloud. I mean, from wikipedia on Hawking radiation:

      "The power in the Hawking radiation from a solar mass black hole turns out to be a minuscule 1028 watts. It is indeed an extremely good approximation to call such an object 'black'."

      I mean, how heavy do you want those things to be? Its more likely that the radiation comes from the enormous forces excerted on matter around these black holes, not from the black holes themselves.

    6. Re:At least it's not SPAM by owlstead · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ugh, stupid copy/paste, that's 10 to the power of -28 watts. Not that much. Not enough to power a postcard with one of these irritating battery/chip/speaker combinations in it. Allthough these things may also be powered directly the dark forces that surround them.

    7. Re:At least it's not SPAM by Fujisawa+Sensei · · Score: 2, Informative

      I suggest you learn a little bit of the math behind black hole evaporation.

      Here I refer to Wikipedia because I'm lazy...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_evapor ation#Black_hole_evaporation

      You'll notice that from the Power emitted from a black hole is inversely proportional to the Mass Squared, so Big Black holes don't emit much power, making them effectively black. Not you described indistinguishable from a star when viewed from a distance.

      Also the time it takes for a black hole to evaporate is proportional to the Mass cubed, so the bigger the black hole is, the longer it takes to evaporate.

      Also its my understanding that these equations assume that the black hole is not feeding and gaining mass. When a black hole does so the surrounding material heats up emits x-rays. Its this x-ray signature that makes them easy to find. Super massive black holes may not have the same x-ray signature, their surroundings being black as well. Those are detected by their gravitational influence: Sagittarius A* was detected this way. (Though its not completely quiet). Still when mass is a function of time and increasing, the mass added to a black hole affects how long it will take to evaporate.

      --
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  5. Spinning Disc Doctor by BillGatesLoveChild · · Score: 4, Funny

    > But I'm totally clueless how a Black hole can spawn anything.

    Black holes spawn a lot of interest, debate, Stephen Hawking's Theses, one Disney movie and an endless source of Deus ex machina. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina .

    1. Re:Spinning Disc Doctor by Dachannien · · Score: 4, Funny

      and an endless source of Deus ex

      I thought that was the result of an Ion Storm.

  6. might be? by passionfruit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    might be the source?

    might be?

    there are probably a zillion black wholes and a gazillion such "cosmic clouds of superheated gas" in the universe. so what makes this guy think this particular "cloud" has agreater probability of being the source of the "cosmic rays" that "permeate" our universe?

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    1. Re:might be? by owlstead · · Score: 5, Informative

      "so what makes this guy think this particular "cloud" has agreater probability of being the source of the "cosmic rays" that "permeate" our universe?"

      They don't:

      "he new finding could also help explain the unwanted and confusing "noise" scientists observe in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Kronberg said. The CMB is a ubiquitous radiation in the universe that is said to be a remnant of the Big Bang."

      Now, if you read that carefully, it is said that this could explain the *noise* in the CMB, not the CMB itself. Half a point for reading through the article though.

  7. currently? by icepick72 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away near the Coma Cluster


    Correction: was located


    That's that damnest thing about observing something 300 million light years away.

    1. Re:currently? by TheInvisiblePinkUnic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Time is also a frame of reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
      As long as /. is targeted for human readers
      The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away near the Coma Cluster
      holds good.

      --
      Cogito, ergo sum
  8. mod parent down! by earthbound+kid · · Score: 2, Informative

    Seriously, the parent completely misstated the intensity of hawking radiation. I can't believe it got modded up to 4 in the first place.

    Now, black holes are often surrounded by bright clouds, but the clouds are bright for reasons completely unrelated to hawking radiation. As stuff falls into a black hole, it gets accelerated until it's going really fast. Once it gets fast enough, the light generated by the friction of the things falling in gets blue-shifted until it moves into the x-ray range. Now, this does occur a lot, so many black holes are detectable as the presumed center of giant x-ray vortexes, but that is completely different from hawking radiation since this is caused by material external to the black hole falling in.