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Black Hole Cluster Spawns Massive Cloud
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."
Cowboy Neal's black hole spawns a massive cloud of stink on a daily basis.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.)
> 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 .
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)
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.
"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.
Correction: was located
That's that damnest thing about observing something 300 million light years away.