Monster Black Hole Busts Theory

Genocaust writes "A stellar black hole much more massive than theory predicts is possible has astronomers puzzled. Stellar black holes form when stars with masses around 20 times that of the sun collapse under the weight of their own gravity at the ends of their lives. Most stellar black holes weigh in at around 10 solar masses when the smoke blows away, and computer models of star evolution have difficulty producing black holes more massive than this. The newly weighed black hole is 16 solar masses. It orbits a companion star in the spiral galaxy Messier 33, located 2.7 million light-years from Earth. Together they make up the system known as M33 X-7."

Comments

Supermassive black holes

[Raul654]

If theory says that black holes beyond 10 solar masses cannot form, how do they explain the conjectured supermassive black holes at the center of our and other galaxies?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[RuBLed]

It seems that they are in separate divisions/classes. This should explain it.

While 16 solar masses is hefty for a stellar black hole, it is miniscule compared with the black holes thought to lie in the heart of many large galaxies. Such "supermassive" black holes have masses millions to billions times that of our sun, but they are thought to form by mechanisms different from the stellar variety.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[shawn(at)fsu]

They mentioned that in the article. Mister Scientist thinks their are different mechacisms at work that produce the super massive black holes at the centre of galaxies. I was wondering though, is it possible that a black hole of this mass could me produces in a trinary solar system where two black holes merge, in this case leaving you with a 16 solar masses and orbiting the remain star?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[yariv]

Those black holes are the result of collapse of the core itself, as I understand. The core is (relatively) very dense, and along time it collapse together to one hole. Here they are talking about a stellar black hole, one that is believed to be, basicly, one collapsed star. Along those lines it might be a possible explanation to claim it was in a three-stars system, and this "stellar" black hole is actually the remains of two stars (joined after at least one of them collapsed). Of course this might not be possible, I am not an astronomer and I have no access to the actual data.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[legoman666]

Am I the only one who thought of Muse's song, "Super Massive Black Hole" when I saw that wikipedia link?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ILuvRamen]

I was thinking the same thing. And you know how they get that big? By forming and then sucking up tons and stars around them. And who says this one didn't form differently? It's in a binary system now but trinary systems exist. And don't say "but it didn't suck up 6 stars." They just said in the article that some stars can be 20 solar masses. That's a really badly named unit lol.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[StikyPad]

If theory says that black holes beyond 10 solar masses cannot form, how do they explain the conjectured supermassive black holes

Like This.

Or, more pedantically, black holes may never form at all from the point of view of an observer outside the event horizon.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Goosey]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar-mass_black_hole

There are different categories of Black Holes. The very wikipedia article you linked to mentioned this in the 'Formation' Section:

  - Black holes of this size can form in several ways. The most obvious is by slow accretion of matter (starting from a black hole of stellar size).

TFA refers to an unexpected size for a Stellar-class Black Hole.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Nefarious Wheel]

So .. that's the way things were done 2.7 million years ago. Well, back when I was just a lad...

As a kid studying cosmology I was once told that you only needed 3 solar masses of imploding stellar material to make a black hole.

Are there any theories to cover black holes made up of say, more than one galaxy? Is there any upper limit?

(Clears throat)"Beyond the blue Event Horizon, Heechee waiting for meeeee..."

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Divine10]

No you were not. Amazing group and an amazing song.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[lacheur]

This theory is about the creation of a black hole formed from a *single* large star that collapses. Nothing to do with black holes in the center of galaxies built up from many, many stars.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[yariv]

Why is it badly named? A solar mass is excatly as the mass of sol (our sun). Sounds like a good name to me.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[thrawn_aj]

(Clears throat)"Beyond the blue Event Horizon, Heechee waiting for meeeee..."

I LOL'D ... hard =D.

/fabulous book

//ditto the game by Legend Ent.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[kalirion]

So why couldn't this one have been made up from two stars?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Tablizer]

Agreed, that is an oddity in the story. However, I think it works like this. OUTSIDE of the center of galaxies, stars don't collide very often. Black holes have no more mass than the stars they came from (usually less because lots explode into space), and even big stars don't hit other stars very often at all. And, large stars are fairly rare, most are medium (sun-like) and smaller, reducing chances of large collisions even further. (Having lots of gravity improves collision chances a bit, but not significantly.)

Thus, the chances of two black holes colliding to make larger holes is quite unlikely outside the center. So, if non-center holes are from large stars and large stars have an upper limit of around 10 suns when they collapse, then where do the bigger ones come (15+) from?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[jd]

What if you have an n-ary system in which two or more supermassive stars are sufficiently close together that after the supernova, the total mass exceeds 10 solar masses even though no individual star did? (Since the star cores would merge at the common center of gravity, they would behave as a single remnant of the combined mass, NOT as individual collapsing objects.) Alternatively, if the black hole forms in a regular fashion but is in a dense enough zone - or a zone that has an obscenely large number of extra-solar supermassive planets - that it absorbs six or more solar masses before it can evaporate a comparable amount of mass, you'd reach the desired mass. Thirdly, my guess is that all simulations assume point singularities (probably the most common kind, assuming black hole theory is correct), which means that they won't be including Kerr Ring singularities or any of the other Really Weird Forms that have been predicted.

I'm sure that there are ways to fudge things so that the desired mass can be reached. Or, there again, the simulations could be wrong. That happens, for all that Michael Fish wishes otherwise. Well, maybe not. He stands to make a lot of money from his new book because of that fiasco.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Tablizer]

I was wondering though, is it possible that a black hole of this mass could me produces in a trinary solar system where two black holes merge, in this case leaving you with a 16 solar masses and orbiting the remain star?

If I am not mistaken, the largest stars tend not to be binary/trinary. Once the mass gets past a certain point, it upsets the harmonics needed to make doubles and triples. However, I can't find any verification of this mentally rusty snippet of info.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[inode_buddha]

I thought of goatse, but then I've been here a while...

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

Just FYI: after binary comes TERNARY, not trinary. Don't feel bad, though, it's a very common mistake which I myself have made before being corrected.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Junior J. Junior III]

*Stellar* black holes are black holes that originate from the aftermath of a single star going supernova.

Super-massive black holes like what exist at the center of a galaxy don't have a well understood origin, but it is supposed that if a black hole is created in a region of space with a great deal of matter in the vicinity, it may gobble up a lot of it, adding to its mass until it becomes super-massive.

A stellar black hole that's so big it shouldn't be possible for it to have been created by the usual supernova, and in a region of space sufficiently vacant to rule out the gobbling theory, is what is being puzzled over.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[nospam007]

Just like us, stellar black holes are getting fatter, they need a diet.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[buswolley]

I think parent's intent was to make a joke, not to be insightful.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[dwater]

> their are

you misspelled 'arse'.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[lgw]

There's no theoretical upper limit from what I've read, however it can be hard to explain how large black holes can form given the current age of the universe. Given a few trillion years, large black holes should be common.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ozbird]

A stellar black hole that's so big it shouldn't be possible for it to have been created by the usual supernova, and in a region of space sufficiently vacant to rule out the gobbling theory, is what is being puzzled over.

The region of space is vacant now - it doesn't mean that it was when the black hole was feeling peckish.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ILuvRamen]

the theory is if one star was more than 20 solar masses, the force of the supernova would throw too much mass off and it wouldn't be able to collapse into a black hole. So they're all confused apparently which is why I said it was obviously a trinary system, one star went black hole and sucked up just one of the others. That would explain the 17 solar mass black hole in a system with one other star. Seriously, is it that hard for them to figure out?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[jotok]

From TFA:

There could be a way to test the new theory. The Large Hadron Collider being constructed at CERN in Geneva might just be capable of making microscopic black holes - or, if Vachaspati is right, black stars.

Goody. This should end well.

Unlike the large, long-lived black holes in space, these microscopic objects would evaporate fast. The spread of energies in their radiation might reveal whether or not an event horizon forms.

What exactly does "evaporate" mean when referring to black holes (stars)?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[gomiam]

Reading the article, it seems that the computer models of supernovas would strip all those supermassive planets of their gaseous layers, if not blow the planets themselves away. The problem isn't the black hole being that big (that's a symptom), the problem is how do you make a star go nova "softly" like this one would have done.

And, yes, it seems the simulations are wrong. That's why it's hard for the current nova theories (read models) to create a black hole this big.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[hcmtnbiker]

There is also the possibility of MECOs (Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Objects) which are an alternative theory to black holes, there are even multiple quasars that seem to exhibit their characteristics. Black holes and MECOs cannot both exist, so it's an interesting controversy with evidence that seems to support both.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[shawn(at)fsu]

The proper way not to be a grammar Nazi. Thank you for the pointer. I will make note of it.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[the.Ceph]

IANAAP(I am not an astro physicist) but my understanding of it is that black holes give off a form of radiation called Hawking Radiation. As Hawking Radiation escapes the black hole its mass slowly decreases because (E=mc^2 etc). Eventually the black hole will radiate all of its mass and will have essentially evaporated.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Frank Battaglia]

Likely they are referring to Hawking Radiation.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[sound vision]

I had the chorus going in my head before I even saw the Wikipedia link. +20 indie points.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Hal_Porter]

Goody. This should end well. People said that about plutonium and agent orange.

What exactly does "evaporate" mean when referring to black holes (stars)? They explode with the force of five million megatons of TNT - the power off 100,000 Tsar Bombas concentrated in tiny region of space

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#Black_hole_evaporation

So, for instance, a 1 second-lived black hole has a mass of 2.28 × 10^5 kg, equivalent to an energy of 2.05 × 10^22 J that could be released by 5 × 10^6 megatons of TNT. The initial power is 6.84 × 10^21 W. The shockwave should be enough to totally destroy the Earth, not just obliterate the biosphere which is that best that can be achieved with present day fission/fusion weapons. Even lunar colonies would be hard pressed to survive the explosion. Maybe the moon would be blasted off in to deep space.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[bombastinator]

Nah. It's a reasonable question. "stellar" is not necessarily generally thought of as a term of finite measurement outside of Academia.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[chthon]

Wouldn't it be : In Soviet Russia, you eat black holes ?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[rhizome]

Super-massive black holes like what exist at the center of a galaxy don't have a well understood origin, but it is supposed that if a black hole is created in a region of space with a...

Isn't it funny how we don't even capitalize "black hole?" I'll bet anybody that in 500 years people are going to read our words and tell each other, "...they believed in these things called 'Black Holes!'" It'll be like the flat earth days.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[TapeCutter]

It seems to me that black holes with a mass between 10 and 1,000,000 suns are rare but obviously not unheard of. We have also (indirectly) observed at least one star being sucked into the BH at the center of the milky way.

It seems patentently obvious that this particular BH ( and another one I read about that was ~40sols ) somehow gained mass after forming. But scientists being the skeptical critters they are prefer evidence over supposition since that is how theories are strengthened or discarded. Astronmer's want to catch a stelar sized BH in the process of eating lunch and even then they will only go so far as saying BH's eat 'X' because we have observed it, we think they may also eat 'Y' but we have never observed it.

A similar evolution of ideas can be seen when we look at how BH's went from mathematical curiosity to established science. When I was a kid in the 60's BH's were still just a theory in books. By the time the 80's came around most people assumed BH's were real but some scientists still had doubts and unanswered questions. By the 90's, even the most stubborn skeptic had to admit there was no other explaination. Yet it was not until recent measurements of stars orbiting very close to the milky way's center that everyone fully agreed our galaxy really did contain a central BH.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[osu-neko]

Yes, it's extremely hard to figure out how what you just said could possibly happen. If it was a ternary system, that means the three stars were in stable orbits. One forms a black hole. If no mass were lost, everything would remain in the same stable orbits. If mass were lost (which is almost certainly the case -- supernovas tend to throw off a lot of mass), then the star that becomes a black hole now has *less* grip on its companions than it did. If it doesn't lose them entirely, they should at least shift into more distant orbits. When a star becomes a black hole, it becomes much LESS likely to gobble up its neighbors. If it didn't gobble them up before it collapsed into a black hole, it almost certainly isn't going to do so afterwards.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

Perhaps because the mass of our Sun is a variable, as is the mass of other stars. Matter falls in, matter gets expelled. Today a star might be 3 solar masses, tomorrow it might be 2.999999999999999999999999999999999976 solar masses. That sort of wild, erratic variation is no good in the exact world of astronomy.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Oktober Sunset]

No, if they were making a joke, they would have mentioned the supermassive black hole shown at goatse.cx, which is far bigger than most nerds thought possible.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[anno1602]

An alternative explanation is that the supermassive black hole might have formed directly. On formation, so much mass accumulated so quickly that it directly collapsed into a black hole, bypassing the star stage entirely.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ultranova]

Wouldn't it be : In Soviet Russia, you eat black holes ?

Well, seeing how both people and goods had a habit of disappearing and never being seen again in Soviet Russia, I'd say that both forms are correct. I wonder if that reflects some deep, underlaying symmetry in the Laws of Politics ?

As an interesting aside, the light emitted near the event horizon of a black hole experiences red shift as it climbs up the gravitational field, and the Soviet Russia's flag is... red. Does that mean that Soviet Russia was a black hole, eating both people and material, and has now evaporated ?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ZombieWomble]

That's something of a misleading post - while a "one second" black hole would indeed release such a huge amount of energy, the creation of such a black hole is unthinkable in the LHC: The energy the protons collide with is around 14TeV, or about 10^-6 joules. That's more than a billion billion billion times lower than the one second black hole you suggest in your post. The size of black holes produced in CERN would dissipate almost instantly, with a relatively small puff of particles.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[iamacat]

brown hole

Re:Supermassive black holes

[foobsr]

Interestingly (as I have just discovered), quote: "Trinary is an artistic language in David Brin's Uplift series of science fiction novels, spoken largely by dolphins or "neo-fins." The language is largely regarded to have high poetic potential, and is in fact ideal for such things as the construction of any poetry, from haikus to dirty limericks."

Brin seems to have interesting views, quote: "In a time of increasing political polarization, I have urged (in my most recent essay, "The Ostrich Papers") that we look past the simplistic and outdated "left-right political axis." Yes, there is madness going on. But I suggest that the cure is not bitter "culture war." Rather, moderate and decent citizens of the Enlightenment need to reach out to other decent people -- even those who have swallowed nonsense. At stake is preserving a nation of modern confidence from a looming dark age."

CC.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[digitig]

Isn't it funny how we don't even capitalize "black hole?" Why would we? I can't think of any of the standard capitalisation rules that would apply. Unless your name happens to be Black Holes.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[abonstu]

sensitive new age nazi?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Chapter80]

Just FYI: after binary comes TERNARY, not trinary

Regarding base-2, I've seen posts that don't talk about it, and posts that contain the term "binary".

Regarding base-3, I've seen posts that don't talk about it, and posts that use the term "trinary", and posts that use the term "ternary".

Seems about right...

Re:Supermassive black holes

[octal666]

I think laws of physics are the same inside and outside of Soviet Russia, no joke here, move along.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Rogerborg]

If theory says that black holes beyond 10 solar masses cannot form, how do they explain the conjectured supermassive black holes [wikipedia.org] at the center of our and other galaxies?

A wizard did it.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[aliquis]

Why? Do you know the names for four, five and so on aswell?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[MonkWB]

I am from Soviet Russia and black holes ate me you insensitive clod!

Re:Supermassive black holes

[kiwipeso]

Funny, I could swear that there is a porno with that name. ;-) Or at least someone will make it.
The first rule of porn is, there will be porn of it.
The second rule of porn is, they will make porn of it, if there it doesn't exist already.
The third rule of porn is, flatmates will make the hard drive run out of space.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[digitig]

The third rule of porn is, flatmates will make the hard drive run out of space. Flatmates. Yeah, sure...

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, you eat black holes In Russia, black holes are referred to as 'frozen stars', because 'black hole' in Russian is a slang term referring to the anus. Which leads to a rather unintentional interpretation of your post.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[QuickFox]

after binary comes TERNARY, not trinary. According to this, trinary is okay too, at least to mean "consisting of three parts, or proceeding by three" (while they have a longer list of definitions for ternary).

Re:Supermassive black holes

[l33t_f33t]

The same way physicists explain everything: They make stuff up.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Dragonslicer]

Today a star might be 3 solar masses, tomorrow it might be 2.999999999999999999999999999999999976 solar masses. Do astronomers know the mass of any other stars or black holes out to that many significant digits? If not, it doesn't really matter, does it?

That sort of wild, erratic variation is no good in the exact world of astronomy. Astronomy is only as exact as the instruments used to take measurements.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Dragonslicer]

So, for instance, a 1 second-lived black hole has a mass of 2.28 × 10^5 kg Which means that in order to create such a black hole, we'd have to be able to cram 10^5 kg of mass into a singularity. That's a pretty small mass in the realm of astronomy, but it's a pretty damned big mass in the realm of particle physics.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

quaternary, quinternary and so on...

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are confused. Before trinary (3) comes dinary (2) and unary (1). :)

Re:Supermassive black holes

[WeeLad]

The rules of cliche break down at the singularity.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[CCFreak2K]

And if it's base-1, no one calls it anything?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[cparker15]

Funny, I've always used “tertiary”. I'd never even heard of “ternary” until I saw it one day on the Internets.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[DirkGently]

The various laws of conservation say energy in == energy out. So we'd have to first gather up enough energy to make everything go kablooey before we'd be able to pack it into a ball. As it is, we can't even gather enough energy to start off a fusion reaction capable of powering a DeLorean!

Re:Supermassive black holes

[bob.appleyard]

Different sequence. Primary, secondary, tertiary.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

The size of black holes produced in CERN would dissipate almost instantly, with a relatively small puff of particles.

Cool, you are doing your math.

The problem here is that in theory it will dissipate, but in practice it may swallow the whole solar system, it is a matter of starting a chain reaction and good-bye.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[AmigaMMC]

Theory says "stellar" black holes over 10 cannot form, galactic core black holes follow a different evolution path and their physics are still pretty much unknown. Luca

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

And if it's base-1, no one calls it anything?

You mean Unary?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Tired and Emotional]

That seems plausible. I imagine that in that case the spin of the black hole would also be larger than would be expected from the supernova collapse theory.

Has anyone managed to get good observations of balckhole spins?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Convector]

Exact? In some cases you're doing well to get even the right order of magnitude.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[MK_CSGuy]

Wouldn't it be : In Soviet Russia, you eat black holes ?

No, it should read: Black holes don't suck Chuck Noriss - Chuck Noriss slurps 2000 of them in one afternoon.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Kuvter]

6.40 solar masses should be enough for anyone.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

I deliberately didn't put a ";)" in the OP because I thought people would get the sarcasm. But I was wrong.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[PingPongBoy]

I was wondering though, is it possible that a black hole of this mass could me produces in a trinary solar system

Could you? I doubt it.

merge

There have been times that extraordinarily powerful outbursts occurred. A merger could have done. I bet the upper limit of 10 solar masses is not quite right though and a much higher mass is possible.

Now you don't suppose it's an artificial construct? Anything not explained by nature alone is a suspect for intelligent intervention.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[aliquis]

Isn't the expansion accelerating? In that case why who it be more common? Sure a more dense hole will have more gravity but if everything gets more apart from eachother will stuff really collide more?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[kingkongjoe]

It sounds to me like they can not get their algorithms and model approximations to form a black hole larger than 10 solar masses. This does not mean that they do not exist, just that their computer models can't do them. Kind of like all the super nova models that can't explode. We know that they explode, its just that the models they used are too coarse of an approximation.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[RockDoctor]

If theory says that black holes beyond 10 solar masses cannot form, how do they explain the conjectured supermassive black holes at the center of our and other galaxies?

If "theory" did indeed say that, then there might be a bit of a problem. But what theory actually says is more like

"for the evolution of a large, otherwise uninteresting main sequence star isolated in space, a black hole of mass 10*M/sol is an easy to envisage endpoint of evolution."

It doesn't say that other end points are impossible, or implausible, just harder to envisage.
An honest politician is harder to envisage than a thieving corrupt drug addict getting to the most powerful figurehead in global politics, but not impossible. Tony Benn is contemplating re-entereing parliament after standing down to spend more time with his politics.

Here's a scenario which could produce a 16*M/sol black hole without necessarily violating any laws of physics : take 2 large stars in a binary, one 20*M/sol, one of 25*M/sol (large but by no means unreasonable), which are in close orbit, but outside each other's Roche lobes (so there's negligible mass transfer between them in their red giant phases ; another not unreasonable stipulation). The 25*M/sol star will evolve significantly faster than the 20*M/sol star, so gets to the point where it goes supernova while the 20*M/sol star is still on the main sequence. In the supernova a neutron star is generated at 1.5*M/sol (below Chandreshakar's Limit, nothing unusual or incredible about that), but as is common, the supernova is slightly asymmetric resulting in the neutron star getting a hefty kick up the pants and being ejected from the centre-of-mass of the dismantled star at a considerable velocity (several self-diameters per second ; this happens in many if not most neutron star formations which is why we find neutron stars outside supernova remnants). Pure chance points the ejected neutron star at the 20*M/sol star, which it impacts obliquely after a few months. The neutron star starts a "dance of death" through the photosphere of the 20*M/sol star, accreting mass until it collapses into a black hole which continues to eat the 20*M/sol star. Some of the 20*M/sol is ejected in this fairly energetic interchange, but most goes into the black hole in a fairly short period of time.
Voila! One 16*M/sol black hole generated from a stellar explosion coupled with rapid accretion. Certainly an unusual sequence of events, but by no means implausible.

Supermassive black holes at galactic centres are thought to have formed by a considerably different process, early in the construction of the galaxies. It's quite hard to get two black holes to collide (energy is conserved and space is large, so most of the time they just fly past each other unless there's something to damp the system. That means it needs pretty congested space to get them to merge.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[lgw]

Large black holes accumulate mass faster than they lose it to Hawking radiation. This means that the total mass within black holes universe-wide increases over time. Assuming that the universe is very nearly flat (not expanding at a growing rate), it's only a matter of time before most of the mass in the universe is sequestered in large black holes.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[aliquis]

Until there only are one big hole with no more matter to swallow and then it release all the energy and then what? ;(

black holes

[overcaffein8d]

Clearly, this is Proof of God!!!!11!11!111!!!!!oneone

was that in bad taste?

Re:black holes

[Cassius Corodes]

Yes - 1's should always appear after the exclamation mark not in the middle.

Re:black holes

[Whiteox]

You would love this!

From the Sci-Fi film "The Black Hole"

The film's ambiguous and rather cosmic ending, not unlike that of Into Infinity, has been the subject of some debate. As the Palomino survivors (The Heroes) reach the bottom of the black hole after a harrowing flight, they appear to enter Heaven and Hell.[3] We see Reinhardt (The Bad Guy) condemned to eternal imprisonment in the metal body of Maximillian in Hell (a sequence foreshadowed in Booth's line early in the film, that the Black Hole was like something "right out of Dante's Inferno"), then the crew of the Palomino are guided by an angel through Heaven. Eventually they emerge from a white hole into what appears to be a new universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole

Re:black holes

[SpiritGod21]

No, but it's not disproof either.

Re:black holes

[overcaffein8d]

This is absolutely true. It's not disproof.

The point of the thing was actually just that I am sick and tired of people saying that everything science is wrong when a new theory replaces an old one, etc.

And to whomever modded me troll, does it look like i'm a troll now? I mean, it should at least be flamebait!

what?

[sh3l1]

What theory is being busted here?

In the Dark

[ArcherB]

I wonder if this is where all that "dark matter" is. Scientist keep talking about how there is so much more matter than what we can detect. Well, we haven't been able to detect this until now. How much more is missing, I wonder.

It amazes me at how much we DON'T know.

Re:In the Dark

[Dr. Eggman]

Technically, there is a difference between dark matter and and matter so dense its dark. Think of dark matter as "matters at hand in the universe in which we're still in the dark." On second though, "terra incognita" is a much better analogy.

Re:In the Dark

[ArcherB]

Technically, there is a difference between dark matter and and matter so dense its dark. Think of dark matter as "matters at hand in the universe in which we're still in the dark." On second though, "terra incognita" is a much better analogy.

Well, I wasn't talking about black holes being made from dark matter, but like you said, matter we were "in the dark" about or matter than we are unable to detect. Well, evidently, we were in the dark of about 75% of the matter than can exist in black holes. It wasn't until recently that we learned of super massive black holes in the center of every galaxy. All this is matter that we were in the dark about. How many more black holes are there that we don't know about? How much larger are they than we thought they could be? How much more stuff is out there that we can't detect that is perfectly reasonable, easily explained and not at all weird or mysterious, for example solar systems where the center body is simply not big enough to start the fusion process and thus remains dark and unknown to us?

I just keep hearing how dark matter is this uber-mysterious stuff that makes up a majority of the universe and we have no idea what it is. Well, maybe it's something simple like the examples I gave above.

Re:In the Dark

[value_added]

It amazes me at how much we DON'T know.

The following may help to explain things (taken from an Slashdot post):

Indeed. In fact there is no light either. The Sun sucks dark. In fact it
sucks dark so hard that the friction of the dark moving to the Sun
causes the Sun to be very hot. The flow of dark towards the Sun
interrupted by the Earth causes the side of the Earth away from the Sun
to accumulate dark, thus causing Night. As the Earth rotates the dark
caught on the night side can then be pulled off, this causing the
absence of dark known as Day.

What we call light bulbs are truly dark suckers as well. That is why
light bulbs are hot, just like the Sun. When a light bulb is full of
dark and won't suck dark any more, it cools off. If you look in old
light bulbs you can even seen the accumulation of dark.

Dark is also heavier than water. This can be seen in the oceans where
the deeper you go the darker it gets.

Re:In the Dark

[terrymr]

Everybody knows that the missing matter in the universe is packing peanuts.

Re:In the Dark

[kestasjk]

I wonder if this is where all that "dark matter" is. Scientist keep talking about how there is so much more matter than what we can detect. Well, we haven't been able to detect this until now. How much more is missing, I wonder.

It amazes me at how much we DON'T know.
Maybe these dark holes are proof of string theory, because they formed from strings that resonate at the same frequency and so they all join together and resonate at a larger amplitude, and this is what makes them seem so massive.

Or maybe you and I aren't astrophysicists and we shouldn't talk about how much "we" don't know, and let the people who know what they're talking about do the theorizing.

Re:In the Dark

[m2943]

It sounds silly, but at least it has the nucleus of a falsifiable theory (exercise: think about how you would falsify it experimentally if you simply didn't know and why it can't be true). That's better than a lot of the "serious" theories that are floating around.

Re:In the Dark

[joke_dst]

Interesting... It's not trivial. I suppose I could hold a hand close to a lightbulb, and since I feel the heat on the light side, not along the sides where "friction" should be the greatest...

Re:In the Dark

[bentcd]

I suppose I could hold a hand close to a lightbulb, and since I feel the heat on the light side, not along the sides where "friction" should be the greatest... I don't think that would work. The heat output from a lightbulb is likely dominated by the heat generated by the current that is powering its dark-sucking device and so the dark friction heat involved is unlikely to be noticed in comparison. You would probably need considerably more sensitive equipment than a human hand to measure it. The sun only gets as hot as it does because of its /mindboggling/ dark-sucking capabilities. Lightbulbs aren't even wimps in comparison :-)

What you might do, however, is put a bulb in a room with no other dark-suckers in it and then see if dark accumulates on the part of your hand facing away from the bulb. I also suspect you could use reflection to test the theory, but we would first need to know how reflection is supposed to work in the dark-sucking hypothesis.

Re:In the Dark

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Well, this is pretty much how ray tracing works, by taking the photons and sucking them into the "light source", basically sucking the dark away from the scene to produce pretty pictures.

Re:In the Dark

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this is where all that "dark matter" is. Scientist keep talking about how there is so much more matter than what we can detect. Well, we haven't been able to detect this until now. How much more is missing, I wonder.

It amazes me at how much we DON'T know.

Wrong.

Black holes can be detected, because they radiate X-rays.

Black matter is a way to explain dark energy. Dark energy is what is supposed to stop the universe from expanding, but the universe is accelerating, so dark matter is irrelevant, even if it existed and it could predict that the universe would collapse in a final big crunch, because the universe will expand forever.

So we need to understand why it is accelerating.

One possible theory is that the whole universe is a gigantic black hole. Therefore, in the event horizon time doesn't flow (time is frozen), which means time flows backwards inside the event horizon.

This would mean that instead of expanding, the universe is collapsing. This would certainly happen inside a black hole.

Also, the universe seems to be expanding faster. As time flows backwards, it means we are further and further away from the center of the gigantic black hole and time is flowing slower every time, from our point of view. So we see things happening faster and faster. That's why we see the universe expanding faster than before.

Re:In the Dark

[geekoid]

I am amazed at how much we do know, and excited about all that which is left to know.

To be amazed about how much we don't know, A logical person would need to know how much we don't know. Since we don't know how much we don't know we don't know how much there is to go. For all we know we might be about done for all we don't know;however, that does appear to be unlikely, as far as I know.

Re:In the Dark

[aliquis]

Our nearest neighbour is a big piece of cheese.
People finds holes.
The guide mentions mouses actually beeing beings from other dimensions or something like that.

Therefor it's safe to assume the missing mass is the mass of all the mouses.

Re:In the Dark

[branislav]

The deeper You go into the dark the the faster the light from the end of the tunnel will strike You. Sorry for my english, I am not from Your continent

I for one...

[tjstork]

Welcome our new 16 solar mass, inside of gigantic super universe is really a giant black hole singularity, with that weird ship from the Disney movie stuck inside, along with the tv game show host and his once she was really hot but now is sorta aging and still has trouble stacking baby blocks especially inside the 1000G black hole overlords.

A giant black hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

They should name it Goatse.

Re:A giant black hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

This http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/17/2249246 article says AC posts as reliable as registered user posts on Wikipedia. I'm off to prove it wrong.

Re:A giant black hole?

[Nimey]

{looks}

That's more of a giant reddish-pink hole. I don't think there's a theory on that.

Re:A giant black hole?

[Tablizer]

They should name it Goatse.

Fitting to the topic of excess holes, I hope your score becomes
-97402173 troll

sturgeon's law redux

[Speare]

Sturgeon's Law (paraphrased): 90% of everything sucks.

Just goes to show, that when you think it can't suck any worse, you find it can suck a LOT worse.

black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

The black hole phenemenon is nothing more than a marketing gimmick by the adult hd-dvd industry to get nerds interested in the new format (1080p black holes, knowhatiamsayin).

What passes for science on Freerepublic.com

[Anonymous Coward]

To: NormsRevenge Massive black hole enters the record books (Messier 33) AFP on Yahoo ^ | 10/17/07 | AFP ... Astronomers have found the biggest stellar black hole so far, a monster with a mass 15.65 times that of our Sun, lurking in a nearby spiral-shaped galaxy. ... Another category of black holes are "supermassive" holes, spotted at the centre of galaxies, that have masses millions, even billions, times that of the Sun. I'm confused. What's the big deal? 12 posted on 10/17/2007 7:55:34 PM PDT by LoneRangerMassachusetts (The only good Mullah is a dead Mullah. The only good Mosque is the one that used to be there.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

System name

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what's important here is that the system has a cool name/number (M33 X-7). It's refreshing to see that they're giving the cool numbers to the areas that will be known menaces in the future, thus ensuring the safety of future space travellers. ;)

Re:System name

[zig007]

Yep, it is a cool number. But isn't that strange? That some combinations of characters and numbers are cooler than others?

And it is not because they have a specific mathematical meaning or any thing? Most people are blissfully unaware of that anyway.
We all just seem to agree that M33 X-7 is cool. In an eighties kind of way? Like Mazda RX7, BMW M3 or the likes.

Do anyone know anything about this?

Goatse

[gl12]

The internet has known about holes that massive for awhile. Scientists need to get with the program.

Did we link a start gate to it or is linked to a..

[Joe The Dragon]

Did we link a start gate to it or is linked to a ori super gate?

Residents of companion star get bad rap....

[robinsonne]

It orbits a companion star in the spiral galaxy Messier 33

It's not messy, it's got a lived-in, homey feel to it you insensitive clod!!!

Did we link a stargate to it or is linked to a ori

[Joe The Dragon]

Did we link a stargate to it or is linked to a ori super gate?

Simple solution!

[glwtta]

The extra mass is Dark Mass, right?

After all, that's how we deal with all cosmological phenomena we don't understand - prefix it with "Dark" and you're all set!

Re:Simple solution!

[MOBE2001]

After all, that's how we deal with all cosmological phenomena we don't understand - prefix it with "Dark" and you're all set!

You must not question the theories of the gods. Invent more voodoo crap to hide the inadequacies but never question the gods. That's how science works.

Re:Simple solution!

[jamesh]

Your post seems to contain a lot of dark intelligence :)

Re:Simple solution!

[n dot l]

Your post seems to contain a lot of dark intelligence :) Is that better, or worse, than a lot of light stupidity?

Re:Simple solution!

[m2943]

The gods don't mind being questioned; it's their priests that get homicidal when you do.

Re:Simple solution!

[kevin.fowler]

I'm pretty sure a dark lunch collided with my lunch in the fridge today and vaporized it.

Re:Simple solution!

[aliquis]

Aleast you got twice the energy out of it!

(Well, way more than that since you don't break down all the matter into energy of everything you eat but anyway.)

But an eclipse too ...

[TaeKwonDood]

The orbiting star that eclipses it every 3.5 days basically throws most knowledge of black holes out the window - it defies the standard evolution of black holes as we have known them.

Re:But an eclipse too ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it really?

That star probably has a lot of velocity to be circling it once every 3.5 days. Apparently, enough velocity to keep it from being sucked into the black hole at the distance it is currently at, all the while not swinging wildly in whatever direction it happened to be "let go" at.

As the black hole gains mass from the star, and the star looses said mass, I imagine this will not continue to occur...

Re:Black Holes don't care about black people!

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me crazy, but I'm noticing a trend here...

Stargate address

[chifut]

That's all good and nice, but what's the stargate address there so I can check it out?

Re:Stargate address

[kcbanner]

You wouldn't want to gate there...you'd get sucked into the black hole! Like when they send the gate to a black hole and give the address to the Goa'uld, bwhahaha!

Computer models of Supernovae

[confused_demon]

For this discussion it's worth keeping in mind that current computer models have real problems actually getting supernovae to explode. At one point it was so bad that I heard someone say, "If it weren't for the fact that we occasionally observe one explode, I would assure you that they cannot." It's only been in the last couple of years that someone has made a computer model that actually did it.

Re:Computer models of Supernovae

[Leperous]

"It's only been in the last couple of years that someone has made a computer model that actually did it."

Not true. As a numerical relativitist, I can tell you that no decent 3D simulations of supernovae currently exist.

Half the problem is that the physics is simply unknown - is it sufficient for your model to contain rotation, magnetic fields, and what about the equation of state of the plasma? Neutrinos are also thought to play an incredibly important role in the supernova explosion mechanism, and subsequent nucleosynthesis (and other processes) that go on during the supernova event itself. The other half is the sheer computing power to evolve your equations over decent time scales with enough resolution, not to mention making sure the numerical methods you employ work.

There are plenty of groups who are currently working towards 3D evolutions without any neutrino transport, and I think some people have done neutrinos in 1D. Try checking out some of the work by Leibendorfer, for example.

A quick run down of the supernova event though, since the article skims over it very lightly: heavy elements gradually build up at the core (nickel and iron especially), and nuclear fusion shuts down due to their high binding energies. As a result, outwards pressure ("thermal support") is lost, and at some critical moment the core will rapidly collapse onto itself (on a timescale of less than a second) as gravity becomes the dominant force. The outer layers will also in-fall onto this collapsing core.

Depending on the mass of the star, we'd expect the core to collapse into some kind of 'proto' neutron star, or straight into a black hole, if it's massive enough. In the case of the former, neutrinos escaping from the cooling central proto neutron star deposit energy into the outer layers, and drive the actual supernova explosion-event. In the case of the latter, I'm not sure that you'd actually see much of a supernova since neutrinos wouldn't be able to escape from a black hole - or at least the explosion mechanism would be different. There is an 'intermediate' option though: a proto neutron star that later on collapses into a black hole, from the still in-falling outer layers. If this happens you'd expect both a black hole, and pretty violent supernova to boot.

I'm not sure about the numbers presented in the article either. Typically, stars above 8 solar masses will collapse and create a supernova and neutron star remnant. Stars over 20 solar masses should form a neutron star which later collapses into a black hole (as is the case here). Stars over 50 solar masses or so will probably just collapse straight into a black hole, with unknown supernova mechanisms.

Re:Computer models of Supernovae

[EricWright]

Two of the "someone's" are John Blondin at NCSU and Tony Mezzacappa at Oak Ridge National Labs. Here's a link to a press release from ORNL giving a very brief overview of the research project.

Full disclosure: John was my PhD thesis advisor, and I did my research on the evolution of supernova remnants well after the initial explosion. I graduated in the 90s, back when such high-res 3D simulations were merely dreams.

Re:Computer models of Supernovae

[confused_demon]

The presentation that was made recently by the scientific director for NIF at LBNL included references to simulations which actually had supernovae exploding. One of them was particularly interesting because it included a 'natural' asymmetry (as in it came from the model without having to be included artificially).

I'm well aware that a lot of the information that astrophysicists want to know have huge uncertainties. I'm involved in making those measurements.

A steller collision?

[tjstork]

This could be a random steller collision. It's gotta be rare, but still an occurance, when two stars collide. In this case, a largish black hole collides with another star, and the star gets incorporated into it.

Black Holes? Maybe it's Just Lies, eh?

[MOBE2001]

Black holes don't exist except in the figment of some crackpot's imagination. Has this possibility crossed your minds?

Nope, this is Slashdot where everybody wears a little Ferengi outfit and are time travelers from the distant future. ahahaha... AHAHAHA... ahahaha...

Nothing moves in spacetime. Google it.

Re:Black Holes? Maybe it's Just Lies, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Black holes and the site you're talking about have nothing to do with each other.

Black holes have nothing to do with time travel. You're thinking of wormholes.

Re:Black Holes? Maybe it's Just Lies, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Black holes don't exist except in the figment of some crackpot's imagination. Has this possibility crossed your minds?

Perhaps you just need to take a real physics course. Real physicists, as opposed to cranks, have spent many years trying to disprove or invalidate GR, it would make life a whole lot easier. The math is out there, and the world is out there, all you have to do is come up with an experiment that shows GR is incorrect. Or you can utilize your own mathematical ability and just try and disprove SR. Surely you can easily accomplish that task in a day or two?

Nothing moves in spacetime.

Funny, the only hits I got were yours. It looks like you're the only person who actually believes this.

Its been experimentally verified that light travels at a constant velocity regardless of frame of reference.

To prove this crank theory of yours, you only have to do the following things:

• You're going to have to first show that the velocity of light is not constant.
• • Then explain the following:
  • The perihelion precession of Mercury's orbit
  • The deflection of light by the Sun
  • The gravitational redshift of light

Trinary System?

[Fractal Dice]

I'm assuming that its out of the question that this binary star/black-hole system was, at one point, a trinary system?

quick fix

[theMerovingian]

computer models of star evolution have difficulty producing black holes more massive than this

Maybe they need to buy more PS3's

Re:quick fix

[JK_the_Slacker]

Great... now Berkeley will release a Stellar Evolution @ Home client, and I'll be torn between that and Folding @ Home... I knew that black holes were supposed to be able to suck matter, but computer time? Good grief, build a better computer, and they'll build a bigger problem...

The internet has ruined my mind.

[game kid]

Never mind things like Goatse. Thanks to the internet, the only word in the title that doesn't yet have dirty connotations to me is "theory".

Heck, some are working to change that too.

Re:The internet has ruined my mind.

[Farmer Tim]

the only word in the title that doesn't yet have dirty connotations to me is "theory"

That's because where sex is concerned practice is better than theory. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going off to surf for some ther0y.

Re:The internet has ruined my mind.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I actually enjoy that show. Like with just about any entertainment, you have to put up with some tired clichés, but it's pretty funny. I really like Chuck Lorre's most recent three shows, Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men and now this one.

So much for science!

[__aailob1448]

Well, science has been vainquished, therefore proving the existence of God once and for all.

  But...

ONCE AND FOR ALL!

Re:So much for science!

[postmortem]

Science proved existence of God?

Just when you thought religious nuts couldn't get worse.

Re:So much for science!

[__aailob1448]

t'was a joke using an obscure Futurama reference.

Re:So much for science!

[iknowcss]

hate to break it to you, but that's their favorite.

hmm

[thatskinnyguy]

One black hole consumes another black hole creating one gigantic gravitational singularity. Case closed.

Re:hmm

[wizardforce]

that could be the case though I wonder what the probability of two seperate black holes getting close enough to merge like that. Even better then that is that this one in particular is part of a multi-star system- what is to say that it didn't siphon off material from another much larger star?

Re:hmm

[Kingrames]

your black hole theory sucks.

Re:hmm

[jabuzz]

Probably very low. Then again how many odd sized black holes have we observed (it appears to be exactly one), yet we know there are billions of stars in just our galaxy, and that there are billions of galaxies. So even if the probablity of it happening is very low, it still going to happen somewhere and to deny what is being observed is not possibly the outcome of such an event is rather silly. In fact if I where to apply Occams razor I would say that this is the most likely explanation. Until we start finding large numbers of these odd sized black holes the most likely explanation is that they have acquired mass since they formed.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

how very insightful. i would recommend you for the nobel prize, but i wouldnt want to hurt the feelings of all those professional astrophysicists who never thought of that SCHOOLBOY EXPLANATION you've just poured forth from your prodigious intellect.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

So do black holes.

Re:hmm

[thatskinnyguy]

Sometimes the correct and simple explanations are overlooked in favor of more complicated, yet impressive-sounding wrong ones.

Re:hmm

[Ernesto Alvarez]

It doesn't even have to be a black hole consuming another. A black hole consuming enough matter (say, a star) would do.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up, +1 WHOOSH, please.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. I have an even simpler one: God made it so!

Is Excel being used for any calculation?

[Anonymous Coward]

This could present a problem of astronomical proportions, and even exceed that !!

Umm two bck holes would be what exactly?

[jackspenn]

Simply logic shows how you could have two black holes merge and bing you have larger black hole.

Re:Umm two bck holes would be what exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Black holes have a polarity (that's why sun light is polarized). Polarity interactions between merged black holes would increase the size and decrease the overall density, possibly enough to the point that it's no longer a black hole. It's similar to water freezing and creating ice, which is less dense.

Re:Umm two bck holes would be what exactly?

[lstpsvicn]

Two stellar black holes would be an intermediate black hole. A stellar black hole, by definition, is a black hole caused by the collapse of a star. Intermediate black holes are formed from multiple bodies.

Re:Umm two bck holes would be what exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're getting caught up on nitpicking terms, rather than evaluating what the GP was suggesting. It has been categorized as a stellar black hole soley based on its mass, despite the fact that we don't concretely know how it attained that mass. Actually, you will often hear astronomers say stellar mass black holes, the added term clarifying the method of categorizing them.

Astronomers don't actually know how intermediate mass black holes form, but it's thought to be by collision. Except in the galactic cores, black hole hole collisions are thought to be extremely rare. Even star collisions are extremely rare, despite being theoretically easier due to the extended size and theoretically greater number of stars.

I imagine the unlikeliness of such an event is why it got no mention in the article as a theory.

monster dong

[Asshat_Nazi]

Imagine a giant penis flying towards your mouth, and there's nothing you can do about it. And you're like "Oh man, I'm gonna have to suck this thing", and you brace yourself to suck this giant penis. But then, at the last moment, it changes trajectory and hits you in the eye. You think to yourself "Well, at least I got that out of the way", but then the giant penis rears back and stabs your eye again, and again, and again. Eventually, this giant penis is penetrating your gray matter, and you begin to lose control of your motor skills. That's when the giant penis slaps you across the cheek, causing you to fall out of your chair. Unable to move and at your most vulnerable, the giant penis finally lodges itself in your anus, where it rests uncomfortably for 4, maybe 5 hours. That's what using slashdot is like.

Pairs don't merge very often

[Tablizer]

Another issue is the unlikely chance of paired stars crashing into each other. After one partner blows its top at the end of life, it usually loses some mass such that the distance between them INcreases, making them even less likely to touch or enter friction zones. (Being a black hole by itself does not increase its gravitational pull over a star of the same mass). If they are going to merge, they would more likely do so during the regular life, and we'd see samples of such massive stars. But we don't, mainly because there is an upper limit to the size of a stable star.

Further, large stars have short lives, meaning that the time for friction to rub them closer to each other is shorter.

However, it is true that a collision of two big mid-life stars may itself trigger a supernova because the total mass exceeds a stable size, and thus a very large black hole is formed. This may result in a black hole that *looks* like it came from a star larger than the max stable size of a star because its exceeding the stable limit itself is what triggered the formation of the hole. In short, there may be a limit to stable star size, but not to unstable star size.

Re:Pairs don't merge very often

[rtboyce]

Assuming you couldn't have three stars merging at once, wouldn't the limit of an unstable star size therefore be twice that of the stable limit?

x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[J_Omega]

From TFA :

Black holes can't be seen, because all matter and light that enters them is trapped. So black holes are detected by noting their gravitational effects on nearby stars or on material that swirls around them.

The companion star of M33 X-7 passes directly in front of the black hole as seen from Earth once every three days, completely eclipsing its X-ray emissions.

OK, I have a basic understanding of the x-rays produced, but seriously, shouldn't the above confuse most lay-people who might read the article?

1) E-M radiation is trapped within a black hole.
2) Oh, except it produces X-rays... so ignore 1. (sometimes)


So even though black holes can't be seen, black-holes CAN be "seen," kind of.

Which is it?

Is this bad reporting, or am I just too drunk to tell the difference?

I'm betting

[Tablizer]

that AOL disks have something to do with this

Was it in the constellation, Cygnus X-1 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the constellation of cygnus
There lurks a mysterious, invisible force
The black hole
Of cygnus x-1

Six stars of the northern cross
In mourning for their sisters loss
In a final flash of glory
Nevermore to grace the night....

1
Invisible
To telescopic eye
Infinity
The star that would not die

All who dare
To cross her course
Are swallowed by
A fearsome force

Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more?
Atomized ---- at the core
Or through the astral door ----
To soar....

2
I set a course just east of lyra
And northwest of pegasus
Flew into the light of deneb
Sailed across the milky way

On my ship, the rocinante
Wheeling through the galaxies,
Headed for the heart of cygnus
Headlong into mystery

The x-ray is her siren song
My ship cannot resist her long
Nearer to my deadly goal
Until the black hole ----
Gains control....

3
Spinning, whirling,
Still descending
Like a spiral sea,
Unending

Sound and fury
Drowns my heart
Every nerve
Is torn apart....

To be continued (only not really)

Re:Was it in the constellation, Cygnus X-1 ?

[terrymr]

To be continued (only not really)

Did you forget to listen to Hemispheres ?

Re:Was it in the constellation, Cygnus X-1 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I was gonna post that!

The first side of Hemispheres was intended as the continuation, set in the place they found inside th black hole.

(none)

[Velorium]

Queuing even more goatse references in three... two... one...

More importantly...

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, the supermassive black holes are not in charge of Gundam!

Re:More importantly...

[notinchargeofgundam]

supermassive black holes are not in charge of Gundam!

No. I'm not in charge of Gundam.

They don't form.

[Wolfier]

But nothing prevents them from being in existence since the beginning of the universe.

The existing theories only limit how black holes can be formed from less dense materials.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[ceoyoyo]

Black holes don't produce x-rays, but the material falling into them does produce x-rays which, since they're produced outside the black hole, can escape.

It must be said

[lazarus]

that "Black holes are outta-sight!"

- Shamefully ripped off from 'Contact' by Carl Sagan

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[galt23]

Words like "produce" and "consume" are bad science words. Mostly used in docudrama style tv shows and movies using snippets of science to achieve an end goal: make more money by scaring the crap out of people. Black holes do not EMIT xrays, or anything else that we know of (although they must be emitting something if you believe like Hawking, that black holes can and do lose mass and eventually dissipate) . Xrays are EMITTED by material (gases) falling into a black hole, being heated as they move and gain density. The additional energy the gas absorbs is enough to have it shoot off in an almost plasma jet fashion. Technically we can not and never will be able to "see" as in observe visible light reflecting off of a black hole and having it be observed with our retina. The only way we can detect a black hole is by: observing occulations of stars/galaxies either in the visible or xray spectrums; calculating masses of quasars or galaxies based on rotational speeds and observed mass index; or touching it and falling in. It's only a matter of semantics though. We see things all the time without having to actually be hit by reflected light; a person walking across a dark room, slightly obscuring the light from the window comes to mind.

messier-33?

[thatshortkid]

and here i thought he wore 11. the more you know!

Re:messier-33?

[micromuncher]

What the hell - are you Canadian or something?

Beautiful Katamari

[Osty]

I blame the King of All Cosmos and his damned tennis racquet. Time to start rolling up all your junk.

strange black holes are strange

[Gabest]

It's weird that a smaller mass (20 suns down to 16) can create a black hole, I guess it's about density and distance to the whole volume, but I wonder how little mass could be the minimum requirement to prevent the light from escaping.

Re:strange black holes are strange

[HarvardAce]

It's weird that a smaller mass (20 suns down to 16) can create a black hole, I guess it's about density and distance to the whole volume, but I wonder how little mass could be the minimum requirement to prevent the light from escaping. It's exactly about the density. Basically, if you pack any amount of mass (no matter how large or small) into a small enough space, you have created a black hole. If you assume a sphere of mass, it will create a black hole if the escape velocity from the surface of that mass is greater than the speed of light. Escape velocity is determined by sqrt(2*G*M/r), where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the object, and r is the distance from the center of mass. For example, if you have a 1 kilogram mass, you would have to shove it into a sphere of radius 1.48 x 10^-27 meters. For reference's sake, the diameter of a hydrogen atom is about 1 x 10^-10 meters.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[ceoyoyo]

Care to expand on your objection to the word "produce?"

Or are you just being unnecessarily pedantic?

Upgrade computer used for models...

[fahrbot-bot]

...computer models of star evolution have difficulty producing black holes more massive than this...

Perhaps they need to upgrade to another OS better optimized for modeling black holes... Unless they're saving this for modeling those super-massive ones.

Re:Did we link a start gate to it or is linked to

[NeuralSpike]

Dude, start gate? I guess that leads to an end gate, right?

Cue the goatse puns

[GodfatherofSoul]

Just don't link the image please.

Summary...

[Merovign]

"Something we really don't know all that much about turns out somewhat different than we expected."

News at 11? We have a long way to go with cosmology, I just don't get how surprised people seem when we get a surprise.

*MY* Theory.....

[IHC Navistar]

I thought the biggest black hole was was Congress.....

I mean, look at all the tax dollars that get sucked into it and never seen again!

Re:*MY* Theory.....

[geekoid]

Yes, nothing is ever done with tax dollars. Nothing built, nothing maintain, no service rendered. Just piles of money, That's what area 51 really is, a store house for all that money they don't spend.

Say it ain't so, Joe!

[Gazzonyx]

I thought there was an article about this very subject about 2 months ago or so IIRC, and I thought the slashdot consensus was that if we were able to create these black holes (which was of slim chance), they would depart gracefully and all would be well. Thanks, I'm going to sleep well at my desk in the morning.

Can you confirm that the math is correct on this (with respect to the constraints on upper and lower limits) and that 1 second is a viable time frame for a black holes existence at this size and mass? I'm rather hoping someone will come back with, something to the effect of "nah, we can't create one that big and it would only last for half a nanosecond". Otherwise I'm moving to Mars.

As a side note...
Every time we 'play' with something we don't understand, what seems to happen? We get people killed or it's a great discovery that we figure out how to use to kill people that look different than us.

Re:Say it ain't so, Joe!

[aliquis]

Ins't it fairly obvious to you that slaming particles together will likely not create a black hole of 22800kg?
So yes, I guess they will evaporate much faster than 1 second and not release that much energy.

Still sounds like a stupid thing to do imho but inaap.

Re:Say it ain't so, Joe!

[Gazzonyx]

With the speeds, energies, and sizes we're talking about, I have no idea!

Re:Say it ain't so, Joe!

[aliquis]

I thought one used to only bash single atoms together, and those can't weight that much .. I have no ideas what speeds are needed to make them bash together but accelerating 28000 kg or whatever it was up to fast enough speeds to make it all go together probably requires a lot of energy. That is assuming having only a little of it meet, become a black hole, pick up more stuff before it evaporates and so on.

Anyway I think it's scary to =P

The whole world is a scary place.

Supermassive gaseous layers exploding softly

[bombastinator]

Could someone else here who also knows nothing about stellar physics read this thread and tell me it does not all sound like some weird double entendre fart joke?

Re:Supermassive gaseous layers exploding softly

[gomiam]

That would be expected when talking about black holes and explosions.

Re:Supermassive gaseous layers exploding softly

[bombastinator]

Thank you. It's good that someone understands.

Hawking's interlude

[Robotron23]

There's no escaping here, I'm gonna beat you out of shape,
like a fucking black hole even light can't escape.
Got the mind to bust a rhyme to make your brain bleed,
other rappers talk shit, but they gotta concede
that I'm a three sandwich eatin', super-model meetin';
step to me punk and you're gonna get a beatin'.

largest Black Hole ever...

[felipe171]

a.k.a. U.S. budget deficit

16 Solar Masses?

[c6gunner]

I think we just figured out where Rosie O'Donnell disappeared to...

Oh crap!

[madbawa]

I read the title as "Monster Busts..." thats why I opened the article. *Sigh*

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[Dragonslicer]

shouldn't the above confuse most lay-people Why would it? As far as the typical non-scientist is concerned, you can't see X-rays, so they aren't light.

I hope this is not redundant . . .

[SpeedyGonz]

Black holes don't produce x-rays, but the material falling into them does produce x-rays which, since they're produced outside the black hole, can escape.

So, if a black hole is "alone" with no significant matter nearby to attract and consume, it is invisible @ the x-ray part of the spectrum, yet it's gravitational pull affects other bodies not necessarily near. IANAA, but, isn't this case a good candidate for resolving the dark matter issue?

Re:I hope this is not redundant . . .

[Xerxes314]

So, if a black hole is "alone" with no significant matter nearby to attract and consume, it is invisible @ the x-ray part of the spectrum, yet it's gravitational pull affects other bodies not necessarily near. IANAA, but, isn't this case a good candidate for resolving the dark matter issue?

No. Although not much is known about dark matter, enough is known to rule out this possibility. For example, it is known from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis that not much of dark matter can be baryonic. That is, it can't be made up of ordinary protons and neutrons. Since the stellar precursors of the black holes would have been baryonic during the relevant part of the Big Bang, that rules out stellar black holes as candidates for the bulk of dark matter.

In addition, black holes would form a component of galaxies known as MaCHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects); that is, they are star-heavy dense objects that live in the outskirts of the galaxy, as opposed to in the main disk. When a MaCHO passes in front of a distant object, it causes gravitational lensing (called microlensing) which increases the brightness of the object for a short period. Surveys of the sky for microlensing events have ruled out densities of MaCHOs high enough to account for the bulk of dark matter.

For that matter (this part I'm making up myself), you wouldn't expect star-born black holes to actually live in the halo of the galaxy. Since most stars live in the disk, their remnants ought to be clustered around it as well. Since dark matter is known to be roughly spherically distributed in a halo, that doesn't match up.

Re:I hope this is not redundant . . .

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, a black hole that doesn't have a significant accretion disk is basically invisible, in all parts of the EM spectrum. It might glow a little with Hawking radiation (same idea as the accretion disk except it's virtual particles that pop into existence near the hole and one gets sucked in while the other escapes).

The other reply gives a pretty good summary of why black holes don't work as a dark matter candidate. I believe there was a theory that a lot of little black holes were produced in the big bang, but calculations showed that if there were enough to account for all the dark matter we should be bumping into them regularly.

Black holes are hungry

[FudRucker]

once the black hole is created they do feed on gas, dust, meteoroids, comets, planets, other stars & etc whatever their intense gravity can suck up - this could explain why...

That'e because...

[s_p_oneil]

Astrophysicists just make stuff up. They have no way to test any theories, no way to watch anything unfold on a cosmic scale, and no way of knowing what may have mangled the light their telescopes see by the time it reaches us. I read a great article on it once written by an astrophysicist who basically said it was the most fun branch of science because you could just make wild and crazy stuff up.

As long as you can cram your square peg theory into the round hole we see through our telescopes, it becomes accepted as a plausible theory. Dark matter, anyone?

Re:That'e because...

[geekoid]

Please never, ever, comment on any science story, EVER.

This single post has lowered the average IQ of the entire planet. Clearly you are incapable of grasping science, or the scientific method. You have no idea how new information is taken into account, nor to you have the brain power to determine even the simplest of concepts.

Please shut your mouth. With any luck you might accidentally start thinking again.

Re:That'e because...

[s_p_oneil]

Don't be an ass. You've said nothing to indicate that you even know a fraction of what I know, which makes it seem like you're just bashing randomly. If you want to say something more specific to prove you know what you're talking about, no one is stopping you.

The last score I received on an IQ test was 150. I will admit that I only have a BS (Bachelor's of Science) degree from a good technical school (Georgia Tech). I don't have a Masters degree or a PhD, but I do have a great deal of respect for science.

However, I am referring to a real article written by a real astrophysicist. If you want to yell at someone, yell at him. He explained at length how that entire branch of science was practically a pipe dream. He explained how scientists are building potentially flawed theories on top of other potentially flawed theories based on the tiniest sliver of information (which they can't even be sure is accurate). It requires a lot of intelligence and creativity in addition to a firm understanding of modern physics to even make plausible educated guesses, but they're still just guesses, and any breakthrough discoveries in physics can bring the whole thing crashing down.

Re:That'e because...

[Chili-71]

s p oneil(795792) wrote on Oct 18@7:35AM: no way of knowing what may have mangled the light their telescopes see by the time it reaches us There are no black holes - the blacked out regions of space they are seeing are the cloaking shields on space aliens' ships coming to get us.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[TerovThePyro]

IAAA (or went to college as one).

As listed in another comment the X-Rays are not produced by the black hole itself. As the article listed, the black hole in question has a companion star which is feeding it with material. This material forms an accretion disk around the star which is falling into the black hole as it crosses the L2 point between them. As the material spins up around the star, it eventually moves fast enough and generates enough heat to produce X-Rays. This is what we see on Earth to view the black holes with, resulting in the types of images of black holes due to the resolution differences of X-Ray telescope vs Visual spectrum scopes.

In general, you cannot see a black hole alone, which makes sense and is what you were questioning above. A companion star is necessary to create the accretion disk so we can view them.

Hope that helps!

So?

[njfuzzy]

This just seems to fail a basic test of logic. Even if a Black Hole really can't start out above a certain size, clearly a gravity well can *grow*. Anything that comes near it becomes part of it. How could there be an upper limit on the size of something that by its nature can only grow?

Am I the only one

[Cro Magnon]

who thinks black holes really suck?

Dark matter (et al) not in black holes

[podperson]

I wonder if this is where all that "dark matter" is.

The problem is that the strongest evidence for dark matter/energy is in the velocities of stars orbiting the center of galaxies (Andromeda in particular, since it's the one we have the best view of). Their velocity should drop off markedly as the distance from the center, but doesn't, implying that the mass of the galaxy isn't concentrated in the core, but distributed much more broadly.

Dark matter, in other words, is mass that isn't colocated with things we expect to be there.

(Another way of "looking" at this is that black holes aren't dark matter, because we can "see" them. Dark matter refers to stuff we simply can't observe. Black holes radiate.)

And dark energy is even weirder.

Black holes can 'evaporate', in theory.

[jackpot777]

But seeing as it would have to be one small black hole...

A black hole of 4.5 × 10 kg (about the mass of the Moon) would be in equilibrium at 2.7 kelvins, absorbing as much radiation as it emits. Yet smaller primordial black holes would emit more than they absorb, and thereby lose mass.

...this particular black hole would just grow more than it evaporated. Which is kinda the whole point: black holes that swallow more than they evaporate will grow over time.

Congrats!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You posted the same comment twice and got mod points for both posts!! I wish I could be so lucky!! Then again, I post AC

Congrats!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You posted the same comment twice and got mod points for both posts!! I wish I could be so lucky!! Then again, I post AC

Just in case someone asks...

[WheelDweller]

The Bible is pretty silent about things like this. Not because they aren't cool challenges for people to understand, not because they aren't dangerous to our existence (at some VERY late date) but just because they don't matter.

The Bible is a message from God, written in the hand of obedient men. Things like this just aren't that important to the reason we're here. And to be honest, I'm not sure what the specifics of this work are; people will go to years of training and mind-busting classes to get to this level of effort, yet when posed with a single document, they write it off as fairy tales. Or suggest the translations multiply, but they don't. Each one comes from the million-or-so originals. They're based on scientifically-proven understandings, and the Bible has provided several surprises.

So look to the stars; enjoy God's majesty. But don't be tricked into thinking the Bible is anything but scientific proof and cross-checked. Sure, lots of 'contradictions' are bandied about by people who haven't taken the time to research it, but I'm finding none. And the more I'm learning, the more consistent the message is.

A good place to start to get past the cruft of human-influnce (AKA church misunderstandings like the 6,000 year thing) would be http://equip.org./ Hank Hanegraff answers every question you can give'im. He's a good guy, and NOT one of those starry-eyed, programmed-robot types.

Maybe...

[MrKaos]

Gravity isn't as strong as it used to be?

Possibilities for falsification

[paladinwannabe2]

1. Why do mirrors 'redirect' the dark sucking?
2. Why do prisms 'split' the dark sucking into various colors?
3. How do LEDs 'dark suck' while avoiding friction?

Re:Possibilities for falsification

[NoisySplatter]

I don't know about the first two questions, but I'm willing to bet that the LEDs aren't avoiding the friction, but somehow putting it to use by converting the heat into electricity which they then use themselves. This is what enables them to consume less power than traditional metal filament dark suckers.

Re:Possibilities for falsification

[aliquis]

Not at all hard to imagine if you just let the dark sucking be a beam.. a dark traktor beam sucking up darkness.

Since it's just the reverse of light it will be as easy to explain as the opposit.

Initially it's a joke....

[DrYak]

...but basically, when everyone is saying that 2+2=4, what this guy is technically doing is saying that -2 + -2 = -4. When all current theories consider the _presence_ of life, what this guy is doing is considering the presence of _dark_, id est : _absence_ of light. Hi just put a mathematically acceptable "minus" in front and kept the theory as is.
That's why I seems much more plausible...

(and as pointed by another /,er, that how raytracing actually : they make rays coming out of the camera, the exact reverse path from what the photons do). ...of course the thing was a quickly done joke and he didn't push the "inverted model" to the extreme, and thus there are flaws like the "heat radiation" of the "dark-sucking" bulb proposed by another /.er.

I say we toss stephen hawking into it just for fun

[corifornia2]

WEeeee! BleeP!

I noticed the oldnews tag attached...

[mark-t]

... to this story and I couldn't help but agree.

After all, with it being 2.7 million light years away, we certainly know that this story couldn't have been breaking news any later than the end of the last great ice age.

Re:Nazi away...

[Anonymous Coward]

onary most likely.

OK, we have an anomaly to explain?

[OldHawk777]

The algorithm/simulation could be wrong, but maybe we have an observed unique anomaly that is skewing the data collected and input into the simulation. What could the observational anomaly be that would blowout the simulation. IOW: The math/theory may be correct, but a unique/new observational anomaly could explain the surprise. Wait for more findings ....

Re:Computer models of [insert something here]

[Shadowlore]

What? How dare you suggest that computer models don't provide an accurate substitute for reality, and are not a solid substitute for real science! Next thing you know people might question Global Climate Models. That could lead to demanding publicly available data instead of "proprietary" data and scrutiny of the millions of dollars spent on models instead of things like updating the proxies, auditing the monitoring stations, and perhaps even demanding open debate.

There is nothing politically charged about black holes, or even supermassive ones. As such, the quote above about the models being proven wrong by reality is easily accepted and non-controversial. Unlike, say GCM that fail to predict say El Nino. The physicists understand that models are a useful tool for seeing what you don't know, but are not science, nor are they to be accepted as reality.

The Little Doctor

[burndive]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD_Device#Molecular_Disruption_Device

Acronyms...

[SpeedyGonz]

...In addition, black holes would form a component of galaxies known as MaCHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects)...

Yo gotta love acronyms . . . :)
I bet those are the bar-brawl versions of extinction level event asteroids

base-1

[SpaceLifeForm]

Singularity.

Large black holes don't evaporate much

[iamlucky13]

that it absorbs six or more solar masses before it can evaporate a comparable amount of mass, you'd reach the desired mass.

Black hole evaporation is related to temperature, and temperature is inversely related to mass. A large enough black hole, around the mass of the earth if I remember right, has a temperature below the 2.7 Kelvin average radiation temperature of space, meaning it actually absorbs more than it Hawking radiates and can only gain mass (from the absorbed photons according the e=hf=mc^2).

It seems unlikely that it simply absorbed lots of mass after it formed a black hole. Planets in a stable orbit have no reason to fall into the black hole, although I suppose perturbations from the companion star may upset their orbits sufficiently over time. There would be no spare gas in the immediate vicinity because stars, especially massive ones like we're talking about here, blow away extra gas and dust as they heat up and their stellar wind grows in intensity. The gas would have to fall in from quite a distance, and while I am not an expert, I suspect the timescales required for that to occur are far longer than the short life of a 70 solar-mass star like the one orbiting this black hole, barring some very unlikely conditions.

My personal thought was perhaps this is really a pair of orbiting black holes, but another poster pointed out that ternary systems are unlikely to impossible with massive stars, and further reading on the system indicates that the companion star is regularly eclipsed by the black hole. If there were a second black hole, the eclipse pattern should be distinct enough to tell.

Any stellar black hole basically has to be a Kerr black hole. If this has any effect on calculating the mass, which I wouldn't think it could, accounting for that would be obvious.

In this case it's the star

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case the primary X-ray source, as I understand it, is the companion star, which has a mass of about 70 solar masses and burns extremely hot.

Bullshit

[tetromino]

In Russia, black holes are referred to as 'frozen stars'

The term "frozen star" has not been used since the 1970s; everyone refers to black holes as black holes. See http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A7%D1%91%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B4%D1%8B%D1%80%D0%B0

Thank god the pic dosen't have a 'black hole'

[burtosis]

One of my serious pet peeves.

Ever since Disney's movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole/ (damn that cover) everyone runs around thinking about how wide dem' black holes are.

If you could see past all the super heated hydrogen (as in the artistic rendering) black holes have zero angular width because light (and anything else) only passes through the essentially spherical event horizion at near 90 degrees. This condition is satisfied by a point in space. It is not possible to view one directly This instead has the effect of bending space such that the background behind the black hole is distorted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity/

While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a "point singularity," in a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), defined as a "ring singularity."

Yet on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#_note-0/ here comes the giant black ball of timely death.

INAP but it stands to reason that light rays simply do not terminate without a far end in our space time. There may be a dim spot near the center of the lens - but no black. Looks like this is a more accurate simulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BlackHole_Lensing_2.gif

Here is an accurate animation showing how the famous 'ring with a black center' looks in motion. http://www-ra.phys.utas.edu.au/~jlovell/simlens/lens_large.gif/

How much more must we endure before the artists talk to the scientists?

Lul

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a big stinking hole. like linux technical support.

Why didn't the nova blow away the companion star?

[Ken Erfourth]

"My personal thought was perhaps this is really a pair of orbiting black holes, but another poster pointed out that ternary systems are unlikely to impossible with massive stars, and further reading on the system indicates that the companion star is regularly eclipsed by the black hole. If there were a second black hole, the eclipse pattern should be distinct enough to tell."

If the black hole in question is currently orbiting a regular star, then apparently something can survive a nova explosion in the gravitational vicinity. So why not some supermassive planets? Maybe they were orbiting at large radiuses, survived the explosion with much of their mass intact, and then, with their orbits knocked into highly elliptical patterns by the nova, were eventually consumed by the parent black hole (perhaps after hoovering up a lot of the original ejecta from the nova?).

Just saying. We got prima facie evidence that stuff (a companion star) can hang around after a nova explosion (or the resulting black hole can migrate into the vicinity of stuff/stars, which is basically the same thing). So why not assume a normal stellar black hole formation (10 solar masses) that just got lucky and wandered into an area with lots of stuff to pick up?

Thank GOD there is no black hole in the rendering

[burtosis]

One of my serious pet peeves.

Ever since Disney's movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole (damn that cover) everyone runs around thinking about how wide dem' black holes are.

If you could see past all the super heated hydrogen (as in the artistic rendering) black holes have zero angular width because light (and anything else) only passes through the essentially spherical event horizion at near 90 degrees. This condition is satisfied by a point in our visible space. It is not possible to view one directly at all. This instead has the effect of bending space such that the background behind the black hole is distorted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity

While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a "point singularity," in a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), defined as a "ring singularity."

Yet on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#_note-0 here comes the giant black ball of timely death.

INAP but it stands to reason that light rays simply do not terminate without a far end in our space time. There may be a dim spot near the center of the lens - but no black. Looks like this is a little more accurate simulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BlackHole_Lensing_2.gif

Here is a more accurate animation showing how the famous 'ring with a black center' looks in motion. http://www-ra.phys.utas.edu.au/~jlovell/simlens/lens_large.gif The hole would just appear black because the light rays that would come from the center are higly bent and therefore are dim in the same way that light viewed through a microscope is dim.

How much more must we endure before the artists talk to the scientists?

Re:Why didn't the nova blow away the companion sta

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just really hard luck to believe. I don't know what the planetary formation models suggest is possible as far as mass of planets, but in our own solar system, the sun is 99.86% of the mass. For the sun to do the same would require pulling in something like 500 times the existing mass of everything else orbiting the sun.

A merely elliptical orbit won't cut it. It would have to be so eccentric that it carries the body basically to the event horizon (a mere few dozen miles). The mass loss of a supernova actually results in the planets assuming higher orbits, making it even more difficult. It's surprisingly difficult to fall into a gravity well unless you happen to be pointed right at it.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[branislav]

If the X-rays are caused by material caught and squeezed by the black hole it means they are allready sucked in the opposite direction so how can they escape which means we won't be able to find out. You think something can be created out of its source? Try cooking the egg 5 meters away from the oven.Sorry for my english. I am not an American. I am from Serbia. Don't be mad at me. This is just a discussion.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[ceoyoyo]

The x-rays come from material that is outside the black hole's event horizon. The event horizon is the point beyond which the escape velocity for the black hole is greater than the speed of light, so beyond it nothing can escape. Outside of it, light can still escape.

So what happens is that a big disc of matter forms around the hole, and friction and tidal effects cause it to spiral in and eventually pass the event horizon and be consumed. The x-rays we see originate in this disc of matter outside the hole and are produced because friction makes it REALLY hot -- hot enough to emit x-rays.

For your oven metaphor, let's use a really big oven, like the sun. Take your egg outside on a really hot day, find something black and see if you cook it. If you can, you've just cooked an egg about 150 million kilometres from your oven.

Now, the black hole doesn't heat the matter in the accretion disk with EM radiation, like the sun cooks your egg, but rather through gravitational attraction.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[branislav]

Cool! You read this somewhere, but You will have to leave an open page. Science can explain a lot of things, but not the scientists. What makes their theories absolute? Just a presumption and nothing else, especially when we discuss about such a touchy theory. What about the material further from the event? Don't You think it will have a bit more waves exept the X-rays? can we explain a black hole just by the X-rays? What about other transformation of materials or cracking and bursting the electgron orbits. Should they radiate some other waves to make this theory complete? What I wanted to say is that a black hole theory is a contradictory, though I beleive matter will be contradictory itself and "god" knows what it will be transformed into once it reaches the center of the black hole. Everobody is trying to explain a black hole squeezing by the radiation of X-rays as a cause of raised temperature and pressure. At the other hand this theory means that they would be everlasting and by the time a whole universe would collapse into a point or dot. Gravity so strong that does not allow a photon to escape wuold not allow any kind of energy to escape which means that they would last forever always stronger and smaller ( the bigger the mass - the stronger the gravity - the smaller the space where this all is pressed). Where does it ends? Into nothing??? As a conclusion we will have to think that this is the first Universe ever ( which I dought) and in a billion Years ( time is not relevant any more if it will be 1 or 10000000 bilion years ) all mighty space will be just a dot. Don't tell me that this will turn into another big bang or that they will lose their mass and energy by the rotation from the very black hole ( I've read this theory). So what do You think? Are we the first universe or are We just being dum and stupid explaining something that is contradictory to basic laws ( natural, logic and scientific). I think that a black hole will not go into the oposite direction from its creator(Whoever or Whatever created a matter). Thank You for Your time and best regards from Bane-rx7.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[ceoyoyo]

Everything is, of course, our best estimate for how things work. There may not be any such thing as black holes, or they may be very different than we think, but going on the evidence we have, the current best interpretation is what I described.

Black holes aren't necessarily contradictory, just very far outside the conditions we normally experience.