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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."
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?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
They should name it Goatse.
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.
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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!!!
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.
The following may help to explain things (taken from an Slashdot post):
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.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
One black hole consumes another black hole creating one gigantic gravitational singularity. Case closed.
The game.
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.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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?