Slashdot Mirror
Hundreds of Black Holes Found
eldavojohn writes "Hundreds of black holes that were thought to exist at the beginning of the universe have been found by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes. From the article, 'The findings are also the first direct evidence that most, if not all, massive galaxies in the distant universe spent their youths building monstrous black holes at their cores. For decades, a large population of active black holes has been considered missing. These highly energetic structures belong to a class of black holes called quasars. A quasar consists of a doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust that surrounds and feeds a budding supermassive black hole. As the gas and dust are devoured by the black hole, they heat up and shoot out X-rays. Those X-rays can be detected as a general glow in space, but often the quasars themselves can't be seen directly because dust and gas blocks them from our view.' This is pretty big, as it's empirical evidence proving the existence of objects that theoretically had to exist but could not be detected previously."
'The findings are also the first direct evidence that most, if not all, massive galaxies in the distant universe spent their youths building monstrous black holes at their cores.
That's funny, because I've heard the same thing about Dick Cheney.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"Those X-rays can be detected as a general glow in space, but often the quasars themselves can't be seen directly because dust and gas blocks them from our view."
pfft yea sure, i'll believe it's a black hole when i see it.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
No, this just proves that, for certain empirical cases, the difference between theory and practice is smaller in practice than certain other theoretically challenged cases: in other words, this one is rather similar, while still remaining slightly different.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
As covered by Red Dwarf... ... We've been in space for three million years and there hasn't been one! Then, all of a sudden five of them turn up at once!"
"Well, the thing about a Black Hole, its main distinguishing feature, is it's black! And the thing about space, the colour of space, yer basic space colour, is its Black! So how are you supposed to see them.
And the cause of all these black holes?
"Five specs of grit on the scanner scope....the thing is about Grit... is it's black.."
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