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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."
I was scared I might have run into one in a dark alley one night, thank goodness they have been found. On a more serious note, the article mentions that "the galaxies are 9-11 billion years old, and that they *did* exist when the universe was in it's adolescence." Does this mean they are no longer there? And if not, what would have become of the black holes?
I may be totally inept at this whole astronomy thing, but I am curious. If all or most galaxies have black holes at the center, where does the debris and dust and all the other stuff that makes a galaxy work come from? Obviously the black hole is pulling stuff toward it, but where does that stuff come from? And how did it get there?
The game.
Well yes. But it'd have to be a source that generated fantastically intense beams of x-rays, and which had masses of hundreds of millions to billions of times the mass of a star in a fantastically small volume to keep stars in galactic cores moving at ludicrious speed. High density + invisible is something of a puzzle in astronomy.
IANAP however it sounds as if this could have some affect on the Dark Matter/Energy theories. Since Dark Matter/Energy I believe was invented to balance out seemingly correct equations on a cosmic scale? Perhaps this accounts for the extra gravity holding a system together?
Can any physicists elaborate on this for us.
Thanks.
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No one has ever "seen" a black hole, they are seeing effects that can be explained by black hole theory. A subtle but perhaps important difference.
IANAAP, but on the surface of it, ECOs are interesting because they do not involve a singularity.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
There are a couple of ways to get mods effectively removed without a coverup.
If I moderate something and then realise its a bit fucked I normally post in the discussion somewhere (even as AC but still from my account)
It removes the moderation.
If one person mods a comment as funny and 10 mod it as troll then the funny percentage drops off and is not listed anymore.
This I am not totally sure about for simple (funny/troll) mod decisions, I know it happens when a post is moderated wildly by different elements(funny,interesting,informative,troll,flamebait) before one mod class wins (slash lists only the top 3 mod kinds I think).
Then again, you might be right and it might be a conspiracy.
As I see it, the only difference between a black hole and an ECO is whether you are in it or not. The point is black holes look like ECOs from the outside, up to emitted radiation and a magnetic field.