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."

Comments

*phew*

[AlphaDrake]

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?

Re: Had to exist?

[pedestrian crossing]

Not to be pedantic, but couldn't there be another source for the x-rays? What would've happened if this was someones pet theory?

If there were competing theories that predicted the same thing, the race would be on to see whether there was something else they made different predictions about, and to see which could stand up to the additional scrutiny.

Like these?

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.

Re:Question

[teebob21]

Interesting Google calc link. In a related vein, a black hole with the mass of Pluto would have an event horizon (Schwartzchild radius) of only 20 microns, or about the width of a hair on your arm. If it were somehow accelerated to a relativistic speed (> 0.95c), such a black hole could theoretically impact a star/planet/moon and pass right through. The only damage would be the curious 20 micron wide tunnel that suddenly appeared in the celestial body. All other matter on the planet would not be sucked in, although any inhabitants might experience some strange gravitational effects. My first-year college physics professor was a big fan of exotic astronomy, and we did several projects involving similar scenarios.