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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."
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?
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Despite sharing gas clouds and the emission of toxic energy, quasars are found in space while red holes are found near Taco Bells.
'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.
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?
"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....
Suddenly black holes, lots of them!
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
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.
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.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"The goatse guy could not be reached for comment."
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.."
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
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Oh good! I was worried I'd never see them again. The cleaning lady left my garage door open and they sneaked out.
My quazars will be so happy to have them back home.
-David
Racists, like conspiracy theorists, realize the truth of the world even though it runs contrary to dominant, irrational memes propagated by the opinion-makers of media.
There are plenty of racists with PhDs, including Harvard professors... the fact that moderators at a pop-culture geek site give a kneejerk negative response to any racialist post doesn't make it "stupid".
As with anything, really, the more popular the idea, the stupider it is -- so it is with the P.C. notion of ultimate equality and myopia with regard to hereditary intelligence and behavior.
...they're honeypots powerful enough to bog down the Storm botnet!
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
"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."
look closely
"empirical evidence proving"
should never occur in any sentence ever. By definition empirical evidence cannot prove anything. Empirical evidence lends support to inductive arguments, which don't concern themselves with proof. Only analytic statements may be proven.
Please, for the love of god remember, there are two forms of logic, inductive which has arguments from experience (physics), and deductive which has arguments from pure reason (mathematics). Only deductive arguments can be proven because you can always argue with the strength of the evidence in inductive claims. It is a fact (supported by inductive evidence and deductive proofs) that inductive claims may be false no matter how strong the evidence for them is. Thus they can never be proven, but you can say "there are strong practical reasons to believe."
People getting basic logic wrong has led to a lot of poor decisions in our society lately, so please do not contribute to the problem by adding to confusion over terms.
The universe is now proven to be holier than thou.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
No, you are referring to brown holes. They are not the same things.
Finding Black Holes is an intense job, it's not hard to get Sucked in, and there are always new Events on the Horizon. // Sucky job but somebody's got to do it?? /// Having seen "Event Horizon" I don't think I'd really want to go looking for black holes....ugh.
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.
Well, the Earth is pulling the moon towards it too, and yet we still have a moon after all these billions of years. The Sun is pulling the Earth towards it, but, funnily enough, after all these billions of years we're not quite there yet.
In a sense, the Hitchhiker's guide got that right: ""There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. It knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties."" We keep falling in an almost circular orbit around the Sun and ending up (almost) where we started.
What I'm trying to say is that those super-massive black holes obviously do suck everything towards them. But the rest of the galaxy sees it as centripetal force and rotates around them.
The problems with a black holes are at closer ranges.
For a start, if you do get closer to it than its event horizon, then you're properly fucked. There is no way to get out of there, not even theoretically. Not even light can get out of there. Hence, the name black hole.
However, I'll return to the analogy with the solar system. With the Sun's massive gravity well, it's damn near impossible to hit it, even if you wanted to. If you dropped a big rock right at it, even the slighest deviation or initial speed sideways (like would happen if you dropped it from Earth), would cause a clean miss and you'd just get that rock in some kind of orbit around it. The only way to actually hit the sun would be if that orbit was flattened enough that it passes through the sun.
And the same problem applies to black holes too. Remember that it's a more massive gravity well _and_ the "bullseye" is much smaller, at least in relation to the gravity well. As you fall even a little off the centre, your speed would increase enough so at one point the centrifugal force (yes, I know it doesn't even exist, but it makes the explanation easier) just flings you clean around it.
There's even at least one theory that nothing ever finishes falling into a black star. Although there is energy loss due to that X-ray emission and all, basically matter just spirals closer and closer to the event horizon without ever reaching it. Think an asymptotic decay. It gets closer and closer and closer over time, but never quite reaches it.
The second problem is, well, tides. If you get close enough to the centre of a gravity well, say, looking at the centre, then your front is pulled towards it much stronger than your back is.
This is actually true for any gravity well, and, again, you can see it in action in the solar system too. That's why the moon is tidal-locked with the Earth and you always see the same face of it.
But for a massive enough gravity well, the force difference gets larger and can rip a star or a planet apart. That's how stars and black holes end up occasionally peeling another star apart, pretty much syphoning its outer layers.
So basically you could be past the event horizon and still be properly fucked, in slightly different way.
But even that only extends so far. IIRC there are stars orbitting the centre of a galaxy with a period measured in hours. Admittedly, that's not as close as it might suggest, again because of the massive gravity. Even with that angular speed, you still need a heck of a radius to stay in orbit there. But, still, if those survive just fine, then you can probably see how the rest of the galaxy is safe.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The question was: when did they form?
If a Black Hole is in a region with lots of material...it grows. Here's (roughly) how: most of material will orbit the black hole so the Black hole won't grow. BUT: if the density is high enough, it will form an orbiting disk of material. The particles in the disk will collide with each other in their mad dash around the black hole, heating the disk up, and knocking some of the material out of orbit, into the black hole. So you end up with the black hole growing, and an extremely hot disk shining X-rays across the Universe. This has been seen in more nearby quasars. Here they have found the X-rays from the more distant hot disks.
This discovery should be classified as excellend confirmation of what most astronomers thought must be true.
What is a spectrum, what is a red one, why is it red, and why is it so frequently linked with quasars?
What the hell is a quasar?
(write bigger)