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Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Found In Omega Centauri
esocid sends us to the European Space Agency's site for news of a new discovery that appears to resolve the long-standing mystery surrounding Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky. The object is 17,000 light-years distant and is located just above the plane of the Milky Way. Seen from a dark rural area in the southern hemisphere, Omega Centauri appears almost as large as the full moon. What the researchers discovered is a black hole of 40,000 solar masses in the cluster's center. From the press release: "Images obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and data obtained by the GMOS spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope in Chile show that Omega Centauri appears to harbor an elusive intermediate-mass black hole in its center... Exactly how Omega Centauri should be classified has always been a contentious topic. It was first listed in Ptolemy's catalog nearly two thousand years ago as a single star. Edmond Halley reported it as a nebula in 1677. In the 1830s the English astronomer John Herschel was the first to recognize it as a globular cluster. Now, more than a century later, this new result suggests Omega Centauri is not a globular cluster at all, but a dwarf galaxy stripped of its outer stars. According to scientists, these intermediate-mass black holes could turn out to be baby supermassive black holes."
...never one when you need one - then three come along all at once.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Wow- what a headache. What would you feed it?
GOATSE.
So, we've now discovered the biggest and smallest black holes known to exist within about a week of each other.
Now that we've found the most average, space bears will come and blast us into porridge.
Astronomy kicks ass.
Especially when the universe works like my mind wants it to.
strip Omega Centauri of its globular cluster status. I hope the Pluto people will be just as vocal against this change.
I propose calling them "jumbo shrimp black holes."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
So, instead of medium-size, they might actually be small big?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
APRIL FOOLS!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Any non-Americans will be fine. Remember, bears of any kind are born with an innate hatred for America. They are godless killing machines. As an American myself... well it was nice knowing you all.
I got a catholic block.
Holy cow, you must be psychic!
... deja vu! The Matrix must be rebooting!
Woah
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
While grasping at straws here, from your meme link:
;p
Computer Desktop Encyclopedia: meme (Pronounced "meem") A trend, belief, fashion or phrase that is passed from generation to generation through imitation and behavioral replication. Coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene," memes and memetics are the cultural counterpart to the biological study of genes and genetics. Using the evolution analogy, Dawkins observed that human cultures evolve via "contagious" communications in a manner similar to the gene pool of populations over time.
Although if you've any blackhole jokes as well, let's hear em! PS - If you're gonna just post two words, wouldn't it be better to just send me a message?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
What distinguishes the Milky Way globular clusters is the the are all about the same, very old, almost as old as the Universe age. If there is reason to believe this is gravitationally bound to the Milky Way instead of some interloper, and if it has the same HR diagram turnoff point of other Milky Way globulars, there is no reason to think it is anything other than one of the bigger and fatter and closer of the globulars.
..set a course for Omega Centauri, warp 2. Engage. [points finger towards screen]
Any civilization without space flight capability - much more advanced than our own - would have no way to escape, and would be wiped out.
It seems like catastrophes on an astronomical scale are fairly common; how many intelligent beings have perished as a result?
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Cool. They found Londo's soul.
Anybody want my mod points?
I was about to say that your quote from the CDE just represents usage, as all dictionaries and other language references do. Being cited in a reference doesn't make a lame usage non-lame.
But then I looked at your quote and realized that it actually documents my use of the word "meme". (That makes it out of date, since your usage, however lame, is common among computer folk.) You highlighted "phrase that is passed from generation to generation through imitation and behavioral replication." But if you read the whole entry, you'll see that there's more to a meme than imitation and replication: Dawkins observed that human cultures evolve via "contagious" communications in a manner similar to the gene pool of populations over time. So it's all about cultural evolution. Does inventing a new joke count as evolution? I think not.
Now, inventing a new kind of joke counts as cultural evolution — provided the new kind of joke catches on. Judging from the followups to your post, that's not going to happen with black hole jokes; all the replies are just rehashes of existing joke genres.
On the other hand, LOLcats definitely represent a new meme. Though you have to be a cat person (like me) to enjoy them.
Did you read ... anything? Intermediate-Mass black hole seems to indicate its neither stellar sized (small) nor galactic-center super-massive (large) in size.
Sorry, gotta examine this part here:
Does inventing a new joke count as evolution? I think not.
Semantics is so lovely to argue on message boards, it's like digital cock waving! Seriously tho, you think not? Why not? Since I'm lacking the time to take this any more seriously than you apparently are, I bow to you and your great mastery of the English language! Now, if you'll excuse me I have to add you to my friends list so I can pounce on the next mistake you make. Fun times! See ya in the reply.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Anyone got a pic to illustrate this? I can't really believe a star to be that visibly large.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
It is that big, but has low surface brightness. Collectively, it's about as bright as a fairly dim star (magnitude 3.65 according to the Webb Society Deep-Sky Observer's Handbook). If it were concentrated into a point as a star is, you'd probably barely be able to see it against moderate light pollution.
how can it be considered a baby galaxy stripped of its outer stars when it's INSIDE our OWN galaxy? perhaps black holes and globular clusters are just an innate feature of all (or most) galaxies already?
oh lols, he got modded funny. I guess it's still funny when the mods are laughing at him not with him.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say, "You can have my black hole when you pry my cold, dead fingers out of it!"
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Three settings on the space bears' ray guns:
Stun, Kill and Porridge.
They'll hunt them down and find them, of course. In Ursa Major. When they open them up, they'll find that inside, they're full of people.
'Cause you know, sometimes you eat the space bear, sometimes the space bear eats you.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
In case anyone is inerested, here is a link to the article on Gemini's website:
http://www.gemini.edu/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=284
There are a couple good pictures available.
40,000 sun masses isn't big. Look at this baby: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/03/18-billion-suns.html That black hole is as big as some galaxies, and it is still happily gobbling up additional suns. Good we are nowhere near it.
Doesn't the universe realize that it can get a Venti Black Hole for only $0.25 more?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Come to think of it, it probably blends in with the Milky Way. Centaurus has a lot of stuff (nebulas and bright stars like Alpha Centauri) in it and it contains the center of the Milky Way. So Omega Centauri wouldn't stand out as much as if it were in say Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) which is well outside the plane of the Milky Way.
Maybe this will help: http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/slashdotter/
I lived in a dark rural area of the Southern Hemisphere, and let me tell you, I have never seen anything in the night sky even approaching the size of the full moon...
First article listed here:
http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+noyola/0/1/0/all/0/1
If that doesn't work type "Noyola" without quotes into the "Search or Article-Id" field at the top right
http://arxiv.org/
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Look here for some pictures and a little more exposition:
http://www.galaxydynamics.org/spiral_metamorphosis.html
And for cosmological-scale stuff:
http://web.phys.cmu.edu/~tiziana/BHCosmo/ or whose home planets are hit by comets. Technology to survive this threat is much less than you think. It's been available to humans since around 1960-1970. Orbital mechanics was well-established 50-100 years earlier. You just need chemical rocketry and Newtonian mechanics to avert such an ecological disaster; you don't need to abandon the planet or star system. If you can do the latter, you can certainly do the former. It seems like catastrophes on an astronomical scale are fairly common; "Common" is relative: it "seems" to me that the occurrence of an extinction-level event on inhabited worlds is relatively rare compared to the time it might take an intelligent species to progress from speciation to advanced space flight; say, 10^5 to 10^6 years. Even if there are few such intelligent species, they will seldom, if ever (statistically speaking), be wiped out by such an event because such an event is incredibly improbable during the tiny window between their initial existence and their developing the means to avert such a disaster.
Of course, statistical models are not physical reality; it might certainly happen occasionally even if you statistically predict "never". Some star might get lucky and bull's-eye another star in a galactic collision.
Quit complaining. I have 1280x1024 at home and it is perfectly usable. Also, why are you reading Slashdot at work? Shouldn't you, I dunno, work? Mod me down if you want, but you really should be thinking about other things at work.
Exactly. That is why this is the goldilocks black hole, unlike the previous two that were too big and too small. Please google for "goldilocks" to understand the cultural reference. It's a fairy tale and Wikipedia has a summary.
But the real question is, how much more black could it be? And the answer is none. None more black.
> Also, why are you reading Slashdot at work? Shouldn't you, I dunno, work?
BWAHAAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!! That's a good one. work...