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Colliding Galaxies Reveal Colossal Black Holes
Matt_dk writes "New observations made with the Submillimeter Array of telescopes in Hawaii suggest that black holes — thought to exist in many, if not all, galaxies — were common even in the early Universe, when galaxies were just beginning to form. Astronomers have found two very different galaxies in the distant Universe, both with colossal black holes at their hearts, involved in a spectacular collision."
the web site has become a black hole as well.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You could have at least made a goatse reference. Damn it man, it was right *there*.
Pictures please!
Or would that be considered "galaxy pron" ?
The opportunity was left wide open!
I don't think that discovering early black holes is all that surprising given that concentrations of matter were much greater early on.
What I want to know, is how did the universe expand beyond its own swartzchild radius?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Much like the collision between a server full of astronomy pictures and slashdot.
Nothing survives.
Oh, and as the mass increases, time slows down in the vicinity. Or at least that's how it seems.
Paul Leader
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2188
4C60.07 - the first of the galaxies to be discovered - came to astronomers' attention because of its bright radio emission. This radio signature is one telltale sign of a quasar - a black hole, spinning rapidly, feeding on its parent galaxy. A new image captures the moment, approximately 12 billion years ago, when this galaxy ripped a stream of dusty gas from a neighbour.
"This new image reveals two galaxies where we only expected to find one," said Professor Rob Ivison ... "Remarkably, both galaxies contain super-massive black holes, each capable of powering a billion, billion, billion light bulbs. The implications are wide reaching: you can't help wondering how many other colossal black holes may be lurking unseen in the distant Universe?"
Due to the finite speed of light, we see the two galaxies as they collided in the distant past, less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang. By now the galaxies will have merged to create a football-shaped elliptical galaxy. Their black holes are likely to have merged to form a single monstrously large black hole.
"These two galaxies are fraternal twins. Both are about the size of the Milky Way, but each one is unique"
From the thats-a-lot-of-lightbulbs department?
Lead on, we're right behind you.
I guess these events happen in the million year range, so they may have had enough time to evolve and escape.
I would encourage you to study what a black hole actually is, rather than trusting some random sci-fi author's unsubstantiated notion that the layman's term "hole" must mean "magical portal to another dimension".
Our present equations yield a value of "infinite" when solved for the conditions believed to exist at the center of a black hole. This is likely to only mean that our equations are buggy and need fixing.
It is not the opinion of most scientists that anything special would happen inside a black hole. If you could somehow build an infinitely resilient spaceship that could somehow shield you from the effects of extreme gravity, and assuming we are wrong about the speed of light, and that you could possibly go faster than it, the most you would be able to do with a black hole would be to go in and out of the event horizon unscathed, or perhaps bang into whatever form of extremely compressed matter exists at its center. We have no reason to believe otherwise - wormholes, however prevalent they may be in the realm of science fiction, are just an unlikely hypothesis in the world of real science. For them to exist, strange forms of matter with negative density would have to be discovered, and nobody but the wishful thinkers seriously believes in that.
(I am not a physicist, however, and as such I welcome factual corrections and additions to this post)
The accretion disks glow. Actually, the black hole glows, but at a temperature far too low to care, thanks to Hawking Radiation.
Is how to answer my 5-year old's question of: "Ok, but whats outside the universe?"
She gets solar systems, and has a pretty good handle on galaxies and that there are lots and lots of them. I'm still trying to explain the Big Bang, and keep getting hung up on what the universe is expanding INTO.
I know, even us Big People don't have a good answer, but what the heck do you tell a kid?
I know I aught be able to work this out myself, but I'm not sure if general newtonian calculations would be accurate. Is it possible to orbit a black hole from inside the event horizon if it is big enough? It seems intuitively obvious that if you can't achieve escape velocity you shouldn't be able to reach an orbital velocity either but I thought I'd see if someone was willing to give a more solid answer.
"Remarkably, both galaxies contain super-massive black holes, each capable of powering a billion, BILLION, BIIIILLLLLLIIIIIOOOOONNNNN light bulbs." Why do I feel like Dr. Evil coauthored this article?