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Supermassive Black Holes Can Abort Star Formation
cremeglace writes "Astrophysicists have found that when a supermassive black hole quickly devours gas and dust, it can generate enough radiation to abort all the embryonic stars in the surrounding galaxy. It's not clear what this means for life's ability to take hold in such a bleak environment, but the research shows that the process might have determined the fates of many of the large galaxies in the universe."
Is this even more effective than punching, stairs, or a coat hanger?
Are there any conflicts with the Einstein Field Equations as this would suggest?
This reminds me of Larry Niven's short story "At the Core" (collected in Crashlander ) where an expedition to the galactic core finds that the density of stars in the area causes a chain of supernovas, whose radiation will eventually sweep over the outskirts of the galaxy and destroy life on Earth. Now that galactic cores are somewhat better understood, what's the current idea of how our neighbourhood could be affected by events in the center?
How long before Palin comes out against this? I am guessing it would go a little something like: 'Now the 'liberal elites' want us to think that God performs abortions?!'. Then she will follow up with various sentence fragments taken from a 'quote of the day' calendar.
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As if we needed any more proof that black holes suck.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You mean like our galaxy?
If anything, going through this phase of having the supermassive back hole stop new star formation may be the precursor to stabilizing things enough that life can evolve without being interrupted by new stars forming.
Denying the unborn stars their right to life!
(I bet they're pro gay marriage, too!)
This is one place I would fully support the Westboro Baptist Church going to protest things like abortion. Hopefully they can all find the nearest supermassive black hole and go there to protest its role in abortion.
It's not clear what this means for life's ability to take hold in such a bleak environment
Really?
... I find it, a-muse-ing.
I think "Supermassive Black Hole" in fact turned Muse into huge stars. Wait, isn't that what you're talking about?
Seems pretty clear to me. No stars, ..no supernova's, ..no condensed matter, ..no planets, ..no life as we know it. Short of some kind of bizarre plasma based lifeforms you could not expect to find ET. I think I will stay out of that part of the Universe just the same.
Poor NASA. Now they're going to lose even more funding as Republicans and pro-life Democrats lobby to prevent NASA from using federal funds to investigate such phenomenon in the future.
No excuse, Sir.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
> It's not clear what this means for life's ability to take hold in such a bleak environment..."
Please...who said anything about expecting life to 'take hold'...?
James Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Auric Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Pro light?
For once, the Slashdot post is better than the original article.
The cessation of star-making is not the same as the cessation of life. It might be good for life. It might be bad. All we really know right now is that this has not happened to the Milky Way galaxy, so we have a sample of one where it did not occur.
The other thing missing in the original article is that galaxies are active things, and can and frequently do "eat" other galaxies - which brings new gas into the galaxy, and thus could restart star making (or make the black hole active again, or both).
Here is an astrophysics prediction : this galaxies will have a high Mass to Light ratio, since gas and dust will be expelled, but not dark matter.
What sort of timescale are we looking at for such a galaxy to exhaust it's stars and become invisible to us? Could the void out there be full of "dark galaxies" that burned out fast and early and have no remaining active stars or are the supermassive galaxies being studies represent the first generation of such things to arise, presumably lingering on for many, many billions of years, dimming slowly as only the longest-lived stars remain?
See, god practices abortion.
...and you should be getting lots of V1@GRA ads pretty shortly here. Cheers!
spoken like someone that never actually used gmail. the spam filters are very good.
American Christian terrorists are working on a gun sufficient to kill a black hole.
> a supermassive black hole quickly devours gas and dust, it can generate enough
> radiation to abort all the embryonic stars in the surrounding galaxy. It's not
> clear what this means for life's ability to take hold in such a bleak environment,
For life that can exist in space without matter (gas, dust, stars, etc.) but with a large dose of radiation, it wouldn't mean much at all. Except that life is made of matter and thus it would get sucked in too.
I would imagine that a supermassive black hole "can" do anything it wants. Let's see you try to stop it, you silly baryonic, self-organizing, endothermic, negentropic bipeds.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
We are spending way too much energy on stuff that is happening millions of light years away , how much is this costing us the tax payer to fund these discoveries that we can do without, seriously, have we come close to ending famine or curing cancer....i think those are the top 2 priorities, i understand we need to up to date to continue our moon missions and all, but what is happening so far away about these blackholes seems a bit to miss the point , no?