Cannibal Galaxy the Biggest In the Near Universe

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have found the most massive galaxy in the near universe: an obese, bloated monster that may tip the cosmic scales at 13 trillion times the mass of the Sun, 20 times the mass of the entire Milky Way. The galaxy, called ESO 146-IG 005, sits at the center of a dense cluster of other (but much more lightweight) galaxies, and grew to its present size by eating the galaxies around it. In fact, the so-far undigested cores of at least five other galaxies are still easily seen in the cannibal's nucleus. Astronomers are having difficulty pinning down the galaxy's exact mass, but it's clearly the biggest bruiser within 1.5 billion light years of home."

Comments

Should be named Homer Simpson

[roman_mir]

MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Gaaaaalaaaaaxyyyyyyy

om nom nom nom

Black Galaxy?

[Monkeedude1212]

If a Black Hole is a super dense star, is it possible to have a galaxy of black holes? Or one giant one with an event Horizon as big as a galaxy?

Re:Black Galaxy?

[MozeeToby]

By my calculations, a black hole with a radius of 100000 light years would require a mass of approximately 3 * 10^17 solar masses or about 5 orders of magnitude more mass than is present even in this monster galaxy. And of course, all that mass would have to be present within the 100000 light years, this galaxy is much more spread out than that. So no, it's pretty unlikely to have a galaxy sized black hole (and that's even assuming that I did my math right).

Re:Black Galaxy?

[mog007]

In approximately 10^40 years, every galaxy will be nothing but black holes. By then, all stars will either have become white dwarfs or black holes, and the white dwarfs will have even cooled off to become black dwarfs. I suppose there would be some neutron stars for large stars that couldn't reach the mass limit that turns them into black holes.

But a galaxy of nothing but black holes? Nah. It would require nothing but very massive stars, and these stars are very rare, compared to the number of stars in the universe.

Re:Black Galaxy?

[sznupi]

Quite likely pretty much all galaxies will be "a galaxy of black holes" at some point, simply because virtually everything else will decay in the meantime (and long before black holes themselves will decay). Some models even have the possibility that whole Universe will turn into a singularity (though not really of the same kind as a black hole)

As for "giant one with an event Horizon as big as a galaxy", you're unlikely to find enough mass in one place for something like that to form (nevermind the unlikeness of all that mass collapsing into a black hole)

Re:Black Galaxy?

[oldspewey]

In approximately 10^40 years, every galaxy will be nothing but black holes. By then, all stars will either have become white dwarfs or black holes, and the white dwarfs will have even cooled off to become black dwarfs.

So what the hell is the point of even getting up in the morning?

Re:Black Galaxy?

[wdsci]

I mean this in the nicest possible way, but that post really makes it sound as if you don't know what you're talking about. 100000 light years is the size of a typical galaxy, i.e. the Milky Way (admittedly diameter, not radius). And the more massive a black hole, the bigger it is (as measured by the Schwarzschild radius); a black hole with 100 billion stars - which, again, is a typical galaxy's worth - would be about 600 billion km across. That's something like 100 times the size of the orbit of Neptune, and much bigger than any star.

Re:Black Galaxy?

[PaganRitual]

Bacon.

I, for once...

[vagabond_gr]

... well, you know what

Eating ?

[unity100]

you actually mean 'merging' with them. galaxies do not consume stellar material to burn. stellar material just merges.

Re:Eating ?

[spun]

you actually mean 'merging' with them. galaxies do not consume stellar material to burn. stellar material just merges.

I don't consume Cheetos and Mountain Dew, I merge with them. I don't burn most of them, they simply merge into a nearly circular ring around my midsection.

Re:Eating ?

[El_Oscuro]

You do realize that there is no actual food in Cheetos nor Mountain Dew, so your only option is to merge with them. If you actually tried to consume them, your small intestine would leap out and throttle your brain in an desperate attempt to save humanity.

Milky Way not much "worse"/"better"

[sznupi]

("worse"/"better" - is an act of eating galaxies ammoral? ;) )

Our galaxy is a cannibal, too...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgo_Stellar_Stream
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoceros_Ring
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_galaxies
(and those links are just a starting point; BTW, BOINC project Milkyway@home models this)

Time to update the joke

[zill]

Your mom is so fat...

Re:Time to update the joke

[Hurricane78]

Yeah well, and yo momma is so drunk, that the stench of cheap booze is only drowned by the vomit in her beard. :P

It's not that bad

[CorporateSuit]

It's not as big as it sounds. Milky Ways only have like 9 grams of fat. So this thing is like... 180 grams of fat. We'll live.

Re:Now I'm Officially Scared

[spun]

First global warming, now solar system-eating far galaxy monsters. What could possibly be worse?

I'll take a shot at that: How about The Big Rip? Cosmic expansion increasing exponentially quickly so that every atom, no, every point of space time retreats from every other point faster than the speed of light. Everything in the universe ripping apart in an instant. OOoooohhhh! Scary!

Re:Am I the only one

[palegray.net]

That sounds like a pretty bright idea!

Re:And in the opposite corner...

[spun]

The neutrino! Massless and fast. Folks, this should be quite a match.

Neutrinos have mass.

Oh come on...

[otis wildflower]

... It's just BIG BONED!

Change one letter...

[nebenfun]

Oh yeah! Survival of the fittest, bitches!

Wouldn't that be survival of the fattest?

Re:Am I the only one

[negRo_slim]

who's first reaction was to wonder what it might be like to live there, in the cannibal galaxy's nucleus?

I thought the very same thing when I was watching Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking, I think the episode was entitled A Brief History Of Everything and at one point they play a computer simulation of galaxies merging and eventually they throw a lot of galaxies together before that piece ends.

Might be worth looking up as it was incredibly beautiful.

How do they know?

[esrobinson]

Astronomers are having difficulty pinning down the galaxy's exact mass, but it's clearly the biggest bruiser within 1.5 billion light years of home

I mean, it's the largest galaxy they've seen at this point. But, if a galaxy of that size can go undiscovered for this long, how do they know there's not another one within 1.5 billion light years that's larger? Did they look at all of it, and just leave this little section for last?

Or is the summary just fabricating things that aren't in the article?

Expanding? Runaway? Collapsing?

[mindbrane]

Much like the initial debate over the existence of black holes there seems to be lots of wiggle room when it comes to declaring whether the Universe is in a runaway state, whether it's just expanding, or, whether it will collapse. This Standford Uni link gives a quick overview and suggests in ~15bn years it'll collapse to the size of a proton. The Yale Astrophysics Course, IIRC, is strongly steeped in black hole theory and so speaks to the same issues.

do you hear the maddening beating of vile drums?

[Anonymous Coward]

omg! they found azathoth!!!!

Outside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azathoth

Obligatory.

[Arancaytar]

it's clearly the biggest bruiser within 1.5 billion light years of home

Or it would be if it weren't for your mother.

Re:Now I'm Officially Scared

[interkin3tic]

First global warming, now solar system-eating far galaxy monsters. What could possibly be worse?

Total protonic reversal. Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. That would be bad. [/ghostbusters]

Old news

[Frequency Domain]

This happened, like what, a billion and a half years ago?

Re:That would be 1.5 billion light years....

[pclminion]

True, but technically uninteresting. If you are standing 100 meters away from me, then technically I never actually see "you," I see "you, 333 nanoseconds ago."

In order for there to be a past, there has to be a "then" and a "now," and these are relative to your frame of reference. Yes, it's 1.5 billion years in the "past," but it's unimportant because there's no possibility of ever "catching up" to it. What we see right now, for all useful purposes, could be said to be happening "now."

Ah geez, let's just go take a few shots.

Re:That would be 1.5 billion light years....

[dotancohen]

Wrong.

In our light cone this is how the galaxy appears now. There is no concept of "now" outside our light cone, as much as intuitive Newtonian physics would like that to be true.