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Black Holes May Mature Early In Galaxy Evolution
masterwit writes "From Scientific American: 'An accidental find in a star-forming dwarf galaxy shows that black holes may mature early in galaxy evolution.' Also, 'if giant black holes in star-forming dwarf galaxies prove to be common — that is, if Henize 2-10 is not an outlier but a representative of a larger population — they may have much to tell about the formation of primordial black holes and galaxies in the early universe.'"
I think any red-blooded male can confirm that this is obvious common knowledge. They keep maturing earlier and earlier. Hell, have you seen them lately? You think they're all 18 or even 22 millennia until that awkward moment when you make your move and find out they're really only 15 millenia. I say it's the chemicals they're subjected to in the modern cosmos.
The first time astronomers found a supermassive blackhole at the center of a galaxy they decided to check the results against a typical quiet galaxy and found the same thing. The observations continued and it became clear pretty quickly that blackholes in galaxies were common. So common in fact, that I am unaware of a galaxy that didn't have one. The mass of the supermassive blackhole strongly correlates with the mass of the galaxy. A typical galaxy is about 200 times the mass of its supermassive blackhole which suggests a link between supermassive blackhole formation and the creation of galaxies. Whether they act as seeds for a galaxy to form in the first place or are the inevitable result isn't yet clear.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This likely will not affect us in any immediate fashion outside our continued pursuit of knowledge of the universe... but on another note:
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Looks like you need to clean up your computer and online browsing settings! (Unless you meant to post that link following your comment)
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Something to keep in mind next time the Intergalactic Real Estate agent tweets about "PRISTINE oceanfront property in young galaxy, fun neighborhood!"
big black holes = gravitational mass? = maybe account for missing mass we thought of as 'dark matter'? Just curious... this is awesome [if it's not outlier of course].
No. Galaxies aren't just black hole accretion disks.
The influence of the black hole is strong only at the very center tiny fraction of a percent (by either volume or mass) of the galaxy. So much so that we only found them a few decades ago.
You may as well ask if the solar system were just your own personal accretion disk.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You're either trolling or deluded. There is plenty of observational evidence for black holes. See the center of our galaxy. While it is true that relativity and QCD/QED have not been reconciled, and the Standard Model is incomplete at best, they are the best models we have to date.
Science is about forming a testable hypothesis, testing it, and looking at the data. If your hypothesis was wrong, admit it and move on to the next thing. Infinite densities are only forbidden in the sense that they don't fit nicely in the models framework, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the model should be shelved. What you are suggesting is throwing away the experimentalists evidence for black holes because it doesn't fit perfectly with our contrived explanations. You're doing it wrong.
Since relativity and bending of light due to space-time curvature has been experimentally confirmed, meaning light's path can be 'changed' in the sense that we view it (it turns out that the light never really 'curves', but instead it follows a straight line in a curved space, but its all relative, right?), what would you call an area of mass so dense in which light could not escape?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
And I recommend you actually deal with what the majority of cosmologists and physicists actually talk about. I know you probably think yourself quite hip by accepting a contrary view, and doubtless contrary views are important, but being contrary just so you can feel yourself superior is the sign of stupidity.
We have a theory that predicts what we ought to detect from a black hole. We have multiple cosmological sources that match that description. Alternative explanations have other serious issues, so, the weight of the evidence is towards the existence of black hole. Beyond that, Einsteinian physics, being classical in nature, will naturally have a number of singularities, which is why we seek to unite classical physics with quantum mechanics, and not simply declare that at every point that classical physics fails that that amounts to "that's impossible!"
This idea of yours that physics is proscriptive, as opposed to descriptive, suggests to me that you are pretty much a scientific illiterate.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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Looks like you need to clean up your computer and online browsing settings! (Unless you meant to post that link following your comment)
That was probably one of the manual-labor spam factories that seem to be sprouting like weeds recently -- they pay people to register on a forum, read the forum, and post comments (with spam links, of course) that make just enough sense to attract real readers' attention.
On the one hand, I guess it means that spam-detecting tech has advanced far enough that it's no longer very profitable to send out machine-generated spam. On the other hand, this makes it harder for us humans to tell the difference. (But then again, xkcd has a point too.)
"Infinite densities are only forbidden in the sense that they don't fit nicely in the models framework, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the model should be shelved."
More to the point, one shouldn't mistake the mathematics for the physics. Just because a mathematical model indicates infinite density does in no way imply it need exist physically. For that to happen, the mathematics would have to completely describe the physical situation. It might, but we cannot ever know that. All we can do is claim consistency up to a certain epsilon of measurement.
you don't need infinite densities for black holes. In fact as the mass goes up, the density goes down. A Finite density object with a radius smaller than the event horizon radius is a black hole and is indistinguishable from a more dense object since the event horizon radius will be the same if the mass is the same.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Agreed. There is no known mechanism for supporting a mass of finite density that is so high from collapsing into a singularity, but that doesn't mean that such a mechanism doesn't exist. Clearly the central areas of a black hole fall into masses and volumes that are not adequately explained by our current theories - we probably need quantum gravity for this. For all we know space/mass/etc are quantized and a black hole just turns into some kind of crystal with as much packed into the smallest volume physically possible, just as electrons in an atom settle into well-described wavefunctions/etc.
All we know about black holes is that our laws of physics break down beyond the event horizon, and that we are unable to make observations beyond this region as well. Chances are that any explanation of what happens inside will come from studying other things as a result. The whole holographic distribution of information business suggests that even watching a black hole fully decay over time won't really reveal any information about what happened inside - the interior of a black hole might as well be another universe entirely. Indeed, if you define the universe as the set of all things that can be observed, then the event horizon marks of the border of a new universe by definition.