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The Mystery of the Naked Black Hole (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: Most, if not all, galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers surrounded by dense clouds of stars. Now, researchers have found one that seems to have lost almost its entire entourage. The team, which reported its find at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, says it doesn't know what stripped the stars away. But it has put forward a tantalizing possibility: The object could be an extremely rare medium-sized black hole, which theorists have predicted but observers have never seen.
The object could be a black hole, which theorists have predicted but observers have never seen.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The black hole lost its entire entourage because it ran out of money. All that white dust for non-stop parties don't come cheap.
Man, that title sounds like a cross between a Nancy Drew book and some really bad porn.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How do we know the black hole itself didn't strip the stars away? That's kinda what they do, isn't it?
Not really, or at least not anymore than stripping the planets in the solar system away is "kinda what" the sun does. Contrary to the popular image, black holes aren't like giant vacuum cleaners that suck stuff in. Most of them tend to have lots of things in stable orbits around them, as stars have planets, and planets have moons. The only stuff that tends to fall in is stuff that gets directed towards them. A giant black hole at the center of a galaxy would only tend to consume stars which were "thrown" toward it, usually by unstable orbital dynamics created by encounters with other stars.
A "naked singularity" is usually what people call a black hole without an event horizon, an object that's pretty important in theoretical physics. Calling something a "naked black hole" is kind of confusing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Occasionally we have seen stars that have been ejected from their galaxies. This can happen during galaxy mergers.
How do we not know that this is just a massive star that turned into a black hole after it got ejected from its original galaxy? After all massive stars do not last that long because of their size.
That would make a good porn title.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Maybe the answer is that there weren't many stars there to start out with. Why assume they have been "stripped" away? We barely know anything about black holes. Since they are so far away we can never get close enough to them to study them effectively. We can only guess. This will be a mystery forever.
I read the headline, and got very excited thinking that someone had found a naked singularity, it should have been re-worded to say, The Mystery of the Black Hole with Middle aged spread or something. Finding a intermediate sized Black hole is interesting, but not quite as exciting as a naked singularity would have been. To be fair to /. Sciencemag came up with the title, not the editors!
Else we would have been fried by radiation if it wasnt. We know we have a BH or a modest size from fast moving stars near it.
A goatse link! Unexpected.
sould do, yes - then the remaining orrbiting stuff orbits a little faster.
Isn't that a white hole, as hopefully it doesn't suck things in, but ejects things.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You don't know much about how buttsex works, do you?
I can't say I have ever heard of an anus sucking a dick in on its own.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
"The object could be an extremely rare medium-sized black hole",
I like my black holes extra medium please.....
Extremely rare medium sized black holes... are those a bit like extremely rare medium sized Americans?
Just an idea: After some time of getting "thrown" things at it, its gravital pull sould increase isn't it ?
Yes, though for a supermassive black hole that is already composed of the masses of many stars, adding another one now and then probably won't increase the gravitational pull suddenly or significantly.
All the objects previously in stables orbit should start to feel the pull and their previously stable orbit should start to get messed up (exentric orbits, and then maybe plunging orbits ?).
Yes, when a central mass increases, everything in orbit will "fall toward it" a bit faster. But they will still have their "sideways" orbital velocity, and for a small mass increase (or even a relatively large one), the orbit will just end up going faster and being somewhat smaller.
In general, the changes in orbits and velocity won't be enough to sustain a "chain reaction" where new stuff is continuously falling in... at least not in a mature star system.
It is no naked, there are some gas, that why you can see it en X-rays, but there are less stars. So, its not the black hole, its is something unsual in the stellar dynamics in the surroundings.
You sir, need a wider (errrrr) circle (errrr) of friends. Or casual acquaintances.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That's right out at the edge of the central bulge (if the galaxy is the same size as the Milky Way.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"