5 replies to this topic

[Nxt2Hvn]

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer

Updated: 3:26 p.m. ET Feb. 18, 2004Black holes will eat just about anything, and now astronomers have confirmed that stars are on their menus.

Observations from three space-based X-ray telescopes over about a decade provide the first solid evidence of a star being torn apart and partly swallowed by a black hole.



This artist's illustration of the RX J1242-11 system depicts the catastrophic destruction of a star (orange circle) that wandered too close to a supermassive black hole may have occurred. Some of the stellar material was sucked into the black hole, but most of it was flung into the surrounding galaxy.

Fulll Story

[bathory]

this was on the news today, amazing stuff
makes us feel kind of insignificant

[Nxt2Hvn]

[Celumnaz]

Awesome.  Just plain awesome.

I read somewhere there's a black hole at the center of the galaxy.

Interesting about debris being flung from the hole and not drawn into it, I thought nothing escaped a black hole once within it's pull.

Also make me wonder that space is a vacuum, is a black hole is a vacuum within a vacuum?

Or is it a gravitational attraction force... is there a gravitational repulsive force?

What happens if two black holes collide?

Anyway, it makes me say wow.  Neat.  Scary. Cool.

[Bruno]

X-rays from the accelerated and heated matter that spins into the black hole are the only thing that escapes it's gravity pull.

That is the only way that black holes are detected, or at least is a possible sign of the presence of one. This and light distortion from the stars when they are seen on an optical telescope.

[STIX]

My own hypothesis on black holes is that it is the beginning of the formation of a galaxy. whats at the center of a galaxy?

wait a second, I decided to search for the center of a galaxy before I posted this and look what I found!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2334357.stm

just as I suspected