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Team sees biggest black holes yet


Still Waters

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A US team has found the two biggest "supermassive" black holes known to science, Nature journal reports.

Sitting at the centres of two nearby galaxies, the two objects have masses close to 10 billion times greater than our Sun.

Such large black holes had been suspected to exist, but, until now, the biggest known was some 6.3 billion times the mass of the Sun.

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Math says it's possible... In theory, according to the standard accepted age of the universe, 440 billion solar masses is possible.

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Math says it's possible... In theory, according to the standard accepted age of the universe, 440 billion solar masses is possible.

But can the neutrinos escape?

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Apples and oranges there buddy. The theory of neutrinos actually having mass in this physical universe precludes the idea of them escaping from anything... wave form energy - now that's a concept...

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Is harold camping aware of the find??? Perhaps he will come up with a new date and an explanation how we'll be doomed unless we give him all our dough... :P

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  • 3 weeks later...

So could a worm hole grow at an exponential rate, like a plant and swallow us all? OR would it somehow cancel out when it hits another wormhole?

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So could a worm hole grow at an exponential rate, like a plant and swallow us all? OR would it somehow cancel out when it hits another wormhole?

Hi bulveye,

It's not a worm hole, but a black hole. And the growth of it is fully dependent on the amount of matter in the vicinity that it can gobble up. And it would not cancel out when colliding with another black hole, it would just grow bigger. Or did I misunderstand your question?

Cheers,

Badeskov

Edited for typos.

Edited by badeskov
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Hi bulveye,

It's not a worm hole, but a black hole. And the growth of it is fully dependent on the amount of matter in the vicinity that it can gobble up. And it would not cancel out when colliding with another black hole, it would just grow bigger. Or did I misunderstand your question?

Cheers,

Badeskov

Edited for typos.

OK, so one black hole could gain more mass from another right? And letrs say there was loads of mass for it to 'eat' then could a black hole just keep getting bigger, but also would it accelerate in growth? I mean lets say it took 1000 years for it to get one milion miles wide, could it only take 6 months to get 10000 million miles wide? If you feed it more? (sorry I'm a bit tipsy, festive cheer I think some people call it.)

__EDITED to try and make it make more sense)

Edited by bulveye
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OK, so one black hole could gain more mass from another right? And letrs say there was loads of mass for it to 'eat' then could a black hole just keep getting bigger, but also would it accelerate in growth? I mean lets say it took 1000 years for it to get one milion miles wide, could it only take 6 months to get 10000 million miles wide? If you feed it more? (sorry I'm a bit tipsy, festive cheer I think some people call it.)

__EDITED to try and make it make more sense)

The time it takes to grow in size, depends on the amount of matter it is swallowing ATM. It could take a fraction of a second or millions of years. If two super massive black holes joined, it could be a matter of seconds. Although, we would observe the rate at which they approached, it would only grow in size the moment the black parts touch! We would see the signs well before hand. Could take billions of years for the surrounding matter to join and appear elliptical.

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Now this is probably a stupid question, but I'm just wondering, if black holes really can grow in size, how come they haven't just swallowed the galaxies that they are in the middle of?

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Now this is probably a stupid question, but I'm just wondering, if black holes really can grow in size, how come they haven't just swallowed the galaxies that they are in the middle of?

Certainly not a dumb question! It takes billions, if not trillions of years for black holes to devour the stars/planets they host. Our galaxy alone, is a mere 100,000 light years across. This is a huge distance, with an insane amount of matter. In short, our life time is too short to truly respect and imagine the time it takes for a black hole to eat their surrounding stars. Also, we have to consider the orbits and centripetal force..

What makes planetary bodies like the Moon or Earth stay in orbit. What makes it possible for an object to stay in a circular path even when our understanding of the forces affecting it would lead us on first thought to assume otherwise? The reason behind this is centripetal force. Centripetal force is the exertion of force that keeps an object in a curved path when in movement. It is often confused for centrifugal force. So how does it work? The answer is actually a simple case of a blending of opposing forces.

Any object in the universe is under the influence of more than one exerted force at any given time. For example a person standing is experiencing the force of gravity, the force exerted by the air around and the resisting force of the ground beneath their feet. However there is a key difference between an object at rest and one moving. That difference is that the resting object has its system of forces perfectly balanced. The moving object does not.

In the case of a moving object two forces unbalanced just right can create an interesting movement. In the case of centripetal force you have an object that is moving in a straight line normally that also experiences a force pulling it inward towards a focal point. Take the example of a ball on a string. The ball is naturally inclined to go straight but the pull of the string as you swing the ball around keeps it in its circular path. The inward force is not strong enough to overcome the force of the ball in motion.

The centripetal force effect is seen in nature when we see the gravity of a planet exerted on its satellites. The satellites are moving at too high a velocity to fall towards the planet’s center of gravity. However the pull of gravity is strong enough to still bend their path into an orbit.

Centripetal force can then be seen to be one of the fundamental forces needed to understand the movement of celestial bodies. It is also important for spaceflight as it has been used to help launch artificial satellites and help send deep space probes to distant planets. It is also being looked into as a possible source of artificial gravity for future manned space missions. This just shows you some of the many ways the principle can be adapted.

Source

Most massive black holes conjoin with other massive black holes. So most of them will have surrounding matter till near the end of the universe. Expansion will eventually come into play and dark energy will counter-act the force of gravity. Something which, I'm not too sure about (maybe one of our resident experts can fill us in?). The processes here are unexplained, but nearly understood.. Hence, the "dark" adjective. B):geek:

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I am amazed at our universe. Utterly magnificent. :yes:

Couldn't agree more!!

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I bet god lives in a black hole.

I most certainly do not!

I mean.... whatever are you talking about?whistling2.gif

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I bet god lives in a black hole.

The ultimate man cave! LOL

Certainly not a dumb question! It takes billions, if not trillions of years for black holes to devour the stars/planets they host. Our galaxy alone, is a mere 100,000 light years across. This is a huge distance, with an insane amount of matter. In short, our life time is too short to truly respect and imagine the time it takes for a black hole to eat their surrounding stars. Also, we have to consider the orbits and centripetal force..

Source

Most massive black holes conjoin with other massive black holes. So most of them will have surrounding matter till near the end of the universe. Expansion will eventually come into play and dark energy will counter-act the force of gravity. Something which, I'm not too sure about (maybe one of our resident experts can fill us in?). The processes here are unexplained, but nearly understood.. Hence, the "dark" adjective. B):geek:

So, there is some kind of a "critical mass" where it changes behavior or tips a balance point?

When these black holes get the universe all digested and all of them coalesce, what happens? Do we start another cycle of Bing Bang? How could we ever know how old matter is if that is the case?

Edited because it needed it! LOL

Edited by encouraged
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The ultimate man cave! LOL

So, there is some kind of a "critical mass" where it changes behavior or tips a balance point?

When these black holes get the universe all digested and all of them coalesce, what happens? Do we start another cycle of Bing Bang? How could we ever know how old matter is if that is the case?

Edited because it needed it! LOL

As I'm sure you're aware, Encouraged. That is more or less, a rhetorical question. We can only speculate what happens when all matter coalesces. It could be that dark energy will "rip" everything apart before we get to that state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

If the "big rip" isn't the case there are a few other theories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe

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How are the numbers arrived at for density within black holes? Please explain for the mathematically challenged (yes, we do exist) :blush:

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hi all

I am a layman with an inquisitive mind:)

It seems there are two main theories for the end of the universe.I.E expansion and contraction.

Seeing that the discovery of black holes at the center of every galaxy we can see is a fairly recent discovery, why is there not a third main theory?

And please bear with me as i say i am a layman

I.E black hole eats galaxy.black holes eat galaxy's.black holes all attracted to each other. result one black hole contracting on itself?

please feel free to pull this apart:)

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I am amazed at our universe. Utterly magnificent. :yes:

I agree! It is a wonderful place to live. :lol:

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