Surprise! Monster Black Hole Found in Dwarf Galaxy

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Dryson, Sep 17, 2014.

  1. Dryson

    Dryson Commodore Commodore

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    Astronomers have just discovered the smallest known galaxy that harbors a huge, supermassive black hole at its core.
    The relatively nearby dwarf galaxy may house a supermassive black hole at its heart equal in mass to about 21 million suns. The discovery suggests that supermassive black holes may be far more common than previously thought.
     
  2. Captain_Nick

    Captain_Nick Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It's not the size of the thing but what you do with it
     
  3. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Curse you Spock and your Red Matter!
     
  4. CuttingEdge100

    CuttingEdge100 Commodore Commodore

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    My guess is that dwarf galaxy got dwarfed because of that black hole eating up all the suns in it
     
  5. Velocity

    Velocity Vice Admiral Admiral

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    In the back of beyond
    A controversial alternative to black hole theory has been bolstered by observations of an object in the distant universe, researchers say. If their interpretation is correct, it might mean black holes do not exist and are in fact bizarre and compact balls of plasma called MECOs.
    Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, led a team that observed a quasar situated 9 billion light years from Earth. A quasar is a very bright, compact object, whose radiation is usually thought to be generated by a giant black hole devouring its surrounding matter.
    A rare cosmological coincidence allowed Schild and his colleagues to probe the structure of the quasar in much finer detail than is normally possible. Those details suggest that the central object is not a black hole. "The structure of the quasar is not at all what had been theorised," Schild told New Scientist.
    A black hole, as traditionally understood, is an object with such a powerful gravitational field that even light is not fast enough to escape it. Anything that gets within a certain distance of the black hole's centre, called the event horizon, will be trapped.
    A well accepted property of black holes is that they cannot sustain a magnetic field of their own. But observations of quasar Q0957+561 indicate that the object powering it does have a magnetic field, Schild's team says. For this reason, they believe that rather than a black hole, this quasar contains something called a magnetospheric eternally collapsing object (MECO). If so, it would be best evidence yet for such an object.


    From New Scientist magazine (27 July 2006)