New evidence of massive black hole
Pretty damned interesting, if you ask me.
Quote:
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Chinese scientists said on Wednesday they had gathered evidence that shows a giant object in the center of our galaxy is a super-massive black hole.
Zhi-Qiang Shen and researchers at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory captured radio waves emitted just beyond the edge of the mysterious object, known as Sagittarius A, with a system of 10 radio telescopes spread across the United States.
In a report in the science journal Nature they said it \"provides strong evidence that Sgr A is a super-massive black hole.\"
The celestial objects that suck in everything around them including light are among the most mysterious objects in the universe. They are formed when matter from a dying star collapses under its own gravity.
Black holes have been described as the ultimate victory over gravity because of their ability to suck in stars and other galactic features.
Scientists have long suspected the presence of a black hole in the center of the Galaxy. Astronomers believe it is four million times more massive than our Sun.
The research reported in Nature suggests the black hole is as wide as the radius of the Earth's orbit.
\"These observations provide strong evidence that Sgr A is indeed a black hole, and afford a glimpse of the behavior of the matter that is about to flow into it,\" said Christopher Reynolds, of the University of Maryland in the United States, in a commentary in the journal.
He described the findings as a further step towards capturing an image of the shadow around the edge of a black hole, which would be a classic test of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.
The theory predicts that massive bodies -- planets, stars or black holes -- actually twist time and space around as they spin.
Copyright 2005 Reuters. All rights reserved.
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"Four Million Times more massive than our Sun."
Damn. Imagine the size of the star that started That sucker.
Re: New evidence of massive black hole
Quote:
Originally posted by Oneironaut
\"Four Million Times more massive than our Sun.\" *
Damn. Imagine the size of the star that started That sucker.
It doesn't take much of a snowball to start an avalanche. This huge black hole required no very big star in order to precipitate a black hole formation, as the primary factor involved was location, that is, being centrally located in a gravitational system. Things being so close together, there would be collisions which would slow things to a stop, and once stopped, we would have things collapsing together. Once beyond a certain level of Mass, we would have a Black Hole.
Of course, that can only go on up to a certain point. When Massive Pressures again reach a critical threshold what we have then is a Big Bang. We can roughly calculate how much Mass it takes to deliver a Big Bang by examining our own most recent Big Bang and determining how much Mass was thrown outward. Some particularly stupid scientists insist that the Big Bang was some Pure Energy Explosion, however, such a view of obviously belied when we see everywhere in our Universe a clutter of very heavy elements which could have only been created by the greatest atomic pressures which can not be accounted for in a Universe still as young as ours is. Yet all of these heavy elements which clutter our universe could be easily explained as having been generated within the last Universe's Central Black Hole, and that they were blown outward in the Big Bang, which may have had a Pure Energy Explosion in its very center, but which was the dirtiest and smokiest explosion in its outer reaches.
