'Monster' Black Holes Activate When Galaxies Collide

Yahoo News ^ | 6/22/2010 | Space .com

[Dallas59]

Enormous black holes, some of the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe, apparently switch on after galaxies collide, researchers have found.

The centers of as many as a tenth of all galaxies generate more energy than can be explained by stars, with some of these "active galactic nuclei" releasing more radiation than the entire Milky Way galaxy combined, but from a space no larger than our solar system. Astronomers suspect this energy is released when matter falls into giant, supermassive black holes that are up to billions of times the mass of our sun at these galaxies' cores.

"These monster black holes evolve in a way that is strongly related to the amount of dark matter that surrounds them and that is intimately related to the probability of galaxies to merge," said study lead author Nico Cappelluti, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

Isn’t the term black hole racist? /s That’s what the NAACP said. They thought it was code for “black whore”....lol

[Dallas59]

NAACP does not speak English.....or understand science....and apparently is against education.

[Captain Beyond]

bflr

[BP2]

> Don’t know but Stephen Hawking claims they do
> put out visible light known as Hawking Radiation.

I think that was discovered in the future:

[fieldmarshaldj]

Will the NAACP be protesting ?

[Captain Beyond]

ping

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Captain Beyond!

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[onedoug]

I think it’s primarily scientific shorthand. Something doesn’t fit, manufacture a hypothesis - given the constraints of physics - test it against what’s better understood. Peer review in physics, chemistry, geology, etc, is still pretty hard to buck. It’s the political “scientists” one needs be on the lookout for.