Posted on 01/06/2005 11:27:25 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered |
| Dolores Beasley NASA Headquarters, Washington Steve Roy Megan Watzke |
The eruption, which has lasted for more than 100 million years, has generated energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of gamma-ray bursts.
* * * * * * *
"I was stunned to find that a mass of about 300 million suns was swallowed," said Brian McNamara of Ohio University in Athens. "This is as large as another super massive black hole."
* * * * * * *
Gas is being pushed away from the black hole at supersonic speeds over a distance of about a million light-years. The mass of the displaced gas equals about a trillion suns, more than the mass of all the stars in the Milky Way.
Shakespeare could not have conceived that such objects might exist when he allowed his Hamlet to utter these famous lines:
There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
The super-massive black hole described in this article is beyond Horatio's (and Shakespeare's) wildest possible dream, but, for us, it's wide-awake reality.
Ping
I still say it is Bush's fault...
OK, who fed Michael Moore the baked beans?
Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered
OK, who fed Michael Moore the baked beans?
You beat me to it. I was going to say taco bell, though.
The UN is forming a team to provide aid as we speak. This eruption is a result of global warming on Earth. And it's Bush's fault.
Oh, and the Western Nations are being stingy.
Thanks. I was too busy with the post (and some work) to do a search. Should have.
I thought black holes swallowed everything, including energy and gas. So how is it that this black hole is responsible for an explosion with gas streaming away from it, and with so much gamma radiation?
Let me guess.....
Michael Moore's Flatulence !!!!
It's swallowed around 300 million stars. But there are terrifically powerful, swirling magnetic field lines surrounding black holes, lines which channel highly energized gas around and away from the holes.
No problem. Some posters also don't know how to post images, so I try to grab 'em when that occurs. It's a cool photo, though. The universe is a pretty amazing place, eh?
How far away is this from us? Follow up questions. When did it happen? Is it still goin on?
Ping
Michael Moore is in his own universe.
I thought this was another Barbara Boxer thread.
She makes me so proud to be a Californian </sarcasm>
Seriously, this in interesting. I'll check it out when I have more time.
I am just curious here, and I am certainly not a physicist or an astronomer, but based on the very watered down suggestions of string theory... that our entire universe is on a membrane and that all we percieve is tied to that same membrane... and that Gravity is a force that is for whatever NOT tied to this membrane, and therefore is a relatively weak force in our experience compared to other forces....
Could black holes be nothing more than what may be nothing but a relatively small amount of gravitons that have for one reason or another gotten "stuck" to the membrane, or some cascading effect that causes gravitons to become stuck, exponentially increasing their influence ?
I would assume that these possibilities have been thought of by someone far more versed and smarter than I, but I am curious.
It's Bush's fault!
What's the speed of sound in a vacuum?
I thought that the string theory had been discredited.
How far away is this from us? Follow up questions. When did it happen? Is it still goin on?
About 2.6 billion light years away. So we're seeing it as it was 2.6 billion years ago. From out standpoint, it's still going on, but we're observing it as it was then. I suspect it's still there, but we'd have to guess what it looks like at this instant.
Interesting.
What's the speed of sound in a vacuum?
Sound doesn't propagate in a vacuum. By 'supersonic' in this context, I assume that it means faster than the speed of pressure waves propagating through the gaseous medium surrounding the black hole. Just as objects in our atmosphere can move faster than the sound they generate, so too can gas molecules exceed the speed of the pressure waves generated as they're pushed by the black hole's gravitational and magnetic slingshot effects.
(I'm not a physicist, but I play one on FR.)
L
I'm familiar with the string theory conjectures to which you refer, but I can't say whether your further conjecture has merit. I don't know enough to even guess.
Read "The Elegant Universe", black holes actually are capable of emissions.
See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5473323/
DUBLIN, Ireland - After 29 years of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was wrong about black holes.
The renowned Cambridge University physicist formally presented a paper Wednesday arguing that black holes, the celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of objects swallowed up and eventually could spit bits out “in a mangled form.” Last week, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., he revealed he had changed his long-held thinking on black holes.
Hawking’s radical new theory caps his three-decade struggle to explain a paradox in scientific thinking: How can objects really “disappear” inside a black hole and leave no trace, as he long believed, when subatomic theory says matter can be transformed but never fully destroyed?
Hawking had previously insisted that black holes destroy all molecular fingerprints of their contents and emit only a generic form of radiation.
But on Wednesday at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, Hawking presented mind-boggling new calculations that suggest black holes are able to cast out their contents — and that there’s only one way in and one way out.
You've got that right!
Can we stop talking about Gary Condit?
What, did Michael Moore break wind????
Yes, me either, since I know very little... it just seems to me that if the base concept is, we are on a membrane, and all (nearly all) of what we percieve is tied to that membrane, but Gravitons (gravity) for whatever reason is free to leave the membrane, and in further theory perhaps encounter other membranes which may or may not bind them...
Our universe (membrane) would have gravitons leaving or flowing throught it potentially all the time with narry a notice or care.
But say something happened, and for some reason a point on the membrane suddenly changed in some way, causing gravitons not to so easily float away, but to become stuck, like say, plaque in an artery... then a singular stuck graviton would exert more gravitational force that we normally experience.... then that same graviton or event attracted more gravitons, tying them as well to the membrane... the gravitational force would rapidly expand from that point, and would appear to us as a black hole or singularity event... and the "critical mass" point for the devastating impact on our reality when it occurred would be monsterous in its effects.
The idea of "speed of sound" as presented in this article is silly. By its definition the velocity of the air coming coming out of the air vent above me could be considered supersonic once you add its velocity vector relative to me to its velocity vector relative to the sun.
Speed of sound has everything to do with the velocity of a fluid relative to a secondary mass it's capable of communicating pressure info with none of which is implied by the article.
"The Black Cloud"...reality, not the book..coming soon to a Planet near you !
You've probably already seen them, but I'll mention last year's February, May and September issues of Scientific American. Some excellent articles relevant to these issues.
Maybe my little improvised explanation is close to being right. But maybe the authors meant something more mundane, using 'supersonic' to mean what we'd expect it to mean, i.e., 'faster than the speed of sound in Earth's atmosphere'.
Oh, whew, I misread the title. I though it said "erection".
A Redneck's reaction to this discovery: Hey Bubba, it kinda reminds me of a Big Gulp from the 7-11....that's it, we'll call this here black hol'..."BIG GULP!"
From the title, I thought that Hillary finally had an orgasm.
"Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered"
Mikey Mooooron finally erupted, eh?
How does NASA know it's the "most" powerful in the universe?
Geeze, Slick's just broke a record after his surgery.
Naaaaaa, I'm not impressed.
"They" should have seen the eruption that came from my "black hole" after I failed to heed the warnings of locals and proceeded to eat off of a street vendors cart in Cartegana in 1990.
It redefined
"Biblical proportions"
But that's not likely to be what they meant. Gas jets can contain particles moving at extremely high speeds (1000 km/sec or even faster). So we'd have to ask them what they meant, I guess.
It's an endangered species! We need to expand the ESA to include the universe! We are kiling space by all the junk we send up there!
Jesse works in mysterious ways.
Great post...fascinating!
When you contrast the scale of this activity..measured against the subatomic particle scale of quarks and strings...its beyond awesome.
This is the challenge for the athiest...to imagine all of this coming from.....what...on its own?
I head that she had a rendezvous with Janet recently... or was it Helen?
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