Tubbs Jones
Posted on 01/06/2005 8:33:19 PM PST by holymoly
Astronomers have recorded the most powerful eruption of energy yet observed in the universe. It comes from a gigantic black hole, a billion times more massive than our sun, which is swallowing vast amounts of material from its surrounding galaxy.
The eruption was discovered with the Chandra X-ray observatory operated by Nasa, the US space agency, and is reported in the journal Nature. Brian McNamara of Ohio University, the study leader, said he had previously observed vast cosmic bubbles of hot gas extending outward from "supermassive" black holes in distant galaxies, but "what literally almost knocked me off my chair was the scale, the magnitude of this one".
It is not yet clear where all the matter required to sustain the eruption is coming from, nor how the black hole can digest it. "It's like a 300lb person eating 100lb of meat in one sitting," says Prof McNamara.
Co-author Paul Nulsen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics uses a similar analogy. "This new result is as surprising as it is exciting," he says. "This black hole is feasting when it should be fasting." The new study supports recent theories that supermassive black holes have a big impact on the structure of the universe. The black hole occupies a volume of space about the same size as our solar system but it affects a volume of space about 600 times the size of the whole Milky Way galaxy. "From this tiny region of space, the energy is spread out over enormous distances," Prof McNamara says.
You go in there and when you come out the other side it is the BIG BANG in another dimension. Our universe may be just like one bubble the dish water!
LOL!! Great minds think alike! ;o)
Space/Time has got to be getting its' ass kicked in a big way around that bad boy.
Aren't black holes supposed to have a tremendous amount of mass for their size? I would think that a black hole as large as our entire solar system would be quite a bit more massive than a "mere" billion suns. Heck, even an ordinary star that was the size of our solar system would be more massive than that!
[virtual ticker tape parade for martin_f]
I soooo wanted to think up something that good.
It is entirely possible that it has eaten well over a billion suns.
Something like this might create new theory and obliterate old ones. It could be the stellar nature's way of starting over.
Suck it all up and blow chunks on a big bang scale that creates a new universe at the expense of the old. The radiation from the bang could have the potential of taking us out as well in a stellar Tsunami.(assuming our galaxie is not gobbled up as well)
Some day a billion years hence, give or take a few hundred million years or so.
What we may be seeing, is the beginning of the end or some might see it as a new beginning.
How dare you ping me to this blasphemy!
Drop the RATS into it!
Thats because Captain Kirk was kicking his butt again.
I thought this was about Oprah.
bttt
ping
bumperooonie
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