You mean like Iapetus?
Posted on 09/14/2005 5:56:20 PM PDT by AntiGuv
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A supermassive black hole appears to be homeless in the cosmos without a galaxy to nestle in, Hubble Space Telescope scientists reported on Wednesday.
Most monster black holes lurk at the heart of massive galaxies, slurping up matter from the galactic center with a pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.
But a team of European astronomers reported in the journal Nature that a particular black hole some 5 billion light-years away has no evidence of a host galaxy. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
The black hole was detected when the scientists went hunting for quasars -- extremely bright, small, distant objects that are strongly associated with black holes. Astronomers believe a quasar is produced by cosmic gas as it is drawn toward the edge of a supermassive black hole.
Most quasars and black holes are in the middle of supermassive galaxies and in their survey of 20 relatively nearby quasars, the scientists found 19 followed this expected pattern. But one showed no signs of having a galactic home.
The astronomers, using the Hubble telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile, reported that this rogue black hole may be the result of a rare collision between a seemingly normal spiral galaxy and an exotic object harboring a very massive black hole.
One problem in quasar-hunting is that they are so bright, they outshine most galaxies that surround them, just as the headlights from an oncoming vehicle can make the vehicle hard to see. So even if a surrounding galaxy is present, it can be difficult to detect.
The European astronomers used the two telescopes to overcome this problem by comparing the quasars they were watching with a reference star. This let them differentiate the light from the quasar from the light from any possible underlying galaxy.
Further information is available online at http://www.spacetelescope.org.
Give it a government debit card loaded with two grand.
GET THAT BLACK HOLE ON GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE NOW!!
It's homeless and our compassion knows no bounds...even the galaxy is not too big for our Congress spending money to help this "homeless victim"!
They realized it was homeless when they noticed a cardboard sign that read "Will suck light for food"
George Bush hates black holes!
"Will suck light for food"
LOL astronomy humor.
If this has been out in the intergalactic void for who knows how many billion years when it would have eaten all its native sources of nonreplenishible matter, and has no native galaxy, where's the gas and dust coming from to allow us to know that it's there while it's feeding??
Interesting
Because they found a Black Hole so massive that it has already consumed the host galaxy.....this physics stuff is easy, who needs grants.....
"Coming to a neighborhood near you...."
Oh NO! Is it Bush's fault????? :-)
I doubt it. Not unless we could watch it continuously enough to determine that it was moving as if under guided propulsion. Otherwise, there's no way I can think of we'd be able to distinguish, unless it were big enough and close enough that we could see the portholes.
We don't even have the capability yet to visually recognize a whole interplanetary civilization if we were looking at it, much less a single vehicle. If a carbon copy earth were in the next star system over (Alpha Centauri), we probably wouldn't know.
It had a galaxy. It ate the galaxy. And I'm sure it all started with unrestrained government spending ;-)
PS. To be clear, we would know if a terrestrial planet such as earth were around Alpha Centauri; we probably wouldn't know if there was a civilization on it at about our level of advancement.
Anytime the Europeans find "something", the conclusions they have reached in their pronouncment is usually not justified by the data found.
This sounds like another one of those.
"I can't believer I ate the whole thing! Where's the Pepto Bismol when you need it?"
LOL! You beat me too it.
Space is so immense that is is hard to comprehend, yet 5 billion light-years is probably just a tiny spec in God's hand.
That's how big God is.
A black hole? Isn't that where our tax dollars go? And a black hole with nothing left to consume? Prophetic?
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