Posted on 11/30/2009 7:20:07 PM PST by bruinbirdman
The new research may help explain why large galaxies tend to have super-massive black holes at their cores.
Astronomers have long wanted an answer to the chicken-and-egg question of what comes first, a super-massive black hole or the stars surrounding it.
A new observation of a far away object five billion light years from Earth may now help to solve the riddle.
The object is a quasar, a powerful source of energy believed to mark the location of an active giant black hole.
Nothing that gets close enough to a black hole can escape its powerful gravity. However, material swirling around the edge of a black hole can radiate enormous amounts of energy.
Radiation from the quasar was being emitted when the universe was little more than a third of its present age.
To their surprise, the astronomers found that unlike most quasars, this one was ''naked'' and not situated at the centre of a galaxy. However, there was a companion galaxy close to it creating new stars at a frantic rate equivalent to about 350 suns per year.
The galaxy was effectively ''under fire'' from jets of high energy particles and fast moving gas shooting out of the quasar, the scientists found.
The stream of material was likely to be fuelling star formation in the galaxy, the scientists believe. In effect, the quasar was building its own host galaxy.
At a later stage the quasar was expected to end up at the galaxy's centre.
''The two objects are bound to merge in the future: the quasar is moving at a speed of only a few tens of thousands of kilometres per hour with respect to the companion galaxy and their separation is only about 22,000 light-years,'' said lead scientist Dr David Elbaz, from the CEA research
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Do elves do the work? Are black holes unionized? Inspiring minds want to know.
/mark
To me that means God created them.
Opinions of that differ, but union gnomes or elves are most likely not involved. ;)
When you consider the energies and vast distances involved it sure makes our problems here look mighty puny by comparison.
Behold his mighty hand...
Sounds like BS to me. A black hole sweeps up much more matter than whatever matter/energy might be ejected from its accretion disk. Black holes eventually dismantle the galaxies in which they reside. We are circling the drain right now, but it will take a long time to get there. A naked black hole can only assemble a galaxy to reside in by attracting and concentrating matter in its neighborhood.
later
I thought black holes were places where liberal logic thought went.
I know of a Black A Hole that thinks he is the King of America.
Is that the same thing?
So what you are basically saying is, the time needed for a galaxy to be formed is highly variable and contingent on the activity of many unknown and little-understood phenomena. You'll pardon me, then, if I find a galaxy forming in 24-hours hypothetically possible, given this disclosure.
The super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy is not “feeding”.
No. Galaxy formation is a well understood phenomenon. It really all depends on gravity. Jump up and down. That same force that draws matter together is what makes galaxies. Its as simple as that.
“So what you are basically saying is, the time needed for a galaxy to be formed is highly variable and contingent on the activity of many unknown and little-understood phenomena. You’ll pardon me, then, if I find a galaxy forming in 24-hours hypothetically possible, given this disclosure.”
Hypothetically anything is possible, but how probable is it?
Then there’s the question of forming a planet and fully inhabiting it in the 5 days following the ignition of a new star. How probable is that?
Either that or rabbit holes.
Dubai.
In the absence of indications of other galaxy-less black holes constructing their new caccoon, this seems more of a one-of.
Mightn’t this instead be a black hole that was at some time in the far past in the center of a conventional galaxy that collided with a second galaxy, and rather then the two black holes merging, this one by chance is ejected to its “current” observed position.
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