Posted on 04/30/2008 8:00:18 AM PDT by RightWhale
That is... several hundred MILLION solar masses.
Sounds like Reverend Wright on the can after downing a burrito
Yup, amen to that, brother (and this thread wouldn’t have been relegated to the black hole of all forums either!).
Nice article, thanks.
Spin it up and it works just great. Now, sick a big ol' wad of bubblegum to it maybe 1/4 the way to the top.
When you spin it up to its highest speed it'll look pretty good, but there's going to be a wobble ~ not much at first, but as it slows down the wobble becomes worse and finally the top and the gum if still attached, will skid off it's axis and fly wildly away.
Two black holes merging is like sticking bubble gum on the neighbor kid's top.
An isolated black hole can simply mean that it has already consumed all or most of the matter surrounding it.
Black holes are believed to exist on various scales. There are stellar black holes (remnants of super nova star explosions) and there are huge galactic black holes at the center of galaxies with masses millions or billions times that of our sun. The existence of black holes is basically determined by the behavior of visible material surrounding it. And by 'visible' this might mean in various other frequencies of the light spectrum (infrared, x-ray, gamma rays, etc).
That’s true, but you can see the effect it has on any matter that’s close to it but not yet over the event horizon.
Similar to modern human society, the parents kick the kids out but the kids continue to sponge off them for food, gas, etc.
For the analogy to hold, you would have had to, er .... mated with another @$$hole....
Is there something you're trying to tell us? ;-)
While it would gobble what it passed close to upon entering a galaxy at 9.5 million kph, it would also gravatationaly leave a very interesting wake in such a punch-through.
I imagine we could re-examine some interesting galactic and cluster shapes with this sort of wild cue ball in mind.
Now there’s a PhD thesis for somebody... Work out, or predict, how a supermassive black hole would perturb stars in galaxy as it passed through, then, icing on the cake, go to the telescope and find evidence confirming it.
...perturb stars in A galaxy...
The relative closing speed, based upon the movement for the galaxy itself might make the disturbance larger or smaller. Add in the angles of passage and you have some neat disturbances unless you happen to be on a nearby inhabited planet.
If the later was the case we would be at a “great distrubance in the Force” moment for sure.
Just wondering when you came to the realization that you were an @$$hole at 18.
I am wondering when my stepson may come to accept that fact about himself.
Just recently, right after I turned 50.
Errr.... come to think of it...
If the universe has an edge, then what's on the other side of that edge?
On a more depressing note his younger sister is even more so!
I’ve got a 20 going on 21 I could kill.
But you know what really got me? My 17 year old. He is the nicest, sweetest, most considerate and grateful kid you could ever meet.
Really highlighted for me what an @$$hole I was when I was his age.
If the universe has an edge, then what's on the other side of that edge?
The universe might not have an 'edge', but the *observable* universe definitely does, because it's simply the limit to which we can see (in every direction). Regions of space beyond this limit are moving away faster than light and so are impossible to perceive.
More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
Added to my backlog of over 600 articles to read...
Cheers!
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