Milky Way's Center Packed with Black Holes
 

Maybe i'm the only one interested in this stuff and should stop posting things about space. If thats the case plaese inform me.
[img]http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/images/content/105283main_gctr_bin_comp_720x869.jpg[/img]

SAN DIEGO -- A new study reveals that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is loaded with black holes, as astronomers have expected in recent years.

The galactic center is dominated by one supermassive black hole. It packs a mass equal to about 3 million Suns. Around it, scientists have expected to find a high concentration of stellar black holes, the sort that result from the collapse of massive stars. Each can be a few to many times the mass of the Sun.

Observations have hinted at the existence of many stellar black holes near the galactic center. But nosing around there is hard, because the region is shrouded in dust. Visible light doesn't escape the region.

The ongoing study, led by UCLA postdoctoral fellow Michael Muno, is searching the inner 75-light-years of the galaxy with the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. X-rays conveniently pierce interstellar dust.

Muno and his colleagues have found strong evidence for seven black holes (they could be neutron stars, which are also very dense). Importantly, four of the objects were concentrated in the inner 3 light-years of space around the supermassive black hole.

"The observed high concentration of these sources implies that a huge number of black holes and neutron stars have gathered in the center of the galaxy," Muno said.

Extrapolating to the whole sky, the finding suggest a swarm of 10,000 black holes and neutron stars orbit near the galaxy's middle.

A theory by UCLA's Mark Morris, co-researcher on the new project, predicted the concentration back in 1993. Dense objects like black holes interact gravitationally with less dense stars. The lighter stars tend to get jettisoned outward, Morris figured, while the black holes slow down on their orbital trek around the galactic center, and they sink inward.

The black holes can't be seen directly. Those that are detected have likely taken a companion, a normal star that they devour gradually, the theorists figure. The extended feast also involves a release of X-rays as gas from the normal star is superheated until it glows before plunging beyond the point of no return.

The findings were reported here at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. More research is needed to confirm the conclusions, the scientists said.

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/aas_g ... 50111.html

fucking a I thought this was gonna be about a new candy bar with choco chips inside of it..


FUCK THE UNIVERSE! mad: mad: mad:

i'd say thats fairly close. i didn't read the whole thing but how is this affecting out solar system?

It packs a mass equal to about 3 million Suns. ed:

We wouldn't be here without it. Basicall everything orbits around this thing. Every galaxy will have a supermassive black hole, and probably thousands of other black holes in the center. Without these black holes, nothing would stay in place, and basically life anywhere in the universe would really not be all that possible.

ninty9 whats your sigg all about?

i dont think we have much to worry about, everyone will be dead by the time the milky way collapses on itself. in about 50 billion years our sun will run out of hydrogen and suck every planet in our solar system into itself and become a black hole.

Next Encounter
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ESA Huygens Probe
Titan Descent
Jan. 14, 2005
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Countdown:
2 DAYS
10 HRS
19 MIN
41 SEC

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/p ... 41221b.pdf

The Huygens probe will land on the surface of Titan, which is the largest moon of Saturn, on Friday and it will relay back info about the surface and atmosphere for about 30minutes I believe before the equipment stops working. Titan resembles very closley the early earth, so we can learn a lot about how we came to be on our earth. I'm also holding out a sliver of hope that there will be some form of mircoscopic life on the surface. The atmosphere is made up of Nitrogen, just like the Earths, and the surface is thought to contain many liquids, however, there is no liquid water because it's only 95 kelvin on the surface, which is really cold.

The sun is about 4.5 billion years old and will continue to burn hydrogen for about 5 billion more years. Then it'll begin to go to red giant stage, and eventually a white dwarf.

Our universe is 10-20 billion years old. The big bang happened somewhere between that time.

And I don't even think the milky way will collapse on itself. We just never really knew for sure what was at the center of a galaxy. Everyone assumed a black hole, cause it makes sense, but there was never any proof. Now I suppose this is a bit of proof.

Today, two friends and I were talking about how the universe is expanding... in Taco Bell.

I thought it was going to be about African-American Vuurginuurs. ed:

I wonder if god lives in the center of the milky way, like they showed in one of the old star trek movies *shakes head* That movie was an insult to star trek. loney:

[quote="Sergeant_Scrotum":0fe22]I wonder if god lives in the center of the milky way, like they showed in one of the old star trek movies *shakes head* That movie was an insult to star trek. loney:[/quote:0fe22]KHAAAAAAAAAAN. spank:

Well isnt it possible we are heading towards the black hole?

Probably, but it would take a fifillion years.

So that could be the end of the world?

the world will end LONG before the galaxy could collapse in on itself.

The Sun is only going to last another 5 billion years, so when that happens, the earth will essentiually be swallowed up when the sun becomes a red giant. And if you think humanity is going to last even a million years, then we have a lot of work to do. Unless we start to spread out to other planets soon, I doubt humans on earth will be around very long.

Whats kinda funny is that Im studying all this stuff in school right now.

supermassivblakhole= GOATSE! rock:

i think we will be traveling to other planets in a couple more centuries, lets just hope religion doesnt wipe us all out in some retarded zealous war along the way........ALLAH AKHBAR!

Black holes will be the end of time. They are constantly absorbing "dark matter" the colorless fluid like matter we humans arbitrarily refer to as "space". dark matter is what separates masses. When the black holes have absored all the dark matter, there will be a gnab gib, the opposite of the big bang. All matter will compress into a microscopic speck.

Dark matter hasn't even been proven, althought it is very likley. And I don't know if Dark matter will take up all of space, or if it would come in clusters.

And basically what your saying is the big band is a natural event, yes? Meaning it happens over and over again. Once matter compresses, it will eventually rapidly expand again in another big bang in some other time billions of years from now.

Anyway, I don't think there will be any collapse. It has been shown that outer galaxies are increasing in speed due to their doppler red shift.

Basically there are three things that can happen.

1) Galaxies continue to increase speed and distance from one another and eventually galaxies will be so far away from one another that travel to them would take millions or billions of light years.
2) Galaxies slow down and remain in their place and no expansion or retraction is experienced.
3) Galaxies rapidly retract into a single speck.

I think 1 is the most likley from the information we know now.

And remember that these black holes are tiny compared to the relative massiveness of the universe. In order for the black holes to swallow everything up, many millions of galaxies would have to combine. I don't see that happening.

T-48 minutes until the probe "Deep Impact" is launched. If anyones interested, you can watch the launch live here:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

It'll probably happen around 1:15pm eastern.

Deep Impact will smash a hole in an comet by plowing a rod into it to create a crater and another probe will fly by and take pictures and readings.

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/
http://www.canada.com/national/story.ht ... 3471132bc2

Edit: launch is 1:47 eastern.

ROFL

probe, deep impact and plowing a rod ...all in once conveinent paragraph rock:

You always here questions like ... What are black wholes made of? Why are they black? Yaatta yatta yatta...

I belive black wholes are comprised of the stuff it attracts. Black wholes are similar to the hair stuck in your bath drain. The black whole was formed by colliding materials. After the object gained more mass than everything around, it began to be the source of all gravity in a certain area. Nothing around could form any bigger or more mass because the black whole set the limit because objects of higher mass attract smaller objects. Black wholes aren't some rift or a whole in the universe.

The reason i believe they are small is that they have so much mass a molecule can rip through the surface of the black whole and manage to reach the center or the perfect slot between other molecules.

They're black because its the color in which light does not exist. I don't think black wholes don't have light, but once light reaches its gravitational field the energy is absorbed. Therefor the black whole doesn't have light, but it has the energy from the light.


Shit like this interest me to ninty. Anyways, don't take any of this for fact, just theories.

oh yes, I forgot. the universe will end in one of two ways: the compression into an infantesimel speck, like I said before, or universal expansion continues until atoms are so far apart that life and matter can no longer function.

There is no light in a black Hole, they absorb light. thats why they are black, they dont reflect light. Matter that is sucked into them is stretched into spagghetti like strands of molecules, strecthing for millions of lightyears.

You know, its interesting. we can now see light from the beginning of the universe. the light took 400 billion years or however long, the entire life of the universe, to travel from its origin point to us. we can see how the universe began. the episode about this from the documantary series "Universe" with john hurt narrating is all about this. really interesting you should watch it.

We see the light from about 380,000 years after the big bang. The big bang happened 13.7 billion years ago I learned after I watched a show I own again. The age of the universe was recently discovered only a year or two ago for certain.

So yes, if you look 13.7 billion light years in one direction, you'll see what the very early universe looked like. We can't see before that because when the big bang happened, all the light photons couldn't escape because there was too much matter in the way for them to go anywhere. When the universe began to expand more and more, light was able to get away, and that is what we see today.

too much info that i dont feel like saying buta few things....if the sun were to go out while life still exists it would be about in 4-5 billion years at the rate things are going in which we would not die of unstandable cold because before the sun stops emitting heat it will expand engulfing all near planets and coming close to earth's atmosphere which would fry the earth and all its inhabitants.....but way before that happens our ozone layer and atmosphere will deteriorate allowing far more deadlier amounts of uv rays and other rays to pulverize all life.....many other problems will occur until that also......basically...we will die long before the sun goes out UNLESS we get off this planet

That is ture. Earths atmosphere will eventually disipate.

If one really thinks about it, how long do you really think we would last on this planet the way things are going now? Environment and Pollution is one thing, greed, resources, war hatred are other things. Unless we "see the light" and change our ways, earth won't last another 500 years in my opinion. That doesn't mean that we can't go other places...but Earth is our home. Its a shame the way we treat it.

whoops, double post oOo:

plus, if you read the book of revalations, you'll know the rapture cant be far from now. I give us fifty years at best.

i think the general opinion of the average person right now is "I don't care. I won't be around then. What affect will it have on my dead body?