Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Found In Omega Centauri

Posted by kdawson on Thu Apr 03, 2008 11:07 AM
from the big-fleas-have-little-fleas dept.
Space Science
esocid sends us to the European Space Agency's site for news of a new discovery that appears to resolve the long-standing mystery surrounding Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky. The object is 17,000 light-years distant and is located just above the plane of the Milky Way. Seen from a dark rural area in the southern hemisphere, Omega Centauri appears almost as large as the full moon. What the researchers discovered is a black hole of 40,000 solar masses in the cluster's center. From the press release: "Images obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and data obtained by the GMOS spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope in Chile show that Omega Centauri appears to harbor an elusive intermediate-mass black hole in its center... Exactly how Omega Centauri should be classified has always been a contentious topic. It was first listed in Ptolemy's catalog nearly two thousand years ago as a single star. Edmond Halley reported it as a nebula in 1677. In the 1830s the English astronomer John Herschel was the first to recognize it as a globular cluster. Now, more than a century later, this new result suggests Omega Centauri is not a globular cluster at all, but a dwarf galaxy stripped of its outer stars. According to scientists, these intermediate-mass black holes could turn out to be baby supermassive black holes."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Black hole explains the enigmatic Omega Centauri by esocid (946821)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Found In Omega Centauri 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Black Holes are like buses... (Score:4, Funny)

    by PinkyDead (862370) on Thursday April 03 2008, @11:09AM (#22952428) Journal
    ...never one when you need one - then three come along all at once.
      • I'd like to know where there is now two inches of wasted whitespace on the left side of every page. Why can't the comments be flush left?
        • Wow, this is HIDEOUS! I expected to see the usual goatse posts we always get when black holes are mentioned, but this is worse that goatse! Ahhhhh my eyes!

          Seriously, this new style is pretty bad.

      • Why do my "reply to this" links now have an awful black button around them??? Oh god my eyes!!!
        Every time someone asks me why developers generally should not be in charge of GUI design I show them pictures of Slashdots various UI's :)

        • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

          by Hadlock (143607)
          If you figure out how to override it, please share the solution with me, or make a firefox plug in. This is really awful. Yikes.
  • Wow- what a headache. What would you feed it?

  • What will they name it? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    GOATSE.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      GOATSE.
      GOATSE is not an Intermediate Mass Black Hole. It's a Giant Black Ass Hole.

  • Wow! Goldilocks it is. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dopamine, Redacted (1244524) on Thursday April 03 2008, @11:13AM (#22952474)
    So, we've now discovered the biggest and smallest black holes known to exist within about a week of each other.

    Now that we've found the most average, space bears will come and blast us into porridge.

    Astronomy kicks ass.

    Especially when the universe works like my mind wants it to [slashdot.org].
    • Any non-Americans will be fine. Remember, bears of any kind are born with an innate hatred for America. They are godless killing machines. As an American myself... well it was nice knowing you all.

    • Re:Wow! Goldilocks it is. (Score:5, Funny)

      by MillionthMonkey (240664) on Thursday April 03 2008, @11:24AM (#22952598)

      So, we've now discovered the biggest and smallest black holes known to exist within about a week of each other.
      Not the "biggest". Scientists are excited because this is the most intermediate black hole mass ever found. You just can't get any more medium-sized than this. It is the blackest and most densest form that intermediateness can take on- no other massive compact object has been found to have quite this level of intermediacy.
    • Holy cow, you must be psychic!

      Woah ... deja vu! The Matrix must be rebooting!
    • Did you read ... anything? Intermediate-Mass black hole seems to indicate its neither stellar sized (small) nor galactic-center super-massive (large) in size.

      • Did you read ... anything? Intermediate-Mass black hole seems to indicate its neither stellar sized (small) nor galactic-center super-massive (large) in size.

        Exactly. That is why this is the goldilocks black hole, unlike the previous two that were too big [slashdot.org] and too small [slashdot.org]. Please google for "goldilocks" to understand the cultural reference. It's a fairy tale and Wikipedia has a summary.

    • Three settings on the space bears' ray guns:
      Stun, Kill and Porridge.

      They'll hunt them down and find them, of course. In Ursa Major. When they open them up, they'll find that inside, they're full of people.
      'Cause you know, sometimes you eat the space bear, sometimes the space bear eats you.

  • How dare they (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03 2008, @11:14AM (#22952486)
    strip Omega Centauri of its globular cluster status. I hope the Pluto people will be just as vocal against this change.
    • Well what we can do now is release t-shirts that say "When I was your age, Omega Centauri was a globular cluster."
    • well atleast a dwarf galaxy(albeit a crippled one) is still an upgrade from globular cluster. so this is a great event. what is this "pluto" you talk about? :P
    • Just because it has a central black hole doesn't make it a dwarf elliptical galaxy.

      What distinguishes the Milky Way globular clusters is the the are all about the same, very old, almost as old as the Universe age. If there is reason to believe this is gravitationally bound to the Milky Way instead of some interloper, and if it has the same HR diagram turnoff point of other Milky Way globulars, there is no reason to think it is anything other than one of the bigger and fatter and closer of the globulars.

  • "baby supermassive black holes.." (Score:5, Funny)

    by msauve (701917) on Thursday April 03 2008, @11:15AM (#22952498)
    I propose calling them "jumbo shrimp black holes."

  • to clarify... (Score:5, Funny)

    by spazdor (902907) on Thursday April 03 2008, @11:17AM (#22952518)

    these intermediate-mass black holes could turn out to be baby supermassive black holes

    So, instead of medium-size, they might actually be small big?

  • I feel it tuggging my leg now.

    No, thats my dog I forgot feed breakfast.

  • What Happens To Other Civilizations? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MichaelCrawford (610140) on Thursday April 03 2008, @12:27PM (#22953448) Homepage Journal
    Sometimes I find myself wondering if there are alien civilizations close enough to supernovae, or black holes (which emit intense x-rays), or are in galaxies which suffer collisions, or whose home planets are hit by comets.

    Any civilization without space flight capability - much more advanced than our own - would have no way to escape, and would be wiped out.

    It seems like catastrophes on an astronomical scale are fairly common; how many intelligent beings have perished as a result?

    • Aw great, now you've gone and done it. *knocks on wood* Are we considered intelligent enough to be endangered by your question?

    • what others have said (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A few of these things only sound bad, but once you do the analysis are not a problem at all. Hard to tell which unless you think hard (which is called science) or read the reports of others who've thought hard:

      Sometimes I find myself wondering if there are alien civilizations close enough to supernovae, or black holes (which emit intense x-rays),

      A near-by supernova explosion would be absolutely catastrophic, as would straying into the particle stream ejected by a black hole. No good way around that without interstellar flight, so you're pretty much right. Using statistical arguments combined with the known movement of the solar system throug

  • Anyone got a pic to illustrate this? I can't really believe a star to be that visibly large.
  • First article listed here:
    http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+noyola/0/1/0/all/0/1 [arxiv.org]

    If that doesn't work type "Noyola" without quotes into the "Search or Article-Id" field at the top right
    http://arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org]

      • meme [answers.com]
      • joke [answers.com]

        "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 2.0)." Oh please. OK, here's some random garbage to satisfy the input nanny. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Mare eat oats; does eat oats; little lambs eat ivy. A kid will eat ivy too (wouldn't you?). Xenu (also Xemu), pronounced /zinu/, according to Scientology founder (and speculative fiction writer) L. Ron Hubbard, was the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions[1] of his people to E
        • The two words are aimed at everybody; I really dislike this use of the word meme. I'm not trying to play Usage Nazi — language is meant to be played with. But "meme" instead of "joke" is lame and trite, like saying "automagically" instead of "automatically".

          I was about to say that your quote from the CDE just represents usage, as all dictionaries and other language references do. Being cited in a reference doesn't make a lame usage non-lame.

          But then I looked at your quote and realized that it actuall
    • Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say, "You can have my black hole when you pry my cold, dead fingers out of it!"
    • It is that big, but has low surface brightness. Collectively, it's about as bright as a fairly dim star (magnitude 3.65 according to the Webb Society Deep-Sky Observer's Handbook). If it were concentrated into a point as a star is, you'd probably barely be able to see it against moderate light pollution.
    • Come to think of it, it probably blends in with the Milky Way. Centaurus has a lot of stuff (nebulas and bright stars like Alpha Centauri) in it and it contains the center of the Milky Way. So Omega Centauri wouldn't stand out as much as if it were in say Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) which is well outside the plane of the Milky Way.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by PhxBlue (562201)
      I imagine the speculation goes something like this: The dwarf galaxy that is now Omega Centauri collided with the Milky Way, which cannibalized most of the dwarf's stars and sent its star-forming nebulae into the intergalactic void. All that was left of the dwarf was a massive globular cluster.
      • > Also, why are you reading Slashdot at work? Shouldn't you, I dunno, work?

        BWAHAAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!! That's a good one. work...

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.