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Black Hole At Center of Milky Way Confirmed
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Dec 10, 2008 09:00 AM
from the i-can-see-it-from-here dept.
from the i-can-see-it-from-here dept.
Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that a German team has confirmed the existence of a Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the center of the Milky Way, using the 3.5m New Technology Telescope and the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Both are operated by the European Southern Observatory (Eso).
The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.
According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit."
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I guess that... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I guess that... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I guess that... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Ya know all of this would be so easy if someone invented a chronoscope to view past time periods (reference Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past"). Then instead of guessing what happened 10 billion years ago, we could just look and see with our own eyes.
We have such a thing, but we call it a 'telescope' instead of a chronoscope. Want to know what happened 10 billion years ago? Just look at something 10 billion lightyears away (or at least, something that was 10 billion lightyears away 10 billion years ago).
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Re:I guess that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Those that do this, I'd call them Light-Scholars. Because it sounds cool.
And it would be awesome to be there, when they do this.
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Re:I guess that... (Score:5, Funny)
I've seen Black Perl, it was ALL regular expressions. So many that there was a regular expression event horizon, with only preceding elements escaping and at the center was a nondeterministic finite automata. Quite a sight.
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Re:I guess that... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I guess that... (Score:5, Interesting)
When viewed from Europe and Australia, the Milky Way has only nougat at the center. When viewed from the US, it has nougat and caramel. Discuss.
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Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Boy, that sucks.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun
Don't worry, I hear black is a very slimming colour. :)
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We're living in an accretion disk (Score:5, Interesting)
n/t
Re:We're living in an accretion disk (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
About time! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously (surely no one missed the bad relativity joke in that title :-p) though, are black holes really still considered theoretical constructs? For example, Wikipedia starts with "A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that ...". And for Wikipedia haters, this is repeated in literature too.
Meanwhile, in this article -- "the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do exist". And besides, I thought many scientific articles bring up black holes now and then without questioning, anyway.
Re:About time! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they are. We still have no proof of their actual existence.
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
We'll have a proof as soon as the CERN guys turn on the LHC.
And if so we will have a remarkably short period of time to write a paper about it.
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
And if so we will have a remarkably short period of time to write a paper about it.
Academic paper writing... you're doing it wrong!
The way it works is that the paper is written in advance, with blank spots for the data and the graphs that can be plugged in, and then they do the experiments. With mocked-up data and graphs as backup. So don't worry, they should be able to have the paper out very quickly. :)
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
See Fig. 1 [wisc.edu]
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
(I mean... the astrophysics thing)
Good thing you put the 'astrophysics thing' on there. Otherwise we might have seen one of the few instances where a goatse link would be considered ontopic.
Parent
Re:About time! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean how it should read "four million times as massive"? Because you know, everything weighs more near a black hole... Even light.
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
>"four million times heavier than our sun"
Can we please stop with the "yo mama" jokes? Please? :-)
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Insightful)
are black holes really still considered theoretical constructs? ... I thought many scientific articles bring up black holes now and then without questioning, anyway.
Black holes do have a solid foundation in theory, and we can observe the gravitational effects they have on their neighbours. However, as far as I know, Hawking radiation [wikipedia.org] is the only way to detect them directly and I don't think that this has been observed.
The authors of this article are showing observational evidence for a supermassive (millions of solar masses) black hole in the centre of our Galaxy - something that was thought to be at the centre of many galaxies but was still in open question. The observations made during this study have shown that our Galaxy has one, using techniques that are not an option for galaxies further away, thus giving us the best evidence that supermassive black holes exist.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:About time! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dark matter is in the same boat. Same with dark energy and strings. Physics seems to be moving toward explanations involving unobservable objects, whether that's right or not remains to be seen. Question is, can it ever be seen? See?
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Re:About time! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the nature of an unobservable object. All you can do is infer its existence through its effects on other objects, in this case through the reflective effects on sunlight. But then all you've *proven* is that something is causing those effects. The simplest explanation is the moon, but it could be something else, and that's why the moon is still considered theoretical.
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Informative)
That's the nature of an unobservable object.
I wouldn't say a black hole is "unobservable". It emits no light, but has a measurable gravitational field. Conversely consider something like light, which has no mass but can be measured by its electromagnetic interaction (e.g. using a camera).
Different subatomic particles interact in different ways. Four fundamental forces have been identified: electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, and gravitational. A particular particle may interact via 1 or more of these modes. Just because it is "invisible" with respect to a given force does not make it "unobservable": as long as it interacts via at least one force, it can be measured/observed using that force.
All the examples you've given are of things that are observable: black holes and dark matter and dark energy are all observable via the gravitational effects they produce. Just because they are not observable via light doesn't make them unobservable. (Strictly black holes do emit low-levels of measurable radiation (Hawking radiation), and could also be detected in this way.) The "strings" of string theory (if they exist) should in principle be measurable by studying the interactions of particles via the four forces (whether or not we will ever achieve the energy scales required to do so is a separate question). For that matter it is difficult to "see" air, but it is easy to observe/measure it in other ways.
You have falsely equated "interact strongly via the electromagnetic force" to "observable". It's a natural mistake for humans, since our visual sense is so well-developed. However just because it is invisible to our eyes does not make it an "unobservable object". A truly "unobservable object" would be one which doesn't interact via any force. Such an object isn't merely "unobservable", it is simply "nonexistent" by any physical definition (since it cannot interact with anything else in the universe).
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
You mean 'religion'. Oooops, did I say that out loud?
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Informative)
For the mass of the Sun the event horizon is approximately 3 km, and for that of the Earth about 9 mm.
That means the entire mass of the sun or the earth, if compressed down into a black hole, would have a radius of 3km or 9mm, respectively. The rest of your post is very silly and doesn't seem to be based on any facts or reputable research/researchers. :(
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Insightful)
Both of those guys plenty of observational and/or experimental evidence that supported what they claimed.
The whole 'A new theory still being explored is that each galaxy has two black holes. One is intake and one is output.' has neither.
It'd be interesting if it did, but some work in the backyard with a mid-sized telescope can poke some pretty serious holes in the idea.
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Pasteur, Newton, et al. (Score:4, Informative)
And you can help the advancement of science by not drowning out the reasoned discussion of *actual scientists* by not blathering on about nonsense. Science is all about the signal-to-noise, you know.
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Re:About time! (Score:5, Funny)
SAAAAAAAAAAVED BY ZEROOOOOOO
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OMG we are all going to die (Score:4, Funny)
Come on folks its time to have fun with the arts students again. We are all going to die because as we know a black hole sucks everything into it and these guys have only just discovered it which means it must be new so it can only be a matter of days/weeks/months a year at most before our solar system is devoured by this giant black hole.
Run for the hills, there is no escape.
Ahhh arts students, the sort of people who fall for the "di-hydrogen monoxide is potentially lethal but the government are letting it into our water supplies".
Re:OMG we are all going to die (Score:5, Funny)
Ahhh arts students, the sort of people who fall for...
At least they make good venti iced soy mochas ;-)
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Re:OMG we are all going to die (Score:4, Funny)
Only the ones with masters degrees.
I cant stand the Soy Mochas from undergrads. Ick.
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Re:OMG we are all going to die (Score:5, Funny)
I swear to God, this one guy in a philosophy class I was in was telling some girl about the limits of science, and how there are just so many things we don't know for sure.... he goes:
"Take water for example" ::air quotes with his fingers and sarcastic voice:: "H Two Oh?" ::exasperated superiority:: "We don't know that!"
I spent an entire fifty minute lecture secretly pointing a laser pointer at his genitals, doing my part for the human race.
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Re:OMG we are all going to die (Score:4, Funny)
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ESO link (Score:4, Informative)
It always bothered me... (Score:5, Funny)
... that they have names (Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, Yepun) for the individual telescopes in the VLT, but could only come up with "very large telescope" for the whole array.
Please include at least a transformers reference in the next one. Thanks.
Re:It always bothered me... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
So we've found life? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone at the center of our galaxy obviously beat us to getting their Large Hadron Collider [wikipedia.org] working before we did.
Yes, that makes lots of sense. (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. The pulsars emit gamma rays like the dung beetle emit pheromones. The planets circle their star like insects circle a dome light in the porch. Analogies form in the mind of submitters and editors of slashdot the same way driftwood washes up in the beaches of South Carolina.
Re:Yes, that makes lots of sense. (Score:5, Funny)
Analogies form in the mind of submitters and editors of slashdot the same way driftwood washes up in the beaches of South Carolina.
Soaking wet, and surrounded by syringes and condoms?
Parent
Re:Yes, that makes lots of sense. (Score:5, Informative)
An analogy is a lot like a tangerine, in that you have to break through the tough outer rind of legitimacy before you get to the juicy center and realize that an analogy can never serve as real evidence in support of anything.
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Excuse me? Like a pearl? (Score:5, Funny)
So black holes are irritating to the Great Space Oyster which deposits stars, dust, and gas around it to prevent irritation?
There's my nomination for worst science analogy this year.
Time effects (Score:3, Funny)
I'm scared now (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cool, and some questions (Score:5, Informative)
Are we on the same plane as the accretion disk?
Yes.
How close are we to the event horizon? How close is the sun to the event horizon?
Far. 40-50 thousand light years.
Is it possible to collect and examine the radiation from black hole by approaching it from the "top"?
Yes, hypothetically. However, the black hole is not "feeding" at the moment, meaning there is not much radiation coming from it. If it were in full quasar mode, we would have identified it a long, long time ago.
Parent