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Space Science

Second Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way 61

Posted by michael from the hole-in-the-middle-of-it-all dept.
Tsalg pastes "A second black hole lurks at the centre of our Galaxy, according to astronomers who have watched a cluster of stars spinning around it. Just three years ago, astronomers confirmed that the Milky Way revolves around a supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A*, which is about 2.6 million times more massive than the Sun. But now a much smaller black hole, just 1,300 times our Sun's mass, has been found orbiting about three light years away from its supermassive cousin. placing it intermediate between the relatively small (stellar mass) black holes in the Milky way Galaxy and the supermassive black holes found in the nuclei of galaxies."
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Second Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way More

Second Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way

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  • i read.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...a security hole instead a second black hole on the first glance. I guess im getting paranoid.

  • Contradictory? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dshaw858 ( 828072 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:10PM (#10793296) Homepage Journal
    I thought that the goin theory was that at the center of each galaxy lay a black hole, which created the "spiral" effect (such as the one that we see in the Milky Way's "arms"). Does this contradict current knowledge, or is our galaxy just a fluke?

    - dshaw

    • Re:Contradictory? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) <busheatskok@gmail.com> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:18PM (#10793387) Homepage Journal
      That would be a movie effect, not reality. The spiral arms of the galaxy are a density wave propagating through the stars and dust of the galaxy's disk. Think of how sound can be described as a density wave propagating through the air. Same thing.
      • It's not the same thing at all. A density wave propagates through a fluid like air through near-elastic collisions.

        Stars in the spiral arms don't collide and if they did they would be far from elastic.

        The arms rotate only because the stars that form them rotate, there's no wave propagating through some medium.

        • Re:Contradictory? (Score:4, Informative)

          by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @12:22PM (#10798500) Homepage
          There is (according to current understanding) definately a density wave there. Read Binney and Tremaine's "Galactic Dynamics", for example. While it's certainly true that stars virtually never collide, they don't have to to propogate a wave. Their mutual gravity binds them together quite nicely. (We see the same sorts of behaviors in Saturn's rings, incidentally. The rings are also collisional, but self-gravity is what lets most of the waves propogate.)

          If the arms rotated because of the stellar orbits, you can easily see that the arms would be wound up beyond recognition by now. So that clearly doesn't work. (It's referred to as the "winding problem" in astrophysics.)

          By the way, I'm pretty sure that sound waves aren't consider "density waves". The latter are driven by gravity, sound waves are pressure waves.

        • Re:Contradictory? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) <busheatskok@gmail.com> on Friday November 12, 2004 @01:53PM (#10799817) Homepage Journal
          Density waves don't need to be limited to just inelastic collisions. Look at traffic on a highway, in a traffic jam. You've got density waves there too, and no collisions, hopefully.

          In a galaxy, gravity is the binding force. Imagine every star in the galaxy as a physical ball. And for simplicity's sake, imagine that it's connected to all it's neighbors by a spring. That spring is gravity. Now, move the sheet of interconnected stars that you've just made. Bingo, you have density waves.

          • I'm not buying your simplistic analogies, but I was wrong too. See CheshireCatCO's reply to my posting.

            Also these [nap.edu] fascinating pages [astronomynotes.com].

            Apparently we still don't know what creates the density wave in the first place, or maintains them. All we know is why they're brighter...

        • Re:Contradictory? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by anubi ( 640541 )
          One thing that has been puzzling the hell out of me...

          If the "big bang" theory is correct, and the entire universe emanated from a point -

          Where did all this rotational inertia come from???

          I guess the primordial point we supposedly came from was spinning?

          Is it likely that "black holes" can be spun up so much from ingesting incoming rotational inertia that they become unstable and sling themselves apart... aka, the "big bang"?

          I am not a cosmologist, or even a cosmetician as far as that goes, but I ofte

          • You can create spin*, as long as you create the opposite spin elsewhere. Just like you can start yourself from rest and get moving as long as you push something the other way.

            * By "spin" I really mean angular momentum.
            • Do we have any way of knowing if the universe as a whole is rotating? Or if it is, in what plane and how fast?

              ( I consider your "angular momentum" to be the same as my "rotational inertia" )

              This study of cosmology is extremely interesting, yet so much a cliffhanger as we seek yet more and more data... much like a drug addiction. Every time we think we have an answer, it seems to reveal another box of questions.

              I know in the end its just gotta be simple. So far things always have seemed to work that

              • I'm told that there are ways to tell if the universe were rotating, but I've never figured out what they are. (For the record, those telling me are other astronomers, so there's hopefully some knowledge there...) I wouldn't be surprised, though; I can tell you if an an object IN the universe is rotating. (But not, as it turns out, moving through space at a constant speed, apart from declaring a relative motion.)

                Cosmology is like all of science. Each answer opens new questions. The questions get more d

              • Re:Contradictory? (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Ckwop ( 707653 ) *

                Do we have any way of knowing if the universe as a whole is rotating? Or if it is, in what plane and how fast?

                One of the key axioms of Cosmology is that of isotropy. No matter which way you look the universe looks roughly the same. This has been a very successful conjecture and many a cosmologist wouldn't like to throw that principle away without a fight.

                I'm no expert at cosmology but my immediate thought is that material would spread out along the plane of rotation like dust does with newly forming

                • Actually, you get disks from collisions as well as spin. The objects smack into each other and average out their orbits. Since the average velocity lies in the plane perpindicular to the axis, that's where you get a disk.

                  The universe as a whole is too tenuous to be collisional. So that's not it.

                  Isotropy does imply conservation of angular momentum, but I'm not sure that it implies a non-rotating universe.

    • Re:Contradictory? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @08:58PM (#10794229) Journal
      What the other poster said. But even if things where like you said, this is a 1600 solar mass black hole orbiting a 2.6 million solar mass black hole at a distance of 3 light years. At galactic distances, they can be approximated as a single 2.6016 million solar mass object. It's just not big enough to matter in that respect.

    • Re:Contradictory? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Most - but not all - galaxies are thought to contain central balck holes.

  • black hole collision (Score:5, Interesting)

    by i_should_be_working ( 720372 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:12PM (#10793319)
    any astronomers know what to expect to see when two black holes collide? we have pictures of stars colliding or ripping each other apart. we have ones of whole galaxies colliding. but what about black holes?
    • we have pictures of stars colliding or ripping each other apart

      See this link [mtv.com] for more information and pictures. I particularly like the one where Andre Agassi knocks Tiger Woods' kneecap out of the arena.

    • this is what came to mind after I read the story headline.

      is there any classification about types of black holes? if they collide will they just merge?
      can black holes get bigger? if A sucks B in is A larger afterwards or has it the same 'size'!?

      just some late-night thoughts. going to bed now.

    • Re:black hole collision (Score:5, Interesting)

      by chenzhen ( 532755 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @08:43PM (#10794110) Homepage
      Actually this is a pretty tough problem to solve. The computation was attempted by several leading numerical relativity institutions some years ago, but met with no success. The professor I work for is currently building up a code that will hopefully someday be able to handle the binary collision problem.

      One of the major problems is that programs crash pretty quickly when the evolution develops a singularity. A good method for avoiding this is called excision, where the singularity is removed from the grid and replaced with boundary conditions. This was recently implemented in my advisor's group and applied to the binary neutron star problem. At the end of the evolution, a black hole forms, so it doesn't seem like there are too many steps before a full black hole collision is possible.
      • On second thought I shouldn't say no success. There have been successes in computing special, less physical cases, for example in treating the stars as frictionless dustballs not possessing magnetic fields. But these features are very important in determining the rotation structure of stellar fluids, and are probably essential in modeling the physically correct binary merger. The general problem remains to be solved, and the goal is to figure out what physical processes produce gravitational waves, so that
      • Actually this is a pretty tough problem to solve. The computation was attempted by several leading numerical relativity institutions some years ago, but met with no success.

        Just divide by zero......twice :-)

    • Re:black hole collision (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From what I've read, astronomers suspect this does happen from time to time, but we haven't actually observed it. However, what it looks like isn't of as much interest as the fact that it is predicted to emit strong (or at least stronger than normal) gravity waves. Gravity waves are very weak and so they are very difficult to detect so they could get a lot more data from such a major event than they normally can by observing other phenomena.
    • Whoa, can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of those things?
  • that when I flush a toilet the water looks like a spiral galazy as it goes down the sewer? Sounds like God leaned on the handle.
    • "that when I flush a toilet ....Sounds like God leaned on the handle."

      I bet you have to wait while Lake Mead refills itself so you can re-flush to catch any floaters that didn't go down the first time!

  • A la Larry Niven, that second black hole at the center of the galaxy is just a sequel [larryniven.org].

  • What are the odds (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    that my immediate guess, that it's the remains from a swallowed dwarf galaxy, is correct?

    • Re:What are the odds (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 )
      Excessively low, I should think. Only 1300 solar masses. Even a tiny dwarf galaxy would be millions of solar masses. Also, they tend to get torn apart rather than crushed in the process of being "swallowed."
    • From the original paper it seems that the star cluster is quite young. That and the fact that very massive stars (which are very rare elsewhere in the Galaxy) are nearby makes it much more likely that this cluster has actually formed in the nuclear disk of the Galaxy. Quoting the authors "the IRS13E cluster is the possible core of an earlier massive star cluster formed about 10Myr ago within 20 parsecs of SgrA*" -T

  • awesome (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Striker770S ( 825292 )
    just think, we wont get sucked in unless we are actually aiming to do so, otherwise we will just revolve around the black hole. so its nothing to get worried about, and by the time the black holes do collide(if they actually do), it will be many years until the effects are felt here on earth, and by that time we will blow ourselves up.

  • Scary (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm not sure why, but the concept of Black holes lurking out in the cosmos is scary!
    I've allways had a fear that, despite out best efforts as intelegent beings, the universe as a whole will be fated to a cold, dark future, without any intelegent life and one big black hole. Or (almost as bad) a repetition of itself.

    I think there is a phobia for that, it was on star treck once, nelix had it.

    I dunno if HUMANS have the average intelegence to escape earh before extinction, but I hope some race will save the
    • not really. new theory sees it ripping itself apart. [space.com] maybe. :)

    • Re:Scary (Score:3, Interesting)

      by FooAtWFU ( 699187 )
      A few words of reassurance.
      Remember, a black hole doesn't have any magical sucking power. It's just gravity. If a star collapsed into a black hole, its gravitational pull doesn't get any stronger. It's still the same mass, it's just a lot denser. Contrary to what science fiction shows will tell you, it won't start "sucking in" anything that the star it collapsed from wasn't already "sucking in".

      Now consider how often you see planets and stars collide. You ever hear about it? Even when two galaxies run into

      • FooAtWFU is right:

        "The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest." Kilgore Trout (Kurt Vonnegut character)

      • Another number I heard which I imagine scales similarly is about 5 hydrogen atoms for every cubic foot of space. At that point there would be enough mass in the universe for it start contracting ... at least that's what Brian Greene said in The Elegant Universe ... interesting read if you're in to string theory.

        • Sounds about right - what about this one: "The critical density corresponds to somewhere between 2 and 8 hydrogen atom per cubic yard" (Alan Guth in "The Inflationary Universe"). Let's hope that God knows his conversions to the metric system better than NASA.

    • That was the result the recent Hawking recanting: information is not destroyed in a black hole, and is retained. Thus, even if all of the universe turned into some kind of big black hole, all the information of the universe would be retained. Perhaps life would continue to exist in some string-width envelope that contains sufficiently similar internal characterstics to our own universe?

      .
      -shpoffo
    • Some more reassuring words: Black holes don't last forever either. Even if the entire universe is eventually collected into them, they still "give off" Hawking radiation when they caputure half of a virtual particle pair, but not the other. Even though the escaping particle did not actually come from the black hole, it can be shown that its energy did. Even though the black hole captured a particle, it actually lost mass equivalent to that partcile. Granted we're talking about timespawns on the order of 10
  • Good on them for identifying this, but does it really come as a big surprise? I think it would make sense that there are a variety of differently sized black holes. As you near the center the amount of stellar mass increases and the black holes get bigger (on average).

    • That this is a surprise depends on whom you ask. The real issue here is to understand how those huge f**off multi-billion solar mass black holes form. And so far there had not been such high-quality evidence for anything in between a stellar-mass black hole formed by a single massive star collapse, and those monsters in the middle of galaxies.

      So those who think that they come from mergers of solar-mass BHs are comforted. There's also those who say that in no way those monsters had enough time to form by s

  • Colour? (Score:1, Funny)

    by AMD-lover ( 759977 )
    As many of us surely know, black holes are, like black boxes, actually orange.

  • Death and Taxes (Score:4, Funny)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Friday November 12, 2004 @10:35AM (#10797470) Homepage Journal
    [T]hey calculated from the movement of the seven stars that they must be orbiting an intermediate-mass black hole, called IRS 13E, which spirals around Sagittarius A* at about 280 kilometres per second.

    Is it just serendipity that this object, into which everything goes and never comes back, is named after an Earthly agency [irs.gov] to which similar attributes are often ascribed?

    • Na. The IRS is more like a wormhole. It takes money from the middle class and funnels it to corporations and to the military for creating mayhem and socialism in Iraq.
      • No no... it would be "socialism in Iraq" if the means of production were all controlled by the Iraqi government. When it's all controlled by the US government, it's called "free market."

        You need to get up to date with your patriotic vocabulary.

  • Kepler's 3rd law states that the square of the period of an orbit is proportional to the cube of the distance. More generally, p^2 is proportional to a^3/M where p is the period, a is the semimajor axis, and M is the mass of the system.

    Plugging in the values for these two black holes, assuming they are in a nearly circular orbit, we find that the period is about 55,000 years. That sounds like a long time until you realize that this mammoth orbit is almost 20 light years in circumference.

    That means tha

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