Black Hole Emits a 1,000-Light-Year-Wide Gas Bubble 145
PhrostyMcByte writes "12 million light-years away, in the outer spiral of galaxy NGC 7793, a bubble of hot gas approximately 1,000 light-years in diameter can be found shooting out of a black hole — one of the most powerful jets of energy ever seen. (Abstract available at Nature.) The bubble has been growing for approximately 200,000 years, and is expanding at around 1,000,000 kilometers per hour."
Sucked Too Much? (Score:1, Funny)
Maybe it sucked up too much matter and had to fart?
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Obligatory Futurama (Score:3, Funny)
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Maybe it sucked up too much matter and had to fart?
Funny but true. Jets from black holes aren't the hole emitting matter. They're the part of the accretion disk of infalling matter which gets caught in the spinning magnetic field near the black hole's poles and is propelled away from the hole at extreme velocity. Meanwhile the infalling matter, "circling the drain", spins up the black hole further as it is finally captured.
So jets like these are produced by the combination of the hole having a strong mag
It wasn't the black hole...! (Score:5, Funny)
...Sirius did it!
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Whoever smelt it dealt it.
The Magical Planet (Score:5, Funny)
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...and no other galaxy wants to be in the room.
very minor issue (Score:5, Informative)
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It sounds like someone at a drunken frat party playing one of those "look at this" games with a match.
Do we need to call an ambulance for this one too?
How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, but the combination of gravity and magnetism means they can whip up a lot of stuff outside the event horizon and direct it outward along the poles.
Further, stuff that does fall in adds it's angular momentum to that of the hole, and a spinning black hole has both an inner and outer event horizon. Stuff can fall through one and still escape the other, IIRC, removing angular momentum from the hole.
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:4, Informative)
An inner and outer event horizon? last I checked the event horizon was the point at which nothing not even light escapes. By that definition theres only one event horizon. If something goes in and is able to come out, it obviously hasn't entered the event horizon. I assume what you are talking about is the gravitational swing effect by which an object enters the gravitational field long enough to gain speed before it is slingshots away before being sucked in.
I think he's talking about the ergosphere [wikipedia.org].
jdb2
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Yes, I've heard the outer ergosphere boundary referred to as an apparent event horizon. I was not referring to ordinary gravitational slingshots.
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:5, Informative)
In science, its important to remember that a "theory" is not the same thing as the loose definition of a theory in casual conversation, or some technical but non-scientific contexts (literary criticism, I'm looking at you.)
In science, a theory is a hypothesis whose predictions which make it falsifiable have withstood testing and which remains viable. The casual-conversation concept of "theory" as an plausible but unverified idea about the world is what in science would be a conjecture or a hypothesis, not a theory.
So, often, we talk about theories (as opposed to mere conjectures or hypotheses) as if they were known except in very particular contexts where there theoretical nature is particularly important (such as in the case of a conflict between two theories that have both withstood scrutiny but where the predictions each makes in conditions impractical to test conflict.) But there's a good reason for that: if it is a "theory" as the term is used in science, it has demonstrated it power in explaining behavior beyond that which was consulted to formulate it. It may need to be refined, but its known to be a useful model.
In science (Score:1)
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Nothing outside of pure logic is ever "proven right". Science is a process of observation, providing hypotheses with explain the observations and predict future observations in a manner which makes them falsifiable, attempting to falsify the hypotheses, and replacing or refining them when they conflict with observations.
We certainly have a very many clues, whi
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This means that theory is not something verifiable thr
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, in philosophy of science, falsifiability has been dead for decades, thanks to the Quine-Duhem Thesis. The Quine-Duhem Thesis states that a theory never makes a prediction in isolation, but does so in conjunction with auxiliary hypotheses and propositions about initial conditions. This means that when we are faced with an observation that apparently falsifies our theory, we always have the option of "explaining away" the observation by rejecting at least one of our auxiliary hypotheses or propositions about initial conditions. (This does lead to the theory becoming more ad hoc.)
Falsifiability has pretty much been replaced by Bayesianism. Bayesianism uses Bayes' Theorem (used in many spam filters, btw), and allows us to talk about an observation confirming or disconfirming a theory. Confirmation does not mean "prove," it only means "makes more likely to be true." Same thing with disconfirmation: "makes less likely to be true," not "falsifies." This is a better fit with actual scientific practice, since scientists tend to look for evidence that confirms their theory, not evidence that fails to falsify it. But for some odd reason, philosophically aware scientists haven't gotten the memo about all of this, and they are still talking about an account of theory confirmation that's been dead for about 50 years.
Philosophers also think that you are never required to accept the results of a non-deductive argument (including the results of abduction, aka the scientific method), and you always have the option of withholding judgment. However, if you do accept a well-confirmed theory as being true, most epistemologists (who study knowledge) would agree that you are justified.
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You see, an epistemological assumption that we can never know truth comes either from a limitation of human conscience or from an ontological assumption that there is no truth to be found.
In reality, there is a reality, there is truth, we are simply constrained by our human limitations when it comes to interpreting it.
If you read what I said I didn't argue that pure falsifiability can be obtained any more than the pure utility of a theory can
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Acting as if theories are somehow more than the current best guess(es) of the scientific method is throwing out the skepticism that is the core of said method.
Oh please, you're no better than the original poster. While you accuse the original poster of overstating the rigor of scientific theories, you massively understate it by bringing them down to the level of mere guesses. Of course, as always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but don't delude yourself into thinking that your position is at all
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Uses a word without a notation? He didn't skip a notation, he issued about how a theory our current best guess and understanding of the universe.
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This is oft repeated garbage. Worse is the saying that a theory is essentially a scientific fact. A theory is no more a hypothesis which has withstood testing.
That's true, but, frankly its a lot better than most of the "knowledge", or "common sense" out there. I'd rather base my work on a theory over common sense any day.
Acting as if theories are somehow more than the current best guess(es) of the scientific method is throwing out the skepticism that is the core of said method.
There are different levels of skepticism, you know. The type of nihilistic skepticism you're advocating is just as unproductive as the blind acceptance that religion advocates. If every scientist had to start directly from first principles, then no progress would ever be made. To paraphrase Newton, one only sees farther than others by standing
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It always amazes me that both laymen and scientists as well talk about such things as if we KNOW whats going on.
We don't. We have theories.
In science, "theory" has a very different meaning. If you talk on the street and say something is a "theory", you mean it's unproven, an idea, it could work like that but you're not sure. Scientists call that a "hypothesis". A theory in science is as close to fact as we'll ever come (since science is always open for learning).
It's the same mistake the ID fanatics exploit. Evolution is not a "theory" in the common-sense meaning of the word, only in the scientific meaning.
In other words: Yes, we know what's g
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When "science" talks about things as if it knows what's going on, it doesn't pretend that it knows what's going on. It talks, as you said your self "as if it knows what's going on." That is, that this is our current understanding. Science evolves, and we talk about it as we know it, instead of talking about it as the latest studies which have been peer reviewed and replicated and not retracted seem to indicate that we might have a valid theory about it - because that's all implied.
The problem people have
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Not likely. Nothing can escape the inner event horizon, thought he boundary is believed to be "fuzzy", so real/virtual particle creation out of the vacuum near it can have the virtual particle captured and the real one escape, with a loss of mass of the black hole.
At least, so believes Stephen Hawking.
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That is because they are smart fellers.
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:5, Informative)
The phraseology in the article is misleading. The energy and gas jets are emitted as matter falls towards the black hole and becomes superheated from the falling. Once the matter crosses the boundary ( event horizon ) into the back hole itself it disappears from the rest of the universe.
Information is released, but very very slowly.
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:5, Informative)
They can emit Hawking radiation.
Basically, pairs of particles appear out of nowhere for extremely brief amounts of time, fly around a bit, then collide together and disappear again.
(Yes, this happens. Matter appears out of nowhere and then disappears again.)
If this pair of particles pops into existence just outside the event horizon of a black hole, there's a chance that, in their brief flying about, one will cross the event horizon and the other will not. Since they're no disjoint, they don't disappear like they normally do.
The particle that is on the outside of the event horizon escapes as Hawking radiation.
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also, don't ask me why, it apparently tends to be the anti-matter particle which gets pulled into the black hole which eliminates some of the black holes mass.... or something like that.
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No, antimatter does not have antimass. And it is 50/50 as to which of the pair falls into the black hole. But for that formerly virtual particle to now exist as a "regular" particle it's energy has to come from somewhere, and in this case, "somewhere" is the black hole. I believe that this is one of those points where to go further, you need to get into the actual math.
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:4, Informative)
I would like to add that this kind of Hawking radiation is extremely slow process and that it has nothing to do with giant fireballs escaping from black holes as such. Or, very probably, anything else we can detect.
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Technically that is not emission. Since the “emitted” particle of the pair never was inside the event horizon at any time. It just came close enough for its partner to get swallowed and then escaped.
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:4, Funny)
Not so much emit as throw away, as a fat kid does with the a wrapper around a candy bar.
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Man, you missed such a great opportunity for a “yo momma” joke!
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:5, Informative)
The dominant theoretical model of black holes has them emitting energy (Hawking radiation).
Though I don't think the effect here is really the black hole emitting anything (from within the event horizon), but an instead an effect that occurs because of gravitational compression outside the event horizon.
Re:How can a black hole emit anything? (Score:4, Informative)
Several other comments talk about a pair of particles being created out of nothing, one gets absorbed and the other flies away. This is basically right, but can be confusing (the one that gets absorbed has negative energy in order to conserve energy). Here's an easier mental model....
Steve Hawking came up with an idea a while ago (70's perhaps?). He was thinking about black holes whose event horizon was around the size of an atom. Then he put it up against the Heizenberg Uncertainty Principle. He realized that particles in these black holes would have such a high degree of certainty about their position, that there would be such a low certainty about their velocity. Therefor, there would be some that would be REALLY fast. Not fast enough that they could escape the pull of the black hole, but fast enough that they could get just above the event horizon. There, they could give off a high-energy photon, and fall back in. This photon, since it was emitted outside the event horizon, would actually escape. This radiation can (and has been) detected, and causes what is known as evaporation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#Black_hole_evaporation [wikipedia.org]
Ironically, this means that smaller black holes (which have higher certainty about a particle's position) evaporate faster. Large-ish black holes absorb more energy cosmic microwave radiation than they emit in Hawking radiation, but if they have small enough mass (I believe smaller than the size of our moon), they emit more Hawking radiation than they receive from the cosmic background.
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There are all kinds of things that can cause a black hole to emit light. Hawking's Radiation for one. The powerful jets at either pole of a black hole result when it is feeding, and large amounts of matter build up in an accretion disk. Incredibly powerful magnetic fields are created by ionized plasma moving at relativistic speeds, and these field create powerful polarized beams of energetic particles, we see as jets and gamma ray bursts.
The accretion disk itself can emit a tremendous amount of energy.
Imagery (Score:2)
Is that an actual image, or an artist's rendition? Why is the bubble of gas so spherical? I would have expected it to be asymmetrical.
Re:Imagery (Score:5, Informative)
That's a piss-poor artist's rendition that on the one hand has a silly sun being slurped up like spaghetti by a black hole, and on the other hand has a depiction of the sort of jet that actually occurs at the poles of a spinning black hole.
The actual "bubble" is diffusion of the jet into gas somewhere off in the direction of the black hole, and is not depicted in that image.
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According to my FoxNews Guide to the Universe, the natives considered cubic ones to be eyesores, lowering local real-estate values.
Excuse me! (Score:2, Funny)
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Previous Record Holder (Score:1, Offtopic)
We can fix it... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Adjacent to the accretion disk... (Score:1, Funny)
...is NGC 911 also known as the Taco Bell Nebula.
End of the world. (Score:4, Informative)
Let's do this grade 6 math puzzle style.
Expanding at ~1,000,000 km/h
12 million light years away.
It already has a radius of 1000 light years.
Assume a light year is 9.46 trillion km long.
Assuming this gas bubble was created by the universes first perpetual motion machine, so the growth is constant, how long before this gas bubble wipes out all life on Earth. Someone watch my math and make sure I didn't slip up.
(9,460,000,000 * 12) - 5000 = 113519995000 km to go.
113519995000 * 1000 = 113519995000000 hours left.
Or 4729999791666.6 repeating days
Or ~675714255952 weeks
or ~12994504922 years.
If we do live forever, mark your calendars, 12994506932, Earth is finished.
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Hmm. Only 7 billion years after our sun turns into a red giant.
Ideally, we'll have moved off this rock and/or moved the rock itself by then.
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But by that time an entire bubble with a radius of 12 million 1 thousand light years will have engulfed part of our space.
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Ah, but we know where it is. We just go the other way. We'll have to move off in 4-5 billion years and will have a 7 billion year head start.
Re:End of the world. (Score:5, Funny)
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Okay. Now do this one:
As population grows, eventually there will be enough people to entirely cover the surface of the earth one person deep. As population grows further, the depth of humans will increase, pushing the surface of the human-earth outward. Given the current population growth rate, how long, in years, will it be until the human-earth surface is expanding outward at the speed of light?
Hint: it's a 4-digit number.
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When we put a building a thousand feet into the sky, are we adding mass?
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Let's do this grade 6 math puzzle style.
Expanding at ~1,000,000 km/h
12 million light years away.
It already has a radius of 1000 light years.
Assume a light year is 9.46 trillion km long.
Assuming this gas bubble was created by the universes first perpetual motion machine, so the growth is constant, how long before this gas bubble wipes out all life on Earth. Someone watch my math and make sure I didn't slip up.
9,460,000,000,000 km/ly * (12,000,000 ly - 1000 ly) = 113,510,540,000,000,000,000 km to go.
113,510,540,000,000,000,000 km / 1,000,000 km/hr = 113,510,540,000,000 hrs left.
Or ~4,729,605,833,333 days
Or ~675,657,976,190 weeks
Or ~12,993,422,619 years.
If we do live forever, mark your calendars, 12,993,424,639, Earth is finished.
FTFY.
Somehow, despite the fact that you...
- substituting 9.46 billion for 9.46 trillion
- multiplying by 12 then subtracting 5000 instead of multiplying by 12 million minus 1 thousand
- multiplying by 1,000 instead of dividing by 1,000,000
... you still managed to get an answer that was a small error off. Will you PLEASE explain the steps you took? I can't make any sense of them, but obviously there is some legitimacy to them.
Oh, and if it's growing at 1,000,000 km/hr in DIAMETER, it will take twice as long...
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Well, if you want to really get technical, 1000 light years is only one significant digit (1000. Would be 4..) so none of my calculations would be accurate.
Very true. As I mentioned, it was a small percentage. But it still seemed to be a rather glaring omission.
. I was just surprised that his obviously flawed calculation resulted in a somewhat accurate result. (posted on my phone, too lazy to log in)
Me too. But this same subject has come up in ClimateGate: How could apparently bad science come up with a result that roughly matches those of others who used other methods and data?
And (in the case of ClimateGate), part of the answer is rather disconcerting: as it turns out the data were massaged in a similar manner.
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Isn't our sun going to be dead long before then?
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Only if we happen to be in the path of the jet, its not a sphere you know. I'm not upping my life insurance policy.
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Won't the rate of increase in the radius of the sphere decrease as a cube function of time? Or something like that? :)
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Expanding at ~1,000,000 km/h
I think 12994504922 would be a vast underestimate. Right now it's expanding at ~1,000,000 km/h. It is unlikely that the rate of expansion is constant.
It is likely to run into other matter in the universe, and changes in temperature that can reduce the rate of expansion, long before it reaches earth.
Also, the universe itself is expanding at approximately 255,000 km/h, and an accelerating rate.
It is possible that long before it reaches earth, the rate of expansion of the
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OK, now somebody calculate how many atoms are actually going to hit earth once it's here (if it gets here at all), or I won't be able to sleep tonight.
pictures are here (Score:5, Informative)
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Go ahead (Score:1, Offtopic)
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Mini-"Big Bang" in action (Score:1)
Galactic Petroleum (Score:1)
GP really screwed up this time. They put their energy well too far into the black hole's accretion disk, and it triggered a run-away tidal friction cascade, spewing hot plasma toward Jar Jar Bink's planet.
I'm sure it's just an accident. After all, who'd want to kill Jar Jar?
BP is 200,000 years old? (Score:1)
WTF happened to my /.? (Score:1)
A whole hour and not 1 goatse reference?
This is a day that shall live in infamy.
200,000 years (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that 200,000 years from now, or 200,000 years from 12 million years ago? (since it's that many lightyears away)
Send the GSV Beano to investigate (Score:2)
lol
Puppeteers Need to Change Course (Score:2)
Just a minute (Score:1)
I need to boot up my not well-known of subspace red-phone to The Hindmost.
It's seldom used ...
So (Score:5, Funny)
I guess BP was drilling there, too.
some dialed a super gate! (Score:2)
some dialed a super gate!
Minor nit... (Score:1)
12 million light years from here, I suspect you would not find a gas bubble shooting out of a black hole, because if we're detecting it now, it means it happened 12 million years ago, and if you were 12 million years away from here at that black hole, the gas bubble would have long since been shot out.
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Third grade? That one lasted me well into college.
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Re:Third grade truism (Score:4, Informative)
smell is chemical. therefore it's based on the interaction of electron clouds around atoms in particular configurations within molecules. therefore it acts by means of the electromagnetic force. therefore it's mediated by virtual photons. virtual photons are light. light can go only one direction in a black hole, and that's down. so the black hole can't smell it because the virtual photons of its nose can't interact with the virtual photons of the gas outside the black hole to indicate that there are electrons, atoms, and molecules there.
so there, smartypants.
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Can somebody tell "slide rule" here, that Mr. Science left the building, about an hour ago?
It's now fart jokes, "all the way down."
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so the black hole can't smell it because the virtual photons of its nose can't interact with the virtual photons of the gas outside the black hole to indicate that there are electrons, atoms, and molecules there.
Also because it doesn't have a nose.
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The nose is a metaphor for a vessel for chemical interaction. Your nose and my nose are two different objects, no more or less than our noses and a black hole's nose are three different objects. The effect of them is the same. Chemical reaction.
What it lacks is a trained palate.
Re:Jokes (Score:5, Funny)
This is just begging for a "your momma" joke. Anyone want to do the honors?
Yo mama so unimaginative she can't come up with a good joke given ample material. Apparently it's hereditary.
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You sir, have earned your nerd humor merit badge.
Re:Jokes (Score:4, Funny)
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It's OK, They will drill another Black-Hole to relieve the pressure They said it will be cleaned up soon, they promised and everything when it it was only 500 Light-Years wide.
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Mom, is that you?
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Great insight! I'm off proving that galaxies can actually travel back in time...
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