NASA Uncovers Millions of New Black Holes 77
coondoggie writes "NASA today said its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite has unearthed a 'bonanza of new-found supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies.' NASA said the latest discoveries help astronomers better understand how galaxies and the behemoth black holes at their centers grow and evolve together."
The news was released in a press conference, and io9 has a comprehensive write-up about everything that was covered, including the Q&A session. Pretty pictures here.
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Google voice search is racist. If you ask "show me pictures of white people" a bunch of thumbnails of white people show up. If you ask "show me pictures of asian people" a bunch of thumbnails of asian people show up. If you ask "show me pictures of green people" a bunch of thumbnails of green (coloured) people show up. If you ask "show me pictures of black people" all you get is a text only Google search result.
Overly PC Google and overly "sensitive" niggers who think the world constantly owes them shit.
Not really, just an abundance of overly racist lowlife scumbags like yourself who cause companies like Google to create these measures because you all like to be vocal about your despicable racism and general douchebaggery.
Now hurry up and go rot in hell or whatever fictional afterlife you so choose.
Moron.
"NASA Uncovers Millions of New Black Holes" (Score:5, Funny)
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THEY'LL absorb EVERYTHING aaaaaah
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So, in fact, they were right here all along, covered in dirt.
There's also a hot dog joke in there somewhere.
Stellar+ black holes coldest thing in universe (Score:2)
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With a covering (accretion disk), the externally seen temperature is much higher, in the millions of degrees, hence my comment.
Black holes heat up with time (Score:2)
Black holes (Score:4, Funny)
So what they're saying is... they've found teenagers.
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That'd be "horndogs" not "hot DOGs"
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Retraction (Score:2)
In other news, NASA retracted their claim of millions of new black holes, saying "Someone spilled some coffee on the printouts, sorry..."
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I know what you're thinking.. (Score:5, Funny)
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'are there a million black holes waiting to hoover up all sentient life from the universe or are there 100 million black holes waiting to hoover up all sentient life from the universe? ' Well to tell you the truth, in all the chaos I myself can't remember how many black holes I made. So let me ask you, punk. Do you feel lucky ?
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Do you feel lucky ?
There is no luck, only science. Hawking radiation -- your black holes will eventually starve and then dissipate.
Re:I know what you're thinking.. (Score:5, Informative)
A black hole would dissipate via Hawking radiation only if it doesn't absorb more energy than it emits. Large blackholes absorb more energy (cosmic background radiation) than they would emit and hence will not necessarily dissipate. From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
"A black hole of one solar mass has a temperature of only 60 nanokelvins; in fact, such a black hole would absorb far more cosmic microwave background radiation than it emits. A black hole of 4.5 × 1022 kg (about the mass of the Moon) would be in equilibrium at 2.7 kelvin, absorbing as much radiation as it emits. Yet smaller primordial black holes would emit more than they absorb, and thereby lose mass."
Re:I know what you're thinking.. (Score:5, Informative)
In the long term -- "long" that makes the current age of the universe look like an eye-blink and protons seem unstable -- the CMB will be redshifted away until even supermassive black holes begin losing mass.
"This, too, shall pass."
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In the long term -- "long" that makes the current age of the universe look like an eye-blink and protons seem unstable -- the CMB will be redshifted away until even supermassive black holes begin losing mass.
"This, too, shall pass."
Maybe.
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Well if it doesn't I paid a lot of money for nothing.
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That must have been painful.
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Nay. "None shall pass!"
Re:I know what you're thinking.. (Score:5, Insightful)
a hundred million black holes in the universe? Given that there are 170 billion galaxies, that's a pretty small number of black holes.
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a hundred million black holes in the universe? Given that there are 170 billion galaxies, that's a pretty small number of black holes.
Every now and then, one leaves its galaxy and goes to another.
So how does this relate to the "missing matter" (Score:3)
Black holes are heavy right?
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If you read that in the voice of Professor Farnsworth, good for you!
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No, the dark matter is detected by unseen evenly distributed mass across the universe. The black holes are discovered by unseen by very unevenly distributed mass in the universe.
Budget (Score:2, Troll)
Guess someone finally bothered to look at that thing, and found all these black holes
New? (Score:5, Funny)
I'll bet these have been around longer than we have
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Missing mass of the universe? (Score:3)
It sounds like they just found a lot of 'missing mass' here? How does it jibe for balancing things without using 'dark matter/energy'?
Re:Missing mass of the universe? (Score:5, Informative)
How does it jibe for balancing things without using 'dark matter/energy'?
Not well.
These SMBHs are in the centers of galaxies, and piling up more mass at the center of a galaxy doesn't explain the problem of flat galactic rotation curves. The mass needs to be in and surrounding the galaxy, which is why the non-exotic DM theory is called "MACHOs" as in MAssive Compact Halo Objects -- because it'd have to be in the halo.
It's even worse for Dark Energy, since extra mass would actually have the opposite effect that DE has, pushing the universe closer to the Big Crunch scenario. It certainly would not explain accelerating expansion.
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Re:Missing mass of the universe? (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't. Basically the reasoning for dark matter is this :
Under Newtonian or Einsteinian physics, galaxies should rotate a lot slower on the outside, and quicker in the middle than than they actually do (a little like our solar system behaves). No one can explain why they do not, satisfactorily yet.
Dark matter is an explanation which proposes that there is undetectable matter causing the gravity interference which does explain the mechanics of galactic movements. Trouble is, we haven't got a hold of dark matter yet, so although it's an explanation, it's not concrete by any means. If you want a definite explanation, you're probably going to have to go to your priest.
Black holes don't fit. There aren't that many black holes, and despite the name, they are observable. If there were enough black holes to cause galaxies to rotate like they do, we'd have seen them already.
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Perhaps someone knows... The more massive the gravitational field, the more time dilation, yes? The farther out you go the less drastic the effect is. Could the rotation just appear (to our frame of reference) to be moving not as fast in the middle (where the gravity is strongest) even though it is moving as it should according to our theories?
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Perhaps someone knows... The more massive the gravitational field, the more time dilation, yes? The farther out you go the less drastic the effect is. Could the rotation just appear (to our frame of reference) to be moving not as fast in the middle (where the gravity is strongest) even though it is moving as it should according to our theories?
IINAP (and I'm guessing you're not, either). I used to think of things like this and say, "gosh, couldn't this be the explanation?" Then I remember that there are thousands of experts in the field, and it is extremely improbable that me, a layperson in the field, has thought of something -- especially something relatively (pun intended) simple -- that an expert hasn't thought of and obviously debunked (because we would have read about it were it plausible).
That said, I don't understand the physics behin
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The farther out you go the less drastic the effect is. Could the rotation just appear (to our frame of reference) to be moving not as fast in the middle (where the gravity is strongest) even though it is moving as it should according to our theories?
Well, if this was the case, then we would see the same effect in our solar system -- both in the orbits of other planets, and in the orbits of moons around planets -- and they too would show flat rotation curves. However we do not, and both show decreasing orbi
Found it! (Score:2)
That dark matter isn't so dark anymore in the IR range apparently.
Millions of black holes ... (Score:2, Funny)
... nothing to see here, please move along!
Car Analogy? (Score:2)
Artist's concept of a dusty torus [wikipedia.org], or donut [wikipedia.org], of accreting material fueling a quasar [wikia.com].
There's a "WASH ME" car analogy in there somewhere... I just can't find it!
Holly knows why it took so long to find them... (Score:2)
"The thing about a black hole - it's main distinguishing feature - is it's black. And the thing about space, the color of space, your basic space color - is it's black. So how are you supposed to see them?"
Re:Holly knows why it took so long to find them... (Score:4, Funny)
Look during the day, when there's more light to see by.
Re:Holly knows why it took so long to find them... (Score:4, Informative)
They can be found in a number of ways...
They give off something called Bekenstein-Hawking radiation because they are sucking up half of spontaneously generated particle pairs - leaving the other half (that would normally disappear back into the sucked up particle) to spray out into space.
They can be 'seen' by the gravitational lensing they produce when you try to look at the background behind them. (And most of space isn't black, it's full of bright objects and lots of microwave radiation.)
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Sigh... are there no "Red Dwarf" fans around?
Great! (Score:3)
Maybe now they can find all my missing socks.
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Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
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Erma Bombeck postulated that single socks are the larval stage of coat hangers.
but enough about their budget... (Score:3, Interesting)
find any new ones in space?
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The immovable thing that inexorably attracts, consumes, and destroys nearby resources? You would need to look into the Pentagon budget for those. Specifically for outsourcing contracts in certain congressional districts.
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How many holes .... (Score:2)
Wasn't this obvious? (Score:2)
It is election season....
Best line (Score:1)
"We've got the black holes cornered," said Daniel Stern of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the WISE black hole study and project scientist for another NASA black-hole mission, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). "WISE is finding them across the full sky, while NuSTAR is giving us an entirely new look at their high-energy X-ray light and learning what makes them tick."
So that's "cornered" as in "Nobody move, I've got you all surrounded"?
hot dogs (Score:1)