Monster Black Holes May Lurk All Around Us (yahoo.com) 184
Taco Cowboy quotes a report from Yahoo News: Astronomers have stumbled upon a supermassive black hole in an unexpected corner of the Universe, implying these galactic monsters are much more common than once thought, a study said Wednesday. The giant, with an estimated mass 17 billion times that of our Sun, was discovered in a relative desert, astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in the journal Nature. "While finding a gigantic black hole in a massive galaxy in a crowded area of the Universe is to be expected -- like running across a skyscraper in Manhattan -- it seemed less likely they could be found in the Universe's small towns," said a university statement. Big, star-rich galaxies where supermassive black holes had previously been found, are very rare. Smaller ones like the NGC 1600 galaxy housing the newly-discovered whopper, are much more common, but were not previously thought to be appropriate host. "So the question now is: 'Is this the tip of an iceberg?'" said study co-author Chung-Pei Ma. "Maybe there are a lot more monster black holes out there that don't live in a skyscraper in Manhattan, but in a tall building somewhere in the Midwestern plains." The largest supermassive black hole spotted to date tipped the scales at about 21 billion solar masses, said the study authors.
A huge hig-mass object that suck up everything (Score:2, Funny)
Was found in an empty space... duh!
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Black holes do *not* suck up stuff.
Are you implying that black ho's spit?
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. . .
I think you might want to consider the same
Missed the important part of the story (Score:4, Funny)
it seemed less likely they could be found in the Universe's small towns," said a university statement
Well that's great and all, but it misses the most important point of this entire story - what kind of shirt was the spokesman wearing when he released the statement? We already know, from empirical experience, that this fashion statement overshadows anything that might have been said or any legitimate human achievement that may have occurred. Up to and including announcing that HUMANITY LANDED A SPACE PROBE ON A GODDAMNED COMET.
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People can concentrate on more than one thing at once. You are possibly an exception, which would explain your apparent confusion. Yes, the reaction from some was over the top, but that does nothing to change the fact that someone made a stupid mistake and tarnished the image of their organisation by not being as professional as decorum would expect. And none of this has anything to do with a specific piece of research.
I get it - you are clearly rather old (or your mentality is, or both), rather grumpy,
Black hole in the astronomical desert (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Black hole in the astronomical desert (Score:5, Informative)
When will people stop thinking of black holes as giant vacuum cleaner? They're not. What they are is gigantic masses concentrated in a relatively small space creating big gravity. Other objects massive enough (i.e. stars) spin around them, exactly like planets spin around the sun but don't fall into it.
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Exactly. Getting 'sucked into' a sun is just as bad for your health as falling into a black hole, but we don't get all freaked out about those. Well, unless we were in a ship that was getting uncomfortably close to a star, in which case we'd probably be becoming worried.
Black holes do sound pretty cool though, so you can imagine why people might make up stories about them.
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When will people stop thinking of black holes as giant vacuum cleaner? They're not. What they are is gigantic masses concentrated in a relatively small space creating big gravity. Other objects massive enough (i.e. stars) spin around them, exactly like planets spin around the sun but don't fall into it.
As the center of gravity gains mass, formerly stable orbits become unstable and the orbiting bodies fall into the gravity well. This can result in chain reaction which seemingly acts like a giant vacuum cleaner.
Other objects massive enough (i.e. stars) spin around them, exactly like planets spin around the sun but don't fall into it.
Orbits are not a function of mass, anything from an electron to a small black hole can orbit around a supermassive black hole and have the exact same orbit.
exactly like planets spin around the sun but don't fall into it
Except the proto-planets that did get sucked up in the Sun while our solar system was being formed.
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Re:Black hole in the astronomical desert (Score:4, Insightful)
You can gain a whole lot of mass but you're up against the inverse square law. That gravitational 'force' (yes it's really just a geometrical distortion of spacetime) falls away rapidly with distance. The distance is what keeps those remote objects safe.
How can it be "just" a distortion of spacetime and a " 'force' "? There needs to be some actual force to do the distorting of spacetime. You don't get to put quotation marks around "force" and parenthetically claim that gravity is not a force.
The human understanding of the physics behind gravity is not a settled science.
One popular school of thought (called general relativity), that gravity is simply a result of mysterious property of an object called "mass" distorting the fabric of space time so it only appears as a "force" with a field. With this school of thought, you can also think about the strange "force-like" dynamics (e.g, attraction or the change in momentum over time) we observe with gravity fields are really an artifact of our frame of reference (we assume that space-time is not distorted) but in the space-time, really nothing than distorted space time). There is no "force" exhibited by matter that distorts surrounding space-time, but the distortion of space-time is an emergent property of mass (and strangely energy).
However, we know that general relativity is inconsistent with our current understanding of quantum mechanics, so it is probably "wrong", so another school of thought is that analogous to other fields (e.g., electromagnetic fields), the apparently gravitationnal dynamics can be explained by the exchange of particles (or virtual particles) which have been coined as "gravitons". These gravitons would work similarly to how photons mediate the electromagnetic force (and presumably would exhibit wave particle duality like photons).
Of course that often begs the question of what is mysterious mass like property of an object? Some speculate that it is merely parts of an object interacting with a scalar "higgs-field" (it has to be scalar-like, or the "mass-effect" would be different in different directions) caused by an exchange of higgs particles.
How this might all relate back to the first school of thought is called the search for the grand unifying theory. If you figure that one out, a Nobel prize in physics awaits... ;^)
Re:Black hole in the astronomical desert (Score:5, Insightful)
As the center of gravity gains mass, formerly stable orbits become unstable and the orbiting bodies fall into the gravity well. This can result in chain reaction which seemingly acts like a giant vacuum cleaner.
One could argue the same thing about a star or even a planet. If enough stuff falls into any astronomical body, its mass could increase and orbits could destabilize.
Black holes are no different in this regard, hence the reason why it's weird to think of them as special kinds of "vacuum cleaners" that are different from other celestial bodies.
Except the proto-planets that did get sucked up in the Sun while our solar system was being formed.
Terms like "sucked up" are the problem. Suction is a specific physical thing created by a vacuum. In that case, the material that is "sucked up" is actually pushed into something else by the fluid pressure difference. It really doesn't make sense to apply this to proto-planets, since they were not pushed into the Sun by some external pressure.
Rather, they did not have sufficient orbital velocity to avoid falling into the gravity well. Using terminology like "vacuum cleaner" or "suction" is a really bad metaphor because it implies all sorts of things that aren't part of the physical scenario in question.
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People think black holes are giant vacuum cleaners because that is what conventional physics says they are -- things come too close (cross the event horizon) and become imprisoned in the SMBH. So you are authoritatively saying this doesn't happen? No, well then we are only talking degree -- newbs think SMBH's suck a lot, and you think they suck a little. FWIW, "you" (i.e. conventional physics) have your work cut out for you to explain why things don't get sucked in. I imagine you will trot out something to do with "curved space orbits" but implicit in that must be that every single thing orbiting the SMBH manages to stay outside the event horizon. My question #1 (given that SMBH size (diameter) is related to their SMass) is how does everything know exactly where that event horizon is? And question #2 when the SMBH grows in size, how do the objects orbiting the closest not end up now inside the event horizon? My own thoughts on black [just-think-it.com] holes [just-think-it.com].
A black hole has exactly the same gravity as any object of the same mass. Nothing magical happens to the gravitation once the object becomes smaller than the Schwarzchild radius.
That last bit doesn't make much sense to me. You honestly think he's saying black holes don't suck in more stuff as they grow? Yes, they do. They also eventually tend to stop. That's why some quasars are active and some are docile.
There is a simple equation that links the black hole's area and its mass.
I had a look at the blog. Are
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the moon is not slowly falling into the earth. Once something has a stable orbit it tends to stay in that orbit.
That reminds me of how my first year physics professor (Roger Van Geen) explained the orbit of the moon using vectors: "it is constantly falling beside the earth."
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Once something has a stable orbit it tends to stay in that orbit
There is no such thing as a stable orbit, orbiting bodies are either moving towards or away from the object they are orbiting. In order to have a stable orbit the gravitational force and all other forces on the orbiting body would have to exactly cancel out. This is why GPS satellites broadcast their corrected position which they get from ground stations, they can get close to a stable orbit but can not perfectly achieve it.
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Well, in theory an artificial satellite like that should be able to maintain an almost perfectly stable orbit because it can use thrust to do corrections. (Of course, the fuel for the thrusters will run out eventually...)
Natural bodies can't do that, so eventually they're either going to collide or spin away.
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Stuff doesn't just get 'sucked' into a black hole. That's not how gravity works. The planets orbiting the sun are not slowly falling into the sun either, and the moon is not slowly falling into the earth. Once something has a stable orbit it tends to stay in that orbit.
Well yes actually they are slowly falling in, the real question is are we talking about falling in over a period of hundreds of years or trillions of years. We know given enough time everything in orbit around something else is going to tidally lock up and decay into less and less thingys, until there is only one thingy; what we don't know is if the Universe will last that long.
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That's not really how orbits work. A stable orbit can remain stable indefinitely, and some things in orbits actually recede from what they're orbiting (the moon is actually slowly receding away from Earth).
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The Moon orbits the Earth in a prograde motion so the the tidal forces from the Earth's rotation accelerate the Moon's orbital velocity, while shortening the length of the Earth's day. Once the Earth's day matches the lunar orbital period, the death spiral will begin.
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Maybe this is the "missing mass"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe this is what they have been spending years trying to invent the invisible and undetectable dark matter for?
Re:Maybe this is the "missing mass"? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Maybe this is the "missing mass"? (Score:5, Informative)
So neither supermassive black holes in the galaxy's center nor ejected supermassive black holes can explain the effect.
Re:Maybe this is the "missing mass"? (Score:5, Informative)
To calculate the time a celestial body needs to orbit a galaxy, you thus calculate it as if the whole mass inside the orbit was concentrated at the center of the galaxy, and you just ignore all mass that is outside of the orbit. Thus, the distance to the center and the rotational speed of any given star in a galaxy gives you an estimation of the mass of the galaxy until the star's orbit, if you know the mass of the star itself. If you do this for several stars at different orbits, you get an idea how the mass in the galaxy is distributed. Of course, this calculation is just a rough approximation, as you have to account for General Relativity effects for better results.
But still, this rough approximation already shows, that especially for the stars in the outer regions of a galaxy, the mass of the galaxy part within their orbit has to be about five times more heavy than what the estimation from the emitted light would indicate.
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I've never understood this need for greater mass at the outer edges, but I also know little about physics that I don't pick up as technobabble from TV and movies. Doesn't the black hole at the center of the galaxy have a time dilation effect? And if so, wouldn't time move more slowly the closer you get to the center of the galaxy to an outside observer? So the outer edge of the galaxy would appear to rotate faster, but only relatively.
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Unless there are so many super massive black holes that it makes up the difference ...
You do realize we may not actually know everything about how the universe works right? Hence the point of this article ... there are more black holes than expected ... yet here you are immediately throwing out an idea because you think you know whats going on ... while being shown you don't know whats going on.
Science doesn't allow for your preference for how the universe works. You don't get to say 'won't explain the ef
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Why is it that we know so much more about galaxies than our own planet? Hmm? Whats that? I couldn't hear you explain to me why that is?
Why get on in such a dickish fashion?
We see Earth somewhat closer up than galaxies. The weather is different because it's a non-linear, chaotic system. Space is often quite serene in comparison because it's mostly empty.
What exactly are you so angry about with Dark Matter? It's a postulate. That's why there are detectors looking for it. If we never find it, fine, it must not exist. You seem to have decided ahead of time that it doesn't exist. Care to explain why?
Things like MACHOs and Modified Newtownian gr
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Wow, it sounds so right, and yet... so wrong.
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EM is stronger than gravity, then why do they think gravity is the dominant force? The answer will surprise you, I'm sure.
Gravity is always attractive, electromagnetism comes with sign. + and + repel.
You are a crank.
Dark matter ? (Score:2)
Assuming much more matter has been concentrated, over the lifetime of the universe, into black holes - then is this a usable attempt to explain what we still designate as "black matter" ?
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No dark matter is the souls of the departed [wikipedia.org], undetectable except by their mass.
Re:Dark matter -- not the explanation (Score:2)
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One of the mysterious effects is the difference in rotational speed as you go out from the center of the galaxy.
Why can't this be explained by time dilation from the gravity of the black hole? The center is only rotating slower to an outside observer, but could in fact be going the same number of Km/h (to pick a completely off-scale unit).
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Why can't this be explained by time dilation from the gravity of the black hole? The center is only rotating slower to an outside observer, but could in fact be going the same number of Km/h (to pick a completely off-scale unit).
It just doesn't. Time dilation is not arbitrary, it has to work in a very specific manner for all the math and the experimental results (and internet) to work.
The gravitational effect of the accounted for mass in each galaxy doesn't explain their movement.
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Localized is a bit of a weird way to put it. The effect decreases with distance. But as you go further out, you're also orbiting not just the black hole but the rest of the galaxy in between, meaning more gravitational force in the same direction.
But how much faster could the outside really be moving compared to the inside if the galaxy still has a distinct spiral shape and hasn't combined into an amorphous disc? If it's been rotating for billions of years, but still has distinct spiral arms, it can't be
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One of the mysterious effects is the difference in rotational speed as you go out from the center of the galaxy. Again that can't be impacted by something that's only in the center.
And yet they treat the galaxy as a point source of gravity at the center. See this post by Sique [slashdot.org] as an example. Plus, if gravity waves are a reality, then gravity must travel at a limited speed. This would mean that things orbit where the gravity was and not where it is now. This would also mean that the stars in the same orbit at the outer edges of the galaxy are affected by the stars ahead in the orbit more than the ones behind in the orbit. Since they are all travelling around together and gravity has a
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No.
Dark matter isn't just matter we don't see. It's matter that doesn't collide with regular matter, which makes it not conform to galaxies' disk shape.
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More to the point, dark matter is matter that doesn't collide with physicists so they get to ascribe to it any perplexing properties they like and then feed it to the rest of us in a bid to act like they do understand how it acts in the universe.
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Physicists have postulated the existence of cold dark matter because the observations require something to explain them. Large detectors have been built in an attempt to find dark matter. You, on the other hand, have decided that it doesn't exist. What's your explanation, then? Why don't you clear all this up for the rest of us?
In my experience, when someone characterises the current picture so ungenerously, it's because they're a crank of some kind.
We don't know what dark matter is (Score:2)
Dark matter isn't just matter we don't see. It's matter that doesn't collide with regular matter, which makes it not conform to galaxies' disk shape.
We don't know for certain that what we are calling "dark matter" is matter at all. Dark Matter is a place holder term used to explain a gap between our observations and our models. We have some guesses as to what it might be and we've ruled out a few possibilities. Calling it some form of weakly interacting matter is among the more reasonable hypothesis but we can't confirm or deny that idea at this time. It also could be some sort of error in our model of how gravity works. Not quite as likely but not
Definitions (Score:3)
We don't know for certain that what we are calling Matter is matter at all. Matter is a term used to explain our observations and our models.
[eyeroll] What we refer to as matter is matter by definition based on phenomena we have directly observed and experiments we have conducted on its properties. We understand quite a lot (though not everything) about its properties and component parts. Dark matter is something we have no direct observations of and have no idea what its properties might be aside from its apparent effect on gravitational models at large physical scales. We know matter is matter because we've seen it directly, have experimen
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You are wrong. The fact that we don't know what dark matter is, doesn't imply we don't know whether it's matter.
One of the few things we know is that it is matter.
The other thing we are certain about is that it does not interact as easily as other matter with "accounted for" matter.
"Direct observation" stopped being required proof over a century ago.
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This is a conversation for adults. But feel free to scream and cry in the background like an annoying baby.
Only your parents give a fuck and only because they have to take you home to change your diapers after the conversation is over.
Just great. (Score:5, Funny)
Monster Black Holes May Lurk All Around Us
I thought I only had to watch out for their over-priced HDMI cables.
Just an irk (Score:2)
But the human habitation analogies in this piece make me cringe just a bit.
Stuoid headline (Score:2)
We would notice if any supermassive black holes were close enough to affect us
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close enough to affect us
Everything in the observable universe is close enough to affect us.
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Nope. That which cannot interact with us is not observable, and thus beyond the observable universe boundary, by definition.
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I can verify this. (Score:5, Funny)
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I can verify. There is a giant one in my wallet. I put money in... aaaaaand it's gone.
If it's thong-shaped and on a stripper, it's not your wallet.
These comments suck (Score:2)
Don't get sucked in to a discussion on why black holes don't suck any more than regular objects. That would suck.
What's so surprising? (Score:2)
Mighty appetite (Score:2)
"While finding a gigantic black hole in a massive galaxy in a crowded area of the Universe is to be expected -- like running across a skyscraper in Manhattan"
The holes have already eaten everything, that's the same reason why there are no penguins on the North-pole, the polar bears ate them all.
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Nah! (Score:4, Interesting)
Some nice theories here but I'm sticking with my own pet theory: our observable universe exists entirely inside a black hole, slowly being compressed at the center across time.
Our measurements that don't take this into account see the universe as "expanding" because our cherry-picked points of reference are actually getting closer together.
But since this is all happening simultaneously, even our own instruments and myriad points of reference for myriad "constants" are also being compressed, which means it completely goes over our heads and the ruler we think we're holding is much shorter than it actually is.
Also, being on the inside of an event horizon explains why a universe that's supposed to be lit up with infinite stellar matter is more or less dark. Not the entire actual, "outside" universe is in here, inside this particular black hole, with us.
The smallest, relatively debris-like space rock outside this black hole might astound us with dimensions the size of the local group, and indeed the local group may have formed long after such a space rock was sucked in past this black hole's event horizon. As the matter from the space rock was siphoned into a stream of particles past the event horizon, and entered into proximity with the particles of other objects that had also been sucked in, their relative closeness exerted some weak influence of gravity and they coalesced into various tiny swirls and clouds.
Meanwhile, we cannot detect the singularity at the center of the black hole because of the relative proximity of all observable objects near to it. It would just appear to be a "background force" omnipresent over everything, and we would never be able to develop either an instrument to measure the singularity's exerted force because of a lack of possible reference-points.
This leads to the question "well, since black holes also capture light particles, why isn't all the light of the 'real', 'outside' universe also visible as a sheen all around us at the edges of the visible universe?"
But we don't have any concept of what happens to light after it crosses an event horizon. For all we know, photons are just energetic enough to whip around the event horizon without ever being perceived again (you'd have to be right on the event horizon, with a line of observation orthogonal to the photon's path -- which is always changing due to the centripetal force pointing inward) and only less energetic forms such as hydrogen actually manage to "fall in" (which would explain the otherwise inexplicable background hydrogen.)
Sorry if you haven't encountered this theory before, it's entirely my own creation that I came up with just trying to be controversial while lounging around staring at the sky at night. I'm not nearly mathematically creditable enough (only recently passed Differential Equations and completed my minor in mathematics, and majoring in computer engineering, not astrophysics or related fields,) I don't have the time or the fancy, and most importantly of all I wouldn't want to be the one to have to break it to anybody.
And I'm absolutely sure it would be rejected outright, just because every time I bring it up to anyone they just get stunned and stare off into space. I mainly use it as a psych-out for people who are high or drunk at parties, you know -- to fuck with people.
[Re:Nah!] (Score:2)
"we would never be able to develop either the instrument..." ... to finish the sentence: "or the observation of a point of reference outside of the local effects of the black hole."
Also: the main reason this theory isn't acceptable is because, in line with the standards of meritable academe, it can't pass Karl Popper's standard of falsifiability. Unless Thomas Kuhn's theory of experimental paradigm can be modified to disprove that Popper's falsifiability is required for all experimental conclusions -- perha
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And any ways, it's embarrassing. Supposing you offered to include data outside the observable universe, someone trite could ask "oh, yeah? Where'd you get that from?"
Which all implies that your mother is the size of the observable universe, you know, what with all the talk of light-emitting matter entering the cherry-picked black hole and all, Adam Kadmon, etc.
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I'm glad to hear other people have posited the same theory.
About the only thing we could hope for (if we're serious -- I'm not too sure that I am in this case) is that enough people support the theory and wait around for all of the thousands of other theories that are based on its exact inverse to eventually fail, leaving no further opposition.
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Horton, is that you?
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That doesn't fit observations or models of black holes. Fa
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C [wikipedia.org]/H0 [wikipedia.org] = Rhs [wikipedia.org] Distance to edge of observable Universe is a little bigger because expansion is accelerating and will in the future pass the edge of the Hubble sphere.
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Reminds me of this post:
https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=578907&cid=23722965 [slashdot.org]
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Enrico Fermi Is Laughing (Score:2)
All these hysterical headlines.
So, I invoke a variation of the Fermi Paradox in relation to black holes. If they were all over the place "lurking" as the article suggests we should see evidence of that through Gravitational Lensing. Random points in space where suddenly we see a 'smear.' Other evidence would be through objects moving in odd was as we see at the center of our own galaxy. I've never read about any of that.
Last time I checked, we only see lensing where there is a defined galaxy, which then e
Re:Black holes are made up (Score:4, Informative)
There is 0 evidence that what we call a "black hole" is an actual real class of objects that really exist.
Black holes is a prediction of our theory which matches observations so far. A recent example is the black hole merger causing the gravitational waves detected at LIGO.
Unless we find a different theory which matches observations better and which says that black holes are in fact not black holes but something else, we will think of these objects as black holes.
Theory suggests that black holes cannot form because they would require infinite time to collapse.
This is plain wrong. The collapse happens in a very short time, in the proper frame of reference.
See for example http://physics.stackexchange.c... [stackexchange.com] for more details.
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There is 0 evidence that what we call a "black hole" is an actual real class of objects that really exist.
Black holes is a prediction of our theory which matches observations so far.
So... Like anything deeper than a few km in our own Earth. Or Earth's orbit around the Sun.
Thank you, but I think I'll continue to take as real that which "is a prediction of our theories which matches observations so far".
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Disregard that. I was answering the previous post. Sorry for the moment of dumbness.
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There are many possible models collapsed objects that match our observations so far. A "black hole" (i.e., an object with a singularity) is only one
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A "black hole" (i.e., an object with a singularity) is only one of many such models, but it happened to be one of the earliest ones, which is why the name stuck.
From what I understand, the current definition of a black hole is not an object with a singularity, but a region of space surrounded by an event horizon.
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Discussions of alien civilizations waging wars over those canals were a popular household topic conversation, just like black holes today.
Wow your household must be really different from mine, Sheldon Cooper. OBTW did you know they really fucked up your theme song, the universe started 13 Billion years not 13 Million, Idiot song writers.
FTFY (Score:2)
No mate. You're wrong.
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But that is what tv is for.
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for only $8.99 for a 4 hour block.