Astronomers Discovered the Fastest-Growing Black Hole Ever Seen (wral.com) 69
Long-time Slashdot reader Yhcrana shares "some good old fashioned astronomy news." Astronomers have discovered "a black hole 20 billion times the mass of the sun eating the equivalent of a star every two days," reports the New York Times.
The black hole is growing so rapidly, said Christian Wolf, of the Australian National University, who led the team that found it in the depths of time, "that it is probably 10,000 times brighter than the galaxy it lives in." So bright, that it is dazzling our view and we can't see the galaxy itself. He and his colleagues announced the discovery in a paper to be published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia...
The blaze from material swirling around this newly observed drainpipe into eternity -- known officially as SMSS J215728.21-360215.1 -- is as luminous as 700 trillion suns, according to Wolf and his collaborators. If it were at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, it would be 10 times brighter than the moon and bathe the Earth in so many X-rays that life would be impossible. Luckily it's not anywhere nearby. It is in fact 12 billion light years away, which means it took that long for its light to reach us, so we are glimpsing this cataclysm as it appeared at the dawn of time, only 2 billion years after the Big Bang, when stars and galaxies were furiously forming.
The blaze from material swirling around this newly observed drainpipe into eternity -- known officially as SMSS J215728.21-360215.1 -- is as luminous as 700 trillion suns, according to Wolf and his collaborators. If it were at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, it would be 10 times brighter than the moon and bathe the Earth in so many X-rays that life would be impossible. Luckily it's not anywhere nearby. It is in fact 12 billion light years away, which means it took that long for its light to reach us, so we are glimpsing this cataclysm as it appeared at the dawn of time, only 2 billion years after the Big Bang, when stars and galaxies were furiously forming.
That sucks (Score:1)
$subject
Re:Cant Be Much Of A Black Hole (Score:5, Informative)
I assume you know that the black hole itself isn't emitting light, but its accretion disk is. There is a bunch of mass that "falls" into the black hole. This mass doesnt approach it head on, it is traveling by. As the black hole pulls the mass, it speeds up and builds angular momentum. This causes is to form a decaying orbit around the black hole. As it falls, it causes friction with all the rest of the mass falling in at the same time. This generates enormous amounts of heat that glows in various bands of radiation. The most luminous generate X-rays, Gamma-rays, light, infrared rays, microwaves, and lower-frequency radio waves.
This object has a massive accretion disk, that is super-luminous.
Re:Cant Be Much Of A Black Hole (Score:5, Interesting)
So it's eating a star every two days, with an accretion disk managing the luminosity of 700 trillion suns.
If you take the Sun's current output and hold that constant for 4.6 billion years and then emit that total energy over two days, you get 0.1% of 700 trillion Sol brightnesses.
The mass balance here must be way strange, involving some kind of seriously supersized all-you-can-eat hot stardust buffet.
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Among other things, the Sun isn't even half way through its life and nuclear fusion only outputs ~0.7% of energy relative to mass vs accretion disk of 10 percent to over 40 percent. Still, presuming 2 solar masses, and our sun only 1/4th through its energy output life, that would be something like 87.5% conversion (if I'm doing my math right).
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I want my black Holes to be black.
Bright is the new black.
Relativity (Score:5, Funny)
It is in fact 12 billion light years away, which means it took that long for its light to reach us,
No, that is not what it means. It took no time for the light at all to reach us. Time passes slower and distances become shorter the faster you go. Travelling at c, the Lorenz factor for the light itself is infinite, and no time passed for it.
What it means is that if light had been governed by Newtonian physics, it would have taken light 12 billion years to get from there to here.
But Newtonian physics turned out to be only an approximation for low speeds, and was overturned a century ago. Einstein discovered that time is a local phenomenon, and that it is meaningless to use phrases like "ago" for relativistic speeds and distances - no two clocks will ever agree, and may disagree by billions of years.
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*facepalm*
So... how could the author have phrased their meaning in a way that would not have triggered your pedantic reflex?
Re:Relativity (Score:5, Insightful)
it would have taken light 12 billion years to get from there to here.
If you're going to be pedantic, you should take into account the expansion of the universe.
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If you're going to be pedantic, you should take into account the expansion of the universe.
Variable and currently increasing expansion, even. It sure complicates calculations quite a bit. And makes the size of the observable universe in any direction bigger in light years than the age of the universe.
However, be that as it may, it doesn't change that it's always wrong to think of light from X light years away as something that happened X years ago. The "ago" is meaningless because you're dealing with different reference frames with wildly varying time.
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And yet it didn't happen yesterday. There is a time on planet Earth, billions of years ago, after which one could not have departed the planet and, travelling at c, arrived at the object we are discussing before the light we are looking at left it.
So your pedantry adds nothing, whilst the shorthand of 12bya informs those well enough to skip past the superficial synchronised view, whilst also providing the general public with an accurate enough interpretation for their purposes of going "Wow!".
Happy now?
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In the Earth frame of reference, the light that we see today began its journey around 12 billion years ago.
No, it didn't. The Earth's frame of reference does not include the remote location, and the word "ago" is meaningless. Rewind the universe to 12 billion years earlier in Earth's (or what was "here" before) reference frame, and you do not rewind 12 billion years everywhere else too.
There is no master clock that ticks for the entire universe. Time is a local phenomenon only.
Re:Relativity (Score:5, Funny)
No, that is not what it means.
It takes an incredible mind for someone to read the sentence "it took that long for its light to reach us" and then assume that anyone else reading this thinks in terms of the light's reference frame.
Kudos for calling out all those lightist people out there who think just because light is inanimate we shouldn't try and view light from its perspective.
Light lives matter!
You mean Lorentz? Forget the relative in relativit (Score:4)
> Travelling at c, the Lorenz factor for the light itself is infinite
No, it's not travelling at C, "for it".
Also did you mean Lorentz factor? More importantly, did you forget the "relative" in "relativity"?
If you look at it from the light's reference frame, it didn't move, and there's nothing to talk about. It's moving at C only from *our* reference frame. Therefore the only reference frame that's useful to discuss, the reference from from which something happened, is ours. The frame in which it took 12 billion years for the light to reach us.
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It took no time for the light at all to reach us. Time passes slower and distances become shorter the faster you go. Travelling at c, the Lorenz factor for the light itself is infinite, and no time passed for it.
There is nothing wrong with saying that the light has been travelling for 12 billion years. That time is relative to time reckoning on Earth. Sure, light travels along null geodesics, but one cannot even construct a rest frame for a light ray. Regardless, there is nothing wrong with using Earth time.
Einstein discovered that time is a local phenomenon, and that it is meaningless to use phrases like "ago" for relativistic speeds and distances - no two clocks will ever agree, and may disagree by billions of years.
No. If we regard spacetime as flat, time is relative, not local. Einstein's main point in special relativity was that different inertial observers will not necessarily agree on clock rates and simultaneous
Mapping data to theory vs. "seeing" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Mapping data to theory vs. "seeing" (Score:1)
What the hell do you believe seeing is??
It is literally you, whatever you are, getting input that makes you assume you got them through eyes being bombarded by trillions of photons. ... Where "previous input" is mostly just anecdotal hearsay from "sources", mostly to manipulate you deliberately. And yes, that includes that scient
Nevermind the massive distortion of your personal perspective, your eyes, and most of all, that machine whose only purpose is biasing all input based on previous input, aka "brain".
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Wow! (Score:3)
I love sciency stuff (Score:2)
Astronomers Discovered the Fastest-Growing Black Hole Ever Seen
Oxymoron that.
Scientists can't directly observe black holes with telescopes that detect x-rays, light, or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. We can, however, infer the presence of black holes...
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes [nasa.gov]
Old news. (Score:3)
12 billion years old.
So bright? (Score:2)
So, it's super massive and super bright and you can't post a fucking picture of it? FML.
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So, it's super massive and super bright and you can't post a fucking picture of it? FML.
Imagine a white pixel.
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So, how would you know it's just one pixel and if it was just one pixel then how would they infer anything about it?
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