A Giant Black Hole Keeps Evading Detecting and Scientists Can't Explain It (space.com) 41
"An enormous black hole keeps slipping through astronomers' nets..." reports Space.com:
The big galaxy at the core of the cluster Abell 2261, which lies about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth, should have an even larger central black hole — a light-gobbling monster that weighs as much as 3 billion to 100 billion suns, astronomers estimate from the galaxy's mass. But the exotic object has evaded detection so far. For instance, researchers previously looked for X-rays streaming from the galaxy's center, using data gathered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999 and 2004. X-rays are a potential black-hole signature: As material falls into a black hole's maw, it accelerates and heats up tremendously, emitting lots of high-energy X-ray light. But that hunt turned up nothing.
Now, a new study has conducted an even deeper search for X-rays in the same galaxy, using Chandra observations from 2018... But the Chandra data didn't reveal any significant X-ray sources, either in the galactic core or in big clumps of stars farther afield. So the mystery of the missing supermassive black hole persists.
That mystery could be solved by Hubble's successor — NASA's big, powerful James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October 2021. If James Webb doesn't spot a black hole in the galaxy's heart or in one of its bigger stellar clumps, "then the best explanation is that the black hole has recoiled well out of the center of the galaxy," NASA officials wrote.
Now, a new study has conducted an even deeper search for X-rays in the same galaxy, using Chandra observations from 2018... But the Chandra data didn't reveal any significant X-ray sources, either in the galactic core or in big clumps of stars farther afield. So the mystery of the missing supermassive black hole persists.
That mystery could be solved by Hubble's successor — NASA's big, powerful James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October 2021. If James Webb doesn't spot a black hole in the galaxy's heart or in one of its bigger stellar clumps, "then the best explanation is that the black hole has recoiled well out of the center of the galaxy," NASA officials wrote.
Recoil (Score:3)
the best explanation is that the black hole has recoiled well out of the center of the galaxy
What could possibly cause a 3-billion-solar-mass blackhole to recoil?
Re:Recoil (Score:4, Funny)
What could possibly cause a 3-billion-solar-mass blackhole to recoil?
It was searching for pictures of "hot black holes" online and ended up on Goatse by mistake.
Re: Recoil (Score:2)
Thank you for helping to keep the true spirit of Slashdot alive.
Re: (Score:2)
A reply from a four-digiter? I feel honored. :-)
Re: Recoil (Score:3)
A galactical collision.
As in: An entire other galaxy tugging it to their common center. And if especially unlucky, and even larger black hoe at its center passing by juust close enough to accelerate it into some lonely trajectory.
Re:Recoil (Score:4, Informative)
the best explanation is that the black hole has recoiled well out of the center of the galaxy
What could possibly cause a 3-billion-solar-mass blackhole to recoil?
When two (super massive) black holes collide, and the collision is even slightly off-center, the energy released by the collision can give the resulting black hole a considerable kick. Suppose two black holes of 1.6-billion-solar mass collided, they would convert 112 million solar-mass from mass to energy, according to this collision calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com... [omnicalculator.com] . That much energy, if not released perfectly symmetrically, can give any object a large kick.
Re: Recoil (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No matter how big a gravity well is, inertia is still a thing. That much energy being released has to go somewhere, and that almost inevitably will be released as momentum. Let's also remember that while gravity, at the larger (say, Newtonian) scale, is pretty powerful, it is still by far the weakest of all the physical interactions, and the other fundamental interactions can easily overpower it (don't believe me, take a bouncy ball and drop it on the floor, the strong interaction is so many times more powe
Re: (Score:2)
What could possibly cause a 3-billion-solar-mass blackhole to recoil?
It swallowed itself.
Re:Have they considered... (Score:4, Informative)
Have they considered dark matter? I find it explains quite a bit.
Dark matter does not clump in the galactic center. It appears to be spread out throughout the galaxy and beyond the disk of visible stars. Dark matter alone can't explain what astronomers are seeing.
Re: (Score:1)
Dark matter alone can't explain what astronomers are seeing.
It can't explain what astronomers are not seeing either...
You got it the wrong way around. (Score:5, Interesting)
Dark matter is just a term we use for "that mass discrepancy between our theories and our measurements, that we can't explain yet, but hypothetize to be some form of matter we can't measure the normal way, hence 'dark'.".
If we had an explanation for dark matter that actually fits, we would not need this term anymore. (Unless it turns out to really be literally the only dark actual matter, of course.)
Re: You got it the wrong way around. (Score:2)
Except that if it turns out to be actual matter that is dark then we need to revisit other stuff because weâ(TM)ve calculated how much baryonic matter there should be in the universe and it matches up pretty well with what we can see. Suddenly finding another forty times that would throw a considerable spanner in the works.
Re: You got it the wrong way around. (Score:2)
Yes, that is what "can't explain it yet" means.
There *is* a spanner in our works. Math already doesn't check out.
And what we saw as matter until that discovery was visible matter. It is pretty easy to acccept that matter doesn't necessarily have to interact electromagnetically.
Re: (Score:3)
It's called "dark matter" because whatever it is, it at best only weakly interacts with other matter. It is literally dark because it does not appear to interact with electromagnetic radiation (photons), or if it does, such interactions are so exceedingly rare that any such interactions or collisions have proven so far to be very hard to spot.
One of the ways baryonic matter (the matter we are made up of and which we see every day when we look out a window or through a telescope) interacts is through electro
Enormous Dyson sphere maybe? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If it is a Dyson Sphere, that would explain the lack of x-rays but does not explain the lack of IR.
The James Web Space Telescope will have much better infrared resolution than anything currently existing, so we may find out after it launches in October.
A Dyson Sphere is very unlikely. It would be a K3 civilization, which should be much rarer than K2 civs, yet we have seen ZERO K2s despite scanning over 100,000 galaxies.
Also, this galaxy is 2.7B LY from the earth. So the K3 civilization would have been est
Re:Enormous Dyson sphere maybe? (Score:4, Funny)
If it is a Dyson Sphere, that would explain the lack of x-rays but does not explain the lack of IR.
OK, I knew their expensive vacuums are fancy and all, but damn, what the hell is going on inside that ball? Carpet? I should be able to re-tar my driveway at night with that thing.
Re: Enormous Dyson sphere maybe? (Score:2)
Has somebody watched Isaac Arthur? :D
Yoi know what I wonder? How does he know all this stuff? I mean not just Sci-Fi theoretize, but that it actually scientifically makes sense? Because what he talks about goes way beyond any specialist's area of expertise, be in a physicist, astronomist, philosopher or whatever.
No, "futurist" is not an area of expertise. Nor a job. It means "fortune teller". Which means "scam artist".
Evading detecting? (Score:3, Informative)
Dear lord. Try, "evading detection."
Re: (Score:2)
Virtual +1 informative. Serious question for EditorDavid: did you ever go to school? Did you really pass your english classes?!
Re: (Score:2)
The running joke is that the editors are basically morons. It has been that way before Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda sold /. back in 2011.
They had one job -- to fix spelling / grammar mistakes and don't post duplicates -- and they can't even do that!
Time to get ready for the weekly Bitcoin propaganda in 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. /s
Have they tried the airport men's room? (Score:2)
oblig. Star Wars reference (Score:1)
That's no black hole...
Off course (Score:4, Funny)
Well, off course. It has not given consent for tracking.
Well, off course. If it is black, evading detection should be its second nature.
Hero (Score:2, Offtopic)
A Giant Black Hole Keeps Evading Detecting
So it's like Jessica Jones sitting at home being drunk instead of working?
Or is it evading detection by scientists?
I wonder if this is something like a Anti-Quasar. (Score:5, Interesting)
Such Black holes are called active cores. The Black hole at the core of our Galaxy is inactive, as it gets feed only small amounts of matter right now, and thus the jets are small and not really visible right now.
But if there is no material around the Black hole, and the aggregation disk has completely sunk under the event horizon, then there is nothing which can actually radiate to the outside and announce the presence of a Black hole. Maybe this galaxy is totally silent right now, and until new matter has spiraled down to its center and formed a new aggregation disc, we won't detect any radiation from its core.
"aggregation disc" (Score:1)
You keep using that word. Don't. [wikipedia.org]
May not have an acceleration disk (Score:2)
What that Black Hole is Doing (Score:2)
Unless the "Giant Black Hole" is supposed to be doing some kind of detecting function that it's shirking, then " A Giant Black Hole Keeps Evading Detecting and Scientists Can't Explain It" is terrible grammatically.
I think they meant to say "" A Giant Black Hole Keeps Evading DETECTION and Scientists Can't Explain It"
Re: (Score:3)
right and the quadrapole gravity waves we've been detecting are electric too? nope, electric universe hypothesis debunked decades ago and new observations just stomping on its dead corpse.
How can they tell? (Score:2)
If it evades detection, how do they know it's even there? Is it Schrodinger's black hole? (blah blah blah, something snarky about Uranus).
Theory vs experiment (Score:2)