Astronomers Discover Black Hole With Energy Jets Spanning 23 Million Light Years (nytimes.com) 42
"The New York Times reports that astronomers have discovered a black hole spitting energy across 23 million light-years of intergalactic space (source paywalled; alternative source)," writes longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot. From the report: Two jets, shooting in opposite directions, compose the biggest lightning bolt ever seen in the sky -- about 140 times as long as our own Milky Way galaxy is wide, and more than 10 times the distance from Earth to Andromeda, the nearest large spiral galaxy. Follow-up observations with optical telescopes traced the eruption to a galaxy 7.5 billion light-years away that existed when the universe was less than half its current age of 14 billion years. At the heart of that galaxy was a black hole spewing energy equivalent to the output of more than a trillion stars.
"The Milky Way would be a little dot in these two giant eruptions," said Martijn Oei, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Oei led the team that made the discovery, which was reported in Nature on Sept. 18 and announced on the journal's cover with an illustration reminiscent of a "Star Wars" poster. The astronomers have named the black hole Porphyrion, after a giant in Greek mythology -- a son of Gaia -- who fought the gods and lost. The discovery raises new questions of how such black holes could affect the evolution and structure of the universe.
"The Milky Way would be a little dot in these two giant eruptions," said Martijn Oei, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Oei led the team that made the discovery, which was reported in Nature on Sept. 18 and announced on the journal's cover with an illustration reminiscent of a "Star Wars" poster. The astronomers have named the black hole Porphyrion, after a giant in Greek mythology -- a son of Gaia -- who fought the gods and lost. The discovery raises new questions of how such black holes could affect the evolution and structure of the universe.
Re: (Score:1)
Then remember all the people in grips of the "universe is finite, and we must reduce out resource usage" cult.
Name three.
Re: (Score:2)
Cults or people?
Cults would be Green, JustStopOil and Degrowth among several others. Three people would be for example any three protesters from JustStopOil.
Re: (Score:2)
it is definitely unwise to trash/substantially degrade the livability of the jewel of a planetary ecosphere that you live in.
Yes, in the grand scheme of things, climate chemistry and temperature/energy regime may rebalance at another comfortable equilibrium, and the 6th great extinction we are causing may be recovered by new species and ecosystems, the former can take 1000s of years at a minimum, and the latter, on the order
Re: (Score:2)
I say we just test Luckyo's sincerity. Let's house the homeless at his house, surely he won't mind because the universe is infinite and he could just build trillions of houses throughout the Milky Way alone, so clearly there's nothing special about Earth or his house in particular.
Re: "Limited resources" (Score:2)
LOL Space Nuttery should be in the DSM... you're insane.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a shame that "feebleness of mind" was removed from it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
UFOs aren't stopping us from going out there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm telling you that we need to focus on hatching those eggs.
Re: (Score:2)
Then remember all the people in grips of the "universe is finite, and we must reduce out resource usage" cult.
There is so much, so deeply, wrong with this I'm not even sure if this was produced by some backyard LLM.
Re: "Limited resources" (Score:1)
Luckyo is a certifiable lunatic. And he's not funny or endearing the way creimer was.
Re:"Limited resources" (Score:4, Insightful)
Try to Imagine the amount of energy in those things. Then remember all the people in grips of the "universe is finite, and we must reduce out resource usage" cult.
We should strive to become interplanetary. And then intersystemic. And then finally intergalactic. Resources of the universe are infinite. And we should strive to get to them. Human potential has little to no limit, and we should act like it.
We haven't even figured out how to effectively use the energy available on earth, like the energy from a single lightning bolt. We keep using highly inefficient methods of energy production that are limited in resources. We are not even close to ready to gather energy from space.
Re: (Score:2)
There isn't that much energy in a single lightning bolt, so it makes little sense to do it. The reason it looks as spectacular as it does is due to extremely short duration of it. It's calculated to be around 7 GJ.
That's less than 200 liters of gasoline worth of energy. Consider how much a single modern power plant produces, and extreme intermittency of these energy bursts and you'll understand why it's utterly irrelevant as a source of energy for humanity.
Re: (Score:1)
Limited Understanding (Score:2)
Then remember all the people in grips of the "universe is finite, and we must reduce out resource usage" cult.
You are completely misunderstanding the point such people are trying to make. The aim is to reduce our impact on the Earth's environment. Reducing resource usage is a means to that end but if you can reduce your impact while increasing resource usage, for example by putting all our heavy industry off-planet that would be fine. If we ever harnessed energies comparable to those in these jets then we had better not be doing that while still on Earth or frankly even in the solar system.
Resources of the universe are infinite.
Yes, in the same way th
Obligatory Douglas Adams quotation (Score:5, Funny)
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Paywall (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Paywalled shit
...it had to happen
Re: (Score:2)
Wut? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
23 Million light years? Wut is that in Football fields?
American or English/European/International Football ?
Re: (Score:2)
What? I don't know that...... Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh
Re: (Score:2)
What? I don't know that...... Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh
Well, at least you have one of the nicest SIGs on Slashdot, so props for that.
Re: (Score:2)
23 Million light years? Wut is that in Football fields?
American or English/European/International Football ?
Well, the Europeans get mad if we don't use Soccer pitches (yeah, I know that us futbol)
Re: (Score:2)
South Americans as well - and likely are far more into it than Europeans. It got so bad the crowds cheering their team were so thick that the athletes had to be helicoptered because their bus was caught in the crowds and they were going to miss the celebrations at the stadium. Apparently like 23 million people came
Re: (Score:2)
200 galaxies lined up end to end.
Depends (Score:2)
Re:Wut? (Score:4, Informative)
That would be equivalent to about 1.9781441e+21 (or 1,978,144,100,000,000,000,000) US football fields I hope that helps you visualize the scale more easily.
Re: (Score:3)
That would be equivalent to about 1.9781441e+21 (or 1,978,144,100,000,000,000,000) US football fields I hope that helps you visualize the scale more easily.
Crikeys! Someone did the math! You win the internet today, my friend. 8^)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: unit of measure (Score:1)
TFA used our galaxy, the Milky Way as one of their units. Will it be shortened to MilkWays, or just Milks?
But I thought the boundary of our galaxy is ambiguous.
Re: (Score:2)
TFA used our galaxy, the Milky Way as one of their units. Will it be shortened to MilkWays, or just Milks?
But I thought the boundary of our galaxy is ambiguous.
It is definitely ambiguous, I think recently they decided it was around 2 million years across, so I wouldn't be surprised if it became bigger yet.
https://www.sciencenews.org/ar... [sciencenews.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Or Library of Congresses?