Teh One Who Knocks
12-09-2011, 01:39 AM
By James Mulroy, PCWorld
http://i.imgur.com/bijAe.jpg
Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy; Credit: NASA JPL
The next time you take an intergalactic trip to deep space, make sure that you avoid the galaxies of NGC 3842 and NGC 4889 because you just might get yourself sucked into one of the two largest black holes in the known universe.
Recently discovered by an international team of astronomers, these two black holes are at least as heavy as 10 billion Suns. According to University of California, Berkeley, these two black holes are more than 300 million light years from Earth and they threaten to consume anything and everything within an area that's five times the size of our own solar system.
These two supermassive black holes--the largest form of black holes--form the center of two galaxies NGC 3842 and NGC 4889.
What's so fascinating about these massive beasts isn't just that they are large, but they also may be the remnants of quasars--galactic nuclei that typically surround a black hole. Quasars are perhaps the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects in the universe, and are often found at the centers of young galaxies like NGC 4261, 3C 273 (the brightest galaxy to appear in the Earth's sky), and perhaps even our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Basically, at the center of a typical young galaxy is a small black hole surrounded by a quasar, which is itself powered by the black hole. As the black hole sucks in more and more matter, it grows more and more powerful and massive, and it eventually sucks in the quasar that once surrounded it.
Interestingly enough, some quasars are so massive that they have jets of gas shooting out of them that extend many light years into space. These jets are formed from matter that gets torn apart as it approaches the black hole, releasing some mater and energy. According to the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Tennessee, NGC 4261 has a jet that stretches 88 thousand light years from the black hole.
Damn.
http://i.imgur.com/o2n7i.jpg
NGC 4261 Quasar Gas Jets Spill 88,000 light years; Credit: NASA
These two supermassive black holes probably use to have massive quasars just like NGC 4261, but the black holes went unnoticed for so long because they have sucked up everything around them. Now the massive galaxies that orbit them are well out of the black hole's event horizons--the point of no return that not even light can escape.
According to UC Berkeley graduate student and first author of a paper on the discovery, Nicholas McConnell,these black holes have an event horizon of 200 times the orbit of Earth, they have a gravitational influence in a diameter of 4,000 light years across, and these black holes are 2,500 times as massive as the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The search for these supermassive black holes was conducted based on the results of computer simulations by Chung-Pei Ma, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, that dealt with galaxy mergers. As you can imagine, these supermassive black holes were found in equally supermassive galaxies with as many as a trillion stars.
The researchers used telescopes at the Gemini and Keck observatories to find and analyze the black holes. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the UC Berkeley Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.
http://i.imgur.com/bijAe.jpg
Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy; Credit: NASA JPL
The next time you take an intergalactic trip to deep space, make sure that you avoid the galaxies of NGC 3842 and NGC 4889 because you just might get yourself sucked into one of the two largest black holes in the known universe.
Recently discovered by an international team of astronomers, these two black holes are at least as heavy as 10 billion Suns. According to University of California, Berkeley, these two black holes are more than 300 million light years from Earth and they threaten to consume anything and everything within an area that's five times the size of our own solar system.
These two supermassive black holes--the largest form of black holes--form the center of two galaxies NGC 3842 and NGC 4889.
What's so fascinating about these massive beasts isn't just that they are large, but they also may be the remnants of quasars--galactic nuclei that typically surround a black hole. Quasars are perhaps the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects in the universe, and are often found at the centers of young galaxies like NGC 4261, 3C 273 (the brightest galaxy to appear in the Earth's sky), and perhaps even our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Basically, at the center of a typical young galaxy is a small black hole surrounded by a quasar, which is itself powered by the black hole. As the black hole sucks in more and more matter, it grows more and more powerful and massive, and it eventually sucks in the quasar that once surrounded it.
Interestingly enough, some quasars are so massive that they have jets of gas shooting out of them that extend many light years into space. These jets are formed from matter that gets torn apart as it approaches the black hole, releasing some mater and energy. According to the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Tennessee, NGC 4261 has a jet that stretches 88 thousand light years from the black hole.
Damn.
http://i.imgur.com/o2n7i.jpg
NGC 4261 Quasar Gas Jets Spill 88,000 light years; Credit: NASA
These two supermassive black holes probably use to have massive quasars just like NGC 4261, but the black holes went unnoticed for so long because they have sucked up everything around them. Now the massive galaxies that orbit them are well out of the black hole's event horizons--the point of no return that not even light can escape.
According to UC Berkeley graduate student and first author of a paper on the discovery, Nicholas McConnell,these black holes have an event horizon of 200 times the orbit of Earth, they have a gravitational influence in a diameter of 4,000 light years across, and these black holes are 2,500 times as massive as the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The search for these supermassive black holes was conducted based on the results of computer simulations by Chung-Pei Ma, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, that dealt with galaxy mergers. As you can imagine, these supermassive black holes were found in equally supermassive galaxies with as many as a trillion stars.
The researchers used telescopes at the Gemini and Keck observatories to find and analyze the black holes. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the UC Berkeley Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.