Comments on: How do you Weigh a Supermassive Black Hole? Take its Temperature

By: saito

saito — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:38:40 +0000

how can mass of black holes can weigh just by knowning temperature surrounding them(black hoels) ?is it possible?and what the method?

By: Aodhhan

Aodhhan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:15:47 +0000

Space physics is a rather small community. You want to ensure any new theory is pulled apart and put back together several times, and if possible try to find someone to validate your work before releasing it. Even a small mistake in any calculation can hurt your reputation; a full blow miss is nearly a death blow.

By: alphonso richardson

alphonso richardson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:35:10 +0000

You have a point, Astrofiend: could it be that it took a while to get 'scope time' for their observations, or they needed to convince themselves of the robustness of their theory before speaking to others to help make the observations?

By: Astrofiend

Astrofiend — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:24:33 +0000

"Fabrizio Brighenti from the University of Bologna in Italy, and William Mathews from the University of California at Santa Cruz have been working on this research for the past decade. It is only now, with the availability of a telescope as powerful as Chandra that these observations have been possible."

>>>Great result for them (and all of us)! Should be a very useful technique. I wonder why it took them ten years to test it though; Chandra has been flying for almost that long itself now…