Universe Today » Black Holes

Black Hole Drive Could Power Future Starships

Ryan Anderson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:10:03 +0000

Image credit: NASA

What would happen if humans could deliberately create a black hole? Well, for starters we might just unlock the ultimate energy source to create the ultimate spacecraft engine — a potential "black hole-drive" – to propel ships to the stars.

It turns out black holes are not black at all; they give off "Hawking radiation" that causes them to lose energy (and therefore mass) over time. For large black holes, the amount of radiation produced is miniscule, but very small black holes rapidly turn their mass into a huge amount of energy.
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Finding the Mama Bear of Black Holes

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:22:19 +0000

While astronomers have studied both big and little black holes for decades, evidence for those middle-sized black holes has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., find that an X-ray source in galaxy NGC 5408 represents one of the best cases for a middleweight black hole to date. "Intermediate-mass black holes contain between 100 and 10,000 times the sun's mass," explained Tod Strohmayer, an astrophysicist at Goddard. "We observe the heavyweight black holes in the centers of galaxies and the lightweight ones orbiting stars in our own galaxy. But finding the 'tweeners' remains a challenge."
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Could a Black Hole Fit in Your Computer or In Your Pocket?

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:14:31 +0000

Some of the most frequently asked questions we get here at Universe Today and Astronomy Cast deal with black holes. Everyone wants to know what conditions would be like at the event horizon, or even inside a black hole. Answering those questions is difficult because so much about black holes is unknown. Black holes can't be observed directly because their immense gravity won't let light escape. But in just the past week, three different research teams have released their findings in their attempts to create black holes – or at least conditions analogous to them to advance our understanding.
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Two Black Holes Play a Little One on One

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:43:55 +0000

NGC 6240. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/ C.Canizares, M.Nowak; Optical: NASA/STScI

If black holes could communicate, there would likely be a lotta in your face trash talkin' going on between these two merging black holes. This image of NGC 6240 contains new X-ray data from Chandra (shown in red, orange, and yellow) that has been combined with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope originally released in 2008. The two black holes are a mere 3,000 light years apart and are seen as the bright point-like sources in the middle of the image.
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Blaming Black Holes for Gamma Ray Bursts

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:22:43 +0000

Black holes get a bad rap. Most people are afraid of them, and some think black holes might even destroy Earth. Now, scientists from the University of Leeds are blaming black holes for causing the most energetic and deadly outbursts in the universe: gamma ray bursts.
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© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Black Holes, Gamma Ray Bursts

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Astronomers Find Most Distant Supermassive Black Hole Yet

Nancy Atkinson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:17:07 +0000

Composite pseudo-color image of the QSO (CFHQSJ2329-0301). The RGB colors are assigned to z0; zr and i0-bands, respectively. The figures are north up, east left. Credit: Goto et al.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was a supermassive black hole….. Astronomers from the University of Hawaii have spotted a giant galaxy surrounding the most distant supermassive black hole ever found. The galaxy, so distant that it is seen as it was 12.8 billion years ago, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as our Sun.
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If You Don't Have an LHC, Here's How to Create Your Own Black Hole

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:54:57 +0000

Those fearful folks who have worried about the Large Hadron Collider creating a black hole that could swallow the Earth have probably been feeling pretty safe while the giant particle accelerator is still offline. But hopefully they haven't read the latest Physical Review Letters . It includes a paper that explains how researchers at Dartmouth have figured out a way to create a tiny quantum-sized black hole in their lab, with no LHC required.
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Early Black Holes Are Starving, Not Feasting

Anne Minard — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:32:28 +0000

Credit: KIPAC/SLAC/M. Alvarez, T. Abel and J. Wise

A new black hole may not voraciously devour nearby gas — because it may kick out most of the gas in its neighborhood, a new study shows.

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NASA Satellite Will Provide New Look At Cosmic X-Ray Sources

Brian Ventrudo — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:59:50 +0000

NASA has announced the development of a space-based observatory to give astronomers a new way to view X-rays from exotic objects such as black holes, neutron stars, and supernovae. Called the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS), the mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer (SMEX) series of cost-efficient and highly productive space-science satellites, and will be the first satellite to measure the polarization of X-rays sources beyond the solar system.

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© Brian Ventrudo for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Black Holes, X-ray astronomy

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Ejected Black Holes Drag Clusters of Stars With Them

Nancy Atkinson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:42:06 +0000

The tight cluster of stars surrounding a supermassive black hole after it has been violently kicked out of a galaxy represents a new kind of astronomical object which may provide telltale clues to how the ejection event occurred. “Hypercompact stellar systems” result when a supermassive black hole is violently ejected from a galaxy, following a merger with another supermassive black hole. The evicted black hole rips stars from the galaxy as it is thrown out. The stars closest to the black hole move in tandem with the massive object and become a permanent record of the velocity at which the kick occurred.
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Messier 87 Shows Off for Hundreds of Earth-bound Astronomers

Anne Minard — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:12:26 +0000

When the giant radio galaxy Messier 87 (M 87) unleashed a torrent of gamma radiation and radio flux, an international collaboration of 390 scientists happened to be watching. They're reporting the discovery in this week's issue of Science Express.

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Astronomers Discover Medium-Sized Class of Black Holes

Anne Minard — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:04:48 +0000

It's the Goldilocks variety of black holes: not too big and not too small.

The new source HLX-1, the light blue object to the top left of the galactic bulge, is the ambassador for a new class of black holes, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun. It lies on the periphery of the edge-on spiral galaxy ESO 243-49, about 290 million light years from Earth.

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Mysterious "Blobs" Are Windows Into Galaxy Formation

Anne Minard — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:00:47 +0000

Astronomers say they've discovered the "coming of age" of galaxies and black holes, thanks to new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. The new discovery helps resolve the true nature of gigantic blobs of gas observed around very young galaxies, and sheds light on the formation of galaxies and black holes.

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Super-Size Me: Black Hole Bigger Than Previously Thought

Nancy Atkinson — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:25:57 +0000

Using a new computer model, astronomers have determined that the black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy is at least twice as big as previously thought. Weighing in at 6.4 billion times the Sun’s mass, it is the most massive black hole yet measured, and this new model suggest that the accepted black hole masses in other large nearby galaxies may be off by similar amounts. This has consequences for theories of how galaxies form and grow, and might even solve a long-standing astronomical paradox.
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No Nature VS. Nurture for Stars

Nancy Atkinson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:38:59 +0000

Stars don't seem to mind where they grow up. Either in a nice quiet neighborhood or in the hellish environment near a supermassive black hole, astronomers were surprised to find the same proportions of low- and high-mass young stars in different types of star forming regions. Using the Very Large Telescope, astronomers snapped one of the sharpest views ever of the Arches Cluster — an extraordinary dense cluster of young stars near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. “With the extreme conditions in the Arches Cluster, one might indeed imagine that stars won’t form in the same way as in our quiet solar neighbourhood,” says Pablo Espinoza, the lead author of the paper reporting the new results. “However, our new observations showed that the masses of stars in this cluster actually do follow the same universal law”.

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Could Ghost-Like Object Found by Chandra Be Another 'Voorwerp'?

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:41:50 +0000

The ghost of HDF 130. Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/IoA/A.Fabian et al.); Optical (SDSS), Radio (STFC/JBO/MERLIN)

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost" lurking around a distant supermassive black hole. Astronomers think this high-energy apparition is evidence of a huge eruption produced by the black hole. But this blue blob looks eerily similar to another cosmic blob of gas found by Galaxy Zoo member Hanny Van Arkel, the famous object called Hanny's Voorwerp. Could the two objects be similar?
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Distant black hole poses for a close-up

Anne Minard — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:22:17 +0000

1H0707-495

Astronomers have probed closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy that was once thought to be shrouded in dust — which will greatly advance the look captured in this NASA file image from the mid-1990s. Using new data from ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM)-Newton spaceborne observatory, researchers peered into the innermost depths of the object, which lies at the heart of the galaxy known as 1H0707-495.

“We can now start to map out the region immediately around the black hole,” says Andrew Fabian, at the University of Cambridge, who headed the observations and analysis.

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Is Everything Made of Mini Black Holes?

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:23:00 +0000

In 1971 physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that there might be "mini" black holes all around us that were created by the Big Bang. The violence of the rapid expansion following the beginning of the Universe could have squeezed concentrations of matter to form miniscule black holes, so small they can't even be seen in a regular microscope. But what if these mini black holes were everywhere, and in fact, what if they make up the fabric of the universe? A new paper from two researchers in California proposes this idea.
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Rogue Black Holes May Wander the Galaxy

Nancy Atkinson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:19:46 +0000

Here's another "rogue black hole" theory, which hopefully doesn't set the doomsday crowd off on a new tangent. But new research suggests that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the early galaxy-building days of the Universe, may wander the Milky Way. Astrophysicists Ryan O'Leary and Avi Loeb say that rogue black holes originally lurked at the centers of tiny, low-mass galaxies. Over billions of years, those dwarf galaxies smashed together to form full-sized galaxies like the Milky Way. But they also predict that Earth should be safe, as the closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years away.
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Dark Matter, Dark Energy; Now There's "Dark Gulping"

Nancy Atkinson — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:29:40 +0000

For all you dark matter and dark energy fans out there, now there's another new "dark" to add to the list. It's called "dark gulping," and it involves a process which may explain how supermassive black holes were able to form in the early universe. Astronomers from the University College of London (UCL) propose that dark gulping occurred when there were gravitational interactions between the invisible halo of dark matter in a cluster of galaxies and the gas embedded in the dark matter halo. This occurred when the Universe was less than a billion years old. They found that the interactions cause the dark matter to form a compact central mass, which can be gravitationally unstable, and collapse. The fast dynamical collapse is the dark gulping.
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Black Hole Jets Pack One, Two Punch in Radio, Gamma Rays

Anne Minard — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:01:10 +0000

Compact, ultrabright jets at supermassive black holes in active galaxies were already known to pack an impressive punch in radio waves. And now, an international team of scientists says they're kicking out high-energy gamma rays too.

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Oldest and Most Distant Water in the Universe Detected

Nancy Atkinson — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:49:33 +0000

Astronomers have found the most distant signs of water in the Universe to date. The water vapor is thought to be contained in a maser, a jet ejected from a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, named MG J0414+0534. The radiation from the water maser was emitted when the Universe was only about 2.5 billion years old, a fifth of its current age. "The radiation that we detected has taken 11.1 billion years to reach the Earth, said Dr. John McKean of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). "However, because the Universe has expanded like an inflating balloon in that time, stretching out the distances between points, the galaxy in which the water was detected is about 19.8 billion light years away."
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What Would the View Be Like From Within a Black Hole?

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:33:26 +0000

If you fell into a black hole, would you be engulfed in darkness? Could you see out beyond the event horizon? Are there wormholes inside black holes? Do black holes give birth to baby universes? Believe it or not, these questions may have been answered. Andrew Hamilton from the University of Colorado and Gavin Polhemus have created a video showing what falling into a Schwarzschild black hole might look like to the person falling in. The two researchers warn that based on our experience in the 3D world, we might imagine that falling through the horizon would be like falling through any other surface. However, they say, it's not. And likely, a person falling into the black hole would be able to see outside of the event horizon.
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Don't 'Supermassive' Me: Black Holes Regulate Their Own Mass

Anne Minard — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:22:50 +0000

Stellar-mass black holes, between 7 and 25 times the Sun’s mass, are called “micro-quasars" when they spawn powerful jets of particles and radiation, miniature versions of those seen in quasars. Stellar-mass black holes are on the small end of the scale opposite supermassive black holes, including those in quasars, which weigh millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun.

The micro-quasars' jets may be part of a secret weapon for keeping their petite figures, according to new research.

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Astronomers Detect Two Black Holes in a Cosmic Dance

Anne Minard — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:04:49 +0000

Paired black holes are theorized to be common, but have escaped detection — until now.

Astronomers Todd Boroson and Tod Lauer, from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, Arizona, have found what looks like two massive black holes orbiting each other in the center of one galaxy. Their discovery appears in this week's issue of Nature.

Astronomers have long suspected that most large galaxies harbor black holes at their center, and that most galaxies have undergone some kind of merger in their lifetime. But while binary black hole systems should be common, they have proved hard to find. Boroson and Lauer believe they've found a galaxy that contains two black holes, which orbit each other every 100 years or so. They appear to be separated by only 1/10 of a parsec, a tenth of the distance from Earth to the nearest star.

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