From NASA Goddard:
Behemoth black hole found in an unlikely place
Astronomers have uncovered a near-record breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe. The observations, made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, may indicate that these monster objects may be more common than once thought.
Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes – those roughly 10 billion times the mass of our sun – have been found at the cores of very large galaxies in regions of the universe packed with other large galaxies. In fact, the current record holder tips the scale at 21 billion suns and resides in the crowded Coma galaxy cluster that consists of over 1,000 galaxies.
“The newly discovered supersized black hole resides in the center of a massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 1600, located in a cosmic backwater, a small grouping of 20 or so galaxies,” said lead discoverer Chung-Pei Ma, a University of California-Berkeley astronomer and head of the MASSIVE Survey, a study of the most massive galaxies and supermassive black holes in the local universe. While finding a gigantic black hole in a massive galaxy in a crowded area of the universe is to be expected – like running across a skyscraper in Manhattan – it seemed less likely they could be found in the universe’s small towns.
“There are quite a few galaxies the size of NGC 1600 that reside in average-size galaxy groups,” Ma said. “We estimate that these smaller groups are about 50 times more abundant than spectacular galaxy clusters like the Coma cluster. So the question now is, ‘Is this the tip of an iceberg?’ Maybe there are more monster black holes out there that don’t live in a skyscraper in Manhattan, but in a tall building somewhere in the Midwestern plains.”
The researchers also were surprised to discover that the black hole is 10 times more massive than they had predicted for a galaxy of this mass. Based on previous Hubble surveys of black holes, astronomers had developed a correlation between a black hole’s mass and the mass of its host galaxy’s central bulge of stars – the larger the galaxy bulge, the proportionally more massive the black hole. But for galaxy NGC 1600, the giant black hole’s mass far overshadows the mass of its relatively sparse bulge. “It appears that that relation does not work very well with extremely massive black holes; they are a larger fraction of the host galaxy’s mass,” Ma said.
Ma and her colleagues are reporting the discovery of the black hole, which is located about 200 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Eridanus, in the April 6 issue of the journal Nature. Jens Thomas of the Max Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany is the paper’s lead author.
One idea to explain the black hole’s monster size is that it merged with another black hole long ago when galaxy interactions were more frequent. When two galaxies merge, their central black holes settle into the core of the new galaxy and orbit each other. Stars falling near the binary black hole, depending on their speed and trajectory, can actually rob momentum from the whirling pair and pick up enough velocity to escape from the galaxy’s core. This gravitational interaction causes the black holes to slowly move closer together, eventually merging to form an even larger black hole. The supermassive black hole then continues to grow by gobbling up gas funneled to the core by galaxy collisions. “To become this massive, the black hole would have had a very voracious phase during which it devoured lots of gas,” Ma said.
The frequent meals consumed by NGC 1600 may also be the reason why the galaxy resides in a small town, with few galactic neighbors. NGC 1600 is the most dominant galaxy in its galactic group, at least three times brighter than its neighbors. “Other groups like this rarely have such a large luminosity gap between the brightest and the second brightest galaxies,” Ma said.
Most of the galaxy’s gas was consumed long ago when the black hole blazed as a brilliant quasar from material streaming into it that was heated into a glowing plasma. “Now, the black hole is a sleeping giant,” Ma said. “The only way we found it was by measuring the velocities of stars near it, which are strongly influenced by the gravity of the black hole. The velocity measurements give us an estimate of the black hole’s mass.”
The velocity measurements were made by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North 8-meter telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. GMOS spectroscopically dissected the light from the galaxy’s center, revealing stars within 3,000 light-years of the core. Some of these stars are circling around the black hole and avoiding close encounters. However, stars moving on a straighter path away from the core suggest that they had ventured closer to the center and had been slung away, most likely by the twin black holes.
Archival Hubble images, taken by the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), supports the idea of twin black holes pushing stars away. The NICMOS images revealed that the galaxy’s core was unusually faint, indicating a lack of stars close to the galactic center. A star-depleted core distinguishes massive galaxies from standard elliptical galaxies, which are much brighter in their centers. Ma and her colleagues estimated that the amount of stars tossed out of the central region equals 40 billion suns, comparable to ejecting the entire disk of our Milky Way galaxy.
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For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/12/
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I really do love that academics – wonder how they teach their students.
Most astrophysicists agree that based upon big bang acoustics the universe is infinite in space and time, as in has always existed, while also believing that it began some 13.7 billion years ago from the “inflation” and then expansion of a singularity. Does not make sense, but then the math works so what the heck. Also, relativistically, time stops at a singularity, so from whence comes the big bang? Furthermore, how can a singularity form with time stopped? No mass could ever reach the singularity. Lots of stuff does not figure when logic, as opposed to math, is applied. And math is supposed to be a form of logic!
Important question, “how does mass get to the singularity”. How did any mass get into the black hole given matter “hovers on the edge” for longer than the universe has allegedly existed. Well apparently, while the actual matter has passed inside the event horizon, except, if no light can escape (because we can still “see” the object) then.. how did light from the object get to our eyes?
Light both gets trapped and apparently makes it to our eyes or “observation” from hte trapped object that is in fact just trapped light (foolishly explained as “time
I laughed at the black hole in Interstellar, they could see the light that was apparently trapped and never managed to reach their eyes. De Grasse Tyson called it “scientifically accurate” L O L
The term big bang is misleading. Intentionally so as it denotes explosive power, because well, that is what you need, some magical explosion, to defy the physics of alleged black holes, cos nothing escapes these primordial giants except an unknown event “But it must have been powerful because it overcame the infinite space time curvature it resided so it must have been a big bang” << this is intuitive classical thinking and not science.
Our classical brains cooked up black holes because they are an intuitive leap if you treat space time as a real physical thing.
As I said, everything in the universe in a tiny mass would require that particles and nothing else can move, so where did this burst of energy comes from, because in such circumstances a pressure release would be more accurate, suggesting an external event, so one could intuitively claim space time expansion provided the pressure release (the universe is a low pressure universe after all) so temperature would also not exist until space time expanded enough to let particles actually jiggle about, the rate of space time expansion would have led the expansion of matter not the other way around.
See, you can turn it around, and I do not doubt you could quantify in equations what I just said, but that does not make it any more real than the original big bang and it's hot hot beginnings.
Secondly, and importantly, it is Newton's universe that allows you to plop black holes here there and everywhere, it is a linear set of equations, Relativity is highly non linear, separate unrelated sets of equations. So you cant actually go popping black holes everywhere without solving a set of equations each time you add a mass as space time and mass are connected but with Newton, they are not, which is correct, Newton just did not live long enough to incorporate new science in order to resolve the issues with macro scale in his equations just as he never didn't encounter NNFs Non Newtonian Fluids, otherwise his coefficients would have accounted for such I'd imagine.
To get black holes and big bangs together, they basically normalised the two theoretical solutions as to fit them together, basically you need to remove any opposed equations. Only then was superposition possible, but the problem is they altered the very theories they were trying to wedge together.
Or simply put they hammered a square and a circle into the oval hole.
Mark,
You probably know that the accuracy of redshift measurements is something like 40%-60%. The data jump in wide range around the theoretical dependence. And it takes real conviction to conclude that the measurements support the theory. Hubble himself referred to the interpretation of redshift (expansion) that currently became absolutely dominant as one of the possible explanations. However, modern physics is overrun by shysters and, therefore, we have settled “science” whose “stars” like Michio Kaku, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and alike entertain us with scientifically established Big Bang, black holes, dark energy, dark matter… doesn’t matter…
” You probably know that the accuracy of redshift measurements is something like 40%-60%”
So how do you get this? The redshift is measured by comparing the location of well defined absorption bands from astronomical objects to nonmoving samples?
With galactic objects with intrinsic red shift. In such cases red shift is not reliable. So there is that too
A parallax is the only way we have to accurately measure distance and that is limited to how far we sent a satellite out to work with.
We really don’t know how the doppler effect will be interfered with out in the Universe, it’s a massive leap of faith to think there is no effect
An image of where the alleged perpetrator lives:
http://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/heic1607a.jpg
The yellow supergiant at the center has an orbiting blackhole, which was detected by a sudden very bright (iirc brightest in the sky) x-ray emission.
Spectral measurements of dim light coming from the distant objects is a very difficult technical task. The reported accuracy of spectral measurements is something like 1%-5%. If you trust these reports, this is ok accuracy. However, when the redshift velocities are compared to the Hubble law, the deviation of the measured value from the theoretical value can be as high as +100% and -50%. So, my statement of 40-60% accuracy is kind of generous layman-type evaluation. Now, please tell me what other science states that the issue is settled when the measurement data fall into the interval ranging from 0.5v to 2v, where v is the theoretical value. Ah wait, I know some examples – like climate science… actually, any science where desire of tenure and desperate need of obtaining funding is the goal, and not the scientific endeavor. Add to that quite a few clowns that get rich by making shows for Science TV cannel and you have modern physics with its subset of astrophysics, in particular. Desperately trying to be positive and optimistic; however, loosing this battle…
Walt I wonder if you are aware of the Quasar question NASA faced, two very different red shifted quasars that appeared to be connected, NASA released a photo, but if you tweeked the image the bridge appeared, there were a pair of stars in it.
NASA basically doesn’t believe they are connected, because there is no way to disprove the assertion, and observational evidence goes against NASA, but not enough to be of empirical use, because we are technologically limited (so we spend 1.5 tril on climate change) mind you I would not give NASA 1.5 trillion for any project. They are a money black hole, and anyways, their black budget is probably more 😀
Please ignore the main site, I just google image searched. These two have very different red shifts yet they are connected.
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t97/jstunja/NGC7603C_zps4fa74dbe.jpg
Since “black holes” only exist because the standard theory of cosmology can’t explain about 80% of anything, or so it seems, you have to question what it is that they find. If a black hole existed as massive as they claim they are – presumably to explain why galaxies look like they do since there isn’t enough mass otherwise to create them, then they should be easily detected since any star within a reasonable distance would be spinning rapidly around them as they are sucked into these massively hungry monsters. There should be vast open spaces with nothing apparently in the center of these galaxies IF such monsters resided there. Instead, the stars near the center appear to move normally, with none of them approaching relativistic speeds. you can see stars on the opposite side of the center, thus the monster isn’t sucking in light, either. They are, thus, imaginary elements created to shore up a cosmology that fails to define what we actually see. Cosmology, like climate science needs their respective “black holes” to create what their models say MUST be the truth, and since it MUST be the truth, no sense in wasting time and energy on “finding” the truth. We will expend 5 times as much “defending” our chosen truth.
Alternate methods of galaxy creation have been modeled with success to create spiral galaxies but as always with modern science, you only get one view or a narrow scope of views, basically theories that are not anathema to each other.
A plasma sun has been made in the lab, but every 20 years the solar physicists say they are 20 years from replicating the process of continuous nuclear fusion.
I am seeing an awaking to colder fusion, not cold, 5000 degrees can be considered cold fusion. Electrical pressure I have talked about for a few years now, as a means and I’ve been reading a lot, I mention both because I think the solar wind originates from the photosphere along with electrical and EM pressure to turn plasma and solar elements into solar wind.
many people are bamboozled by jargon and to be honest, the field shares its knowledge in either very complicated jargon or amazingly dumbed down cr@p. Never in plain english. Once you boil it down to plain language you can apply logic to the theories and to be honest, this is where so many theories come up short. Because if the plain language is illogical then so is the mathematics they describe
Before we started sending probes out into our own solar system there was an abundance of hypothesis about the planets in our own solar system. Saturn’s rings composition, mar canals, Pluto & Charon… Actual visual observation killed quite a few myths in our own solar system so pardon me if I do not buy into a hypothesis that keeps being challenged by their own findings. Binary suns will interact with each other without a black hole in the center of them, their mass and attraction is the event. Now throw a thousand suns into it, a million suns. It is quite a lovely cg picture tho.. No lack of imagination there:)
17 billion suns is not all that much considering that our own galaxy is estimated to have in excess of 500 billion stars. The great attractor is estimated to have a mass equal to tens of thousands of times the mass of our own galaxy.
Other great attractors out beyond should be emitting some kind of radiation. Are we sure we filtered for everything?
Karl April 12, 2016 at 8:17 am
“curious too how you decide on a 14 day period stating ‘the moon now jumps from one side of the earth to the other every 14 days’ .. this planet rotates .. placing the gravitational period wave at considerably less that I read you as suggesting (1 and 1/2 per day seems closer to right ;)”
Well Karl … the Moon ORBITS the Earth in 28 days … The Earth rotates about its OWN AXIS in 1 day.
Why would an Earth/Moon gravitational wave have anything to do with anything with the Earth daily rotation. The daily cycle produces tides on earth which are a Gravity wave but not a Gravitational wave there is a difference, read about it 🙂
Your response makes me curious now exactly what Earth/Moon component you want to measure.
The other interesting part is you keep referring to EricMorgan as a Mentor of Ligo and I was lost what you were talking … but I think I have worked out that as well when I read your reference.
https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0029/T990181/000/T990181-00.pdf
The top line reads
Eric Morganson
Mentor: Kenneth G. Libbrecht, Frederick J. Raab
So the thing here is Eric is an undergraduate when he is writing this and HIS MENTORS for his work are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_G._Libbrecht
Frederick J. Raab => Head, LIGO Hanford Observatory since 1995
Is that how you got Eric Morganson as some Mentor of Ligo??????
LdB, “Why would an Earth/Moon gravitational wave have anything to do with anything with the Earth daily rotation” Well, gravity operates on 2 bodies at a distance, affecting both as you know – We are using one of the bodies to detect other(s) by looking at deformation of the primary object (Earth, or at least ‘a point’ on earth) – Let’s assume the earth does not rotate but the moon orbits at 1 cycle per day – you’ll see 2 tidal deformations of the planet per cycle. Let’s say the earth rotates once per day and the moon doesn’t rotate at all – you’ll still see 2 tidal deformations a day – that’s why.
We are not measuring gravity waves or gravitational waves with LIGO – we are measuring deformation using an interferometer ..
yes you’re right about Morganson, thanks for that! I read singular ‘mentor’ and seeing his name listed singly read it as: he was the mentor (wrong) presuming the 2 names following were being mentored. Elsewhere on the Caltec site they used the plural when there were two mentors – thanks for spotting that.
Tidal deformations do not equate to black holes or gravitational waves lets be crystal on that though.
Science media went nuts with Gravitational waves confirmed and such, which is not true at all
“Tidal deformations do not equate to black holes or gravitational waves lets be crystal on that though.” Yes I know this is a bit obvious 🙂
So what happens to information such as radio signals or your own thoughts, ( ‘broadcast’ from your brain as EM energy), when it is trapped in a black hole? Is it preserved forever?
I missed this lol
” LdB
April 11, 2016 at 11:28 pm
I do like commentary on such general science issues on WUWT it’s an eyeopener.
Thankfully what the layman public think and believe is about as meaningless as it gets, science is not a democracy and they don’t get a vote.”
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Way to avoid any salient point contradicting in your interpretations Gravitational waves and black holes are not of empirical science sorry, they are purely theoretical. They are still purely theoretical
There is evidence lending to theories and evidence against, but in wider world of theory and physics, the story doesn’t add up sorry, you dont even know which type of black hole you are talking about!
Most concerning is your arrogant attitude, all talk is meaningless if you deem it so.
Where is your convincing evidence because the recent findings are interpretations, not observations, deformation does not equal black hole sorry, nor the presence of gravitational waves, it’s all in your maths, meanwhile our own SMBH doesn’t affect light of close pasing stars and it didn’t swallow a passing cloud of hydrogen, two bits of “observation” that trump your deformation theory.
Science is for anyone that can carry out science you arrogant boy, not only those with qualifications, only the ability to assimilate and apply is required. So there’s another thing you dont understand
We are talking interpretation of perceived effects, that does not actually prove anything however much it convinces you
When we use effects of gravity on planets to find other planets, it is not actual fact until we actually find the planet no matter the evidence. Surely you know that, and are not having a logic fail
We need a new type of AI computer to help break the barriers of thinking about all the scale effects in the universe. Such simulations would explore the depths of how far you can go with gravity wells and how QM works at the singularity to destabilize it.
The big bang theory is screwed by this ‘discovery’.
John