Posted on 09/28/2018 2:50:12 PM PDT by ETL
A glob of material the size of Earth is getting sucked into a black hole at nearly one-third the speed of light, a new study reports.
The speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometers) per second, and, according to Einstein's theory of special relativity, that's the top speed for anything traveling in our universe. So, something zipping at a third the speed of light is moving nearly 56,000 miles (90,000 km) per second — fast enough to circle Earth twice in that brief time.
The newly observed infall event occurred in the galaxy PG211+143, which is more than 1 billion light-years away from Earth. Astronomers spotted it using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space telescope, which observes the universe in X-ray light.
"We were able to follow an Earth-sized clump of matter for about a day, as it was pulled towards the black hole, accelerating to a third of the velocity of light before being swallowed up by the hole," study lead author Ken Pounds, a space physicist at the University of Leicester in England, said in a statement.
The matter reached such incredible speeds because black holes have extremely strong gravitational fields, so strong that even light cannot escape once it goes beyond a critical boundary known as the "event horizon." (That's why they're called black holes.)
There are several types of black holes. The most massive kind, called a supermassive black hole, resides at the core of most if not all galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
If there's enough matter falling into a supermassive black hole, the area shines in superbright X-rays that are visible for long distances. These objects are called quasars, or active galactic nuclei. However, most black holes are too compact to pull such material — which is mostly gas — in immediately. Instead, the stuff orbits the black hole, forming an "accretion disk" as it spirals closer. Eventually, the gas is moving so fast that it gets extremely hot and luminous, generating radiation that we can often see from Earth.
"The orbit of the gas around the black hole is often assumed to be aligned with the rotation of the black hole, but there is no compelling reason for this to be the case," University of Leicester representatives wrote in the same statement.
"In fact, the reason we have summer and winter is that the Earth's daily rotation does not line up with its yearly orbit around the sun," they added. "Until now, it has been unclear how misaligned rotation might affect the infall of gas. This is particularly relevant to the feeding of supermassive black holes, since matter — interstellar gas clouds or even isolated stars — can fall in from any direction."
Members of the study team think the gas is indeed misaligned with the black hole's rotation in PG211+143. In such situations, accretion disks can be twisted and torn; some of the various pieces can then slam into each other, "canceling out" their rotation and allowing some gas to zoom directly toward the black hole, rather than swirl around it.
If misaligned disks are common, it could help explain why black holes from the early universe grew big so quickly. Such black holes would spin relatively slowly, allowing them nab more gas in a shorter amount of time than previously thought, researchers said.
The new study was published this month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The Democrats want a black hole that can suck up every dollar and at 2/3 the speed of light!
I'd like to hear what an Earth size chunk of matter sounds like at 56,000 miles per second.
Has anyone here been at the Talladega Superspeedway when they drop the Green Flag and forty stock cars push the accelerator to the floor at exactly the same moment?
Oh, yeah.
It literally pulls the air out of your lungs!
Think about what kind of mileage you could get if you could draft off of that...say from a light year away...
now think of what it sounded like in the 70's when the engines were all 427ci or bigger... THAT made yer guts rumble
*ping*
It is not a black hole. If it was a black hole, the object would be traveling at 186,000 miles per second as it disappered into the black hole, not 56,000 miles per second.
I’m bad at math, so how many feet per second is that? ;)
They’ll need another multi-million dollar grant to recalculate that! The scientists—the scammers of the next generation.
Saw the headline and thought they were
referring to the Senate confirmation
hearing.
So it sucked in the object 1 billion years ago. We just now saw it.
Thanks fieldmarshaldj.
It is not a black hole. If it was a black hole, the object would be traveling at 186,000 miles per second as it disappered into the black hole, not 56,000 miles per second.
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That’s not true. Things can cross the event horizon at varying speeds. Just like falling out of earth orbit. You don’t necessarily start your fall at terminal velocity.
So it sucked in the object 1 billion years ago. We just now saw it.
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Yup. It already happened. A long time ago.
So a rescue mission is out of the question.
Yeah, I guess rescue is out of the question. I wonder if there was a they, and if there was, did they save themselves by getting off in time.
What happens when a black hole stops feeding?
Does it fart?
5.56mm
Is it a "clump" because we are on the train...Or, because we are standing beside the tracks?
Even gluons mediate their structure at c. I doubt matter can ever reach it.
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