This photo released by NASA Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002 shows medium-size black holes taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. (AP Photo/NASA, FILE)
Posted on 04/24/2006 4:40:32 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - With gasoline hitting $3 per gallon, scientists have just found the most energy-efficient engines in the universe — black holes, those whirling super-dense centers of galaxies that suck in nearly everything.
The jets of energy spurting out of older ultra-efficient black holes also seem to be playing a crucial role as zoning cops in large galaxies, preventing too many stars from sprouting. That explains why there aren't as many burgeoning galaxies chock full of stars as previously expected, said scientists citing results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory that were released Monday.
For the first time, scientists measured both the mass of hot gas that is being sucked into nine older black holes and the unseen super-speedy jets of high energy particles spit out, which essentially form a cosmic engine. Then they determined a rate of how efficient these older black hole engines are and were awe-struck.
These black holes are 25 times more efficient than anything man has built, with nuclear power being the most efficient of man-made efforts, said study lead author Steve Allen of Stanford University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
"If you could make a car engine that was as efficient as one of these black hole engines you could get about a billion miles per gallon of gas," Allen said. "In anyone's book that would be pretty green."
The galaxies in which these black holes live are bigger than ours, the Milky Way, and 50 million to 400 million light-years away. One light-year is nearly 5.9 trillion miles. The black hole at the center of our galaxy wasn't studied because it wasn't gas-rich and big enough so scientists couldn't measure what was going in and coming out, Allen said.
The results were surprising because the types of black holes studied were older, less powerful and generally considered "boring," scientists said. But they ended up being more efficient than originally thought — possibly as efficient as their younger, brighter and more potent black hole siblings called quasars.
Quasars spit out blinding light so scientists can't measure individual energy efficiency for them, said study co-author Christopher Reynolds of the University of Maryland. But if they could, they'd probably be even more efficient, based on indirect calculations, he said.
One of the ways scientists measured the efficiency of black holes was by looking at the jets of high energy spewed out. Those jets produce bubbles of heat nearby, which tend to keep hot gas from cooling and forming stars in large galaxies.
"The black holes are actually preventing galactic sprawl from taking over the neighborhood," said NASA astrophysicist Kim Weaver. She said there's no harm in too many stars, just a mystery of why these several billion old galaxies aren't loaded with even more stars.
Allen and Weaver said in interviews the unseen hot jets appears to answer the question about what's stopping galaxies from growing too big, he said.
"What this does is give us a step toward understanding why the galaxies in the universe look the way they do," Allen said.
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Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu/
This photo released by NASA Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002 shows medium-size black holes taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. (AP Photo/NASA, FILE)
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/KIPAC/S.Allen et al; Radio: NRAO/VLA/G.Taylor; Infrared: NASA/ESA/McMaster Univ./W.Harris
By studying the inner regions of nine elliptical galaxies with Chandra, scientists can now estimate the rate at which gas is falling toward the galaxies' supermassive black holes. These images also allowed them to estimate the power required to produce radio emitting bubbles in the hot X-ray gas.
The composite image of NGC 4696 shows a vast cloud of hot gas (red), surrounding high-energy bubbles 10,000 light years across (blue) on either side of the bright white area around the supermassive black hole. Images of the other galaxies in the study show a similar structure. (The green dots in the image show infrared radiation from star clusters on the outer edges of the galaxy).
Surprisingly, the results indicate that most of the energy released by the infalling gas goes, not into an outpouring of light as is observed in many active galactic nuclei, but into jets of high-energy particles. Such jets can be launched from a magnetized gaseous disk around the central black hole, and blast away at near the speed of light to create huge bubbles.
An important implication of this work is that the conversion of energy by matter falling toward a black hole is much more efficient than nuclear or fossil fuels. For example, it is estimated that if a car was as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it could theoretically travel more than a billion miles on a gallon of gas!
poorly written but interesting ping
At least she's got that goin' for her.
Why did I just know someone would make the connection to her? lol
From the article:
"These black holes are 25 times more efficient than anything man has built, with nuclear power being the most efficient of man-made efforts, said study lead author Steve Allen of Stanford University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center."
A typical light water power reactor and generation system has an efficiency of approximately 28 per cent. Now, the claim of efficiency of 25 times that is puzzling, because the process would be about 700 per cent efficient. In other words, for every joule of energy put into the system, you would get 7 watts out.
I am wondering if the reporter garbled what was said.
Yeah but try to contain one inside a Toyota Prius. I keep getting sucked into oblivion. I have to change the containment field somehow.
When you've seen one black hole, you've seen 'em all.
I dunno about that. I have a car that been a pretty good black hole for money and it don't go anywhere!
I don't know, that must be how they get a billion miles per gallon of gas.
Al Gore would have applied black hole technology to the economy.
Not HO's!
HOLES!
LOL
This may be a stupid question but, if you had a car powered by a black hole, filled it with a gallon of gas, ...would the head lights work at night?
What was said in the article was just plain dumb. I doubt that any real scientist could distort the information as bad as this article, so it must be the author. Calling it garbled is kind.
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