NASA telescope sees black hole gulping remote star

Reuters ^ | Tue Dec 5, 7:18 PM ET | By Will Dunham

[Redcitizen]

A giant black hole displaying horrifying table manners has been caught in the act of guzzling a star in a galaxy 4 billion light-years away, scientists using an orbiting NASA telescope said on Tuesday.

[Pox]

The light, or in this case actually ultraviolet radiation, has nothing substantial in between us and the target galaxy to block or absorb the radiation that was emitted, so basically that radiation traveled for 4 billion years from there to here and we simply 'see' it, the same as the light you see from the stars in the sky.

The light from the Sun we 'see' in the same manner, but its emissions only take minutes to get here.

[Pox]

By dormant they mean that the Black Hole is not currently 'eating' anything substantial enough to emit the x-ray's and other radiation that we see when matter is being actively consumed by the black hole.

[JerseyJohn61]

Marv,

they are very bright objects in the deep darkness
of space.

But to really understand how truly distant those
objects are; multiply 4 billion by 6 trillion.
4 billion being the light years distance and 6
trillion being the mile distance light can travel
in one year.

The answer is one BIG number....JJ61

[Flash Bazbeaux]

It's images like this that I like to conjur up when the Gaia Freaks talk about worshipping "Nature".

[Redcitizen]

Eating a star is like eating a Habenero. It's hot.

[marvlus]

Very sensitive tools. Tools more sensitive than a Liberal looking at a bunny. Tools more sensitive than Jessie Jackson. Tools more sensitive than even Barbra S!

This makes sense!

Ok... a lot of what they are going on is theoretical speculation on what would cause a outburst of UV that strong in that short a period. There are only so many events that can cause those outbursts. Detecting is the easy part, analysis is the hard part.

This requires a little more thinking.
Thanks! :-)

[TChris]

Do star-guzzling blackholes cause universal warming?

* chuckle *

[glaseatr]

NASA has photos but the picture from the article is an "Artists Rendition" Oh brother.

[Judith Anne]

Whenever life gets you down Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough...

Just, remember that you're standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
It’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself, contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side-to-side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us it just three thousand light years wide

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions in this amazing and
expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is
So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
Cause there’s bugger-all down here on Earth

[DustyMoment]

I hope this is only available for adults to view. It's much too violent for children to see.

Think "Grief Counselors".





/sarc

[marvlus]

Based on your answers to my question, I am hearing that we know (somehow) this distant galaxy is 4 billion light years away, and that the radiation emitted came from that galaxy, thus started 4 billion years ago, and we are just now getting it? And the fact the it is radiation or that type of light tells us that it was the result of a black hole "gulping" a star. This is quite fascinating!

[DustyMoment]

Do star-guzzling blackholes cause universal warming?

Only if they emit celestial flatulence afterward.

[ASA Vet]

ping

[Tenacious 1]

[Old news. It happened four billion years ago, you know. :)]

Did anyone catch this on video? Does Youtube.com have it posted yet? Where are the attorneys on this? Someone has got to be held accountable for this atrocity. And, by the way, what is the statute of limitations on a crime of this nature?

[JerseyJohn61]

Yup Marv, creation is an amazing place. But just
consider ourselves in that equation. I think the
average adult body is made up of about 3 trillion
cells or so. At the moment that we were all
conceived, we were only made up of one single
cell. A fertilized ovum. Since then we have grown
3 trillion times.

Just some food for thought....JJ61

[samson1097]

http://dingo.care2.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf

Second best flash animation ever

[Tenacious 1]

[What the heck is a "dormant" black hole. It either is or isn't a black hole I would think and once it's a black hole it stays a black hole.]

I thought the same thing. I am trying to picture a dormant tornado or hurricane. How does this work?

[Tenacious 1]

How does a black hole "digest" the mass it consumes? Where does it go?

Twighlight Zone or Worm Hole into time?

Where do the contents of Black Holes immerge?

Is there a God? Are black holes just the end of God's straw?

I have a headache.

[JerseyJohn61]

By "dormant" they mean that their is simply nothing
close enough at this time for the black hole to
grab in it's gravity hold....JJ61

[Pox]

I believe the distance is calculated by observing a certain type of supernova in the target galaxy and measuring the 'red shift' of the light that we observe. The certain type of supernova shine at what was believed to be a specific brightness anywhere (that could be a wrong assumption according to new data from other studies), and we measure how much that light that reached us has 'shifted' towards the red end of the light spectrum which gives us the distance estimate.

I may be getting the explanation wrong, but this is how I understand it.