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Supermassive black hole 12 billion times larger than the sun detected

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K

kyser73

Member
So the REALLY interesting thing (now we're past the 'Holy fuck its huge!' stuff), or things, about this particular Black Hole are:

1. It's very, very, very old. The estimate on its formation (based on its red shift) is ~1bn years after the Big Bang, which would make it one of the very first black holes.

2. This is problematic for current theories on BH formation because the time scale it is estimated to have been born in means it shouldn't have had enough time to become so big and so energetic - it grew at a pace that is currently at the edge of current theory as its size implies it was absorbing gas and material at pretty much the maximum rate possible over a long period of time.

3. This should have been prevented by the quasar it sits in, as this is so bright (x40K the luminosity of the whole Milky Way) the light the quasar was emitting would be powerful enough to prevent gas from falling past the event horizon.

TL:DR - it's too big for how old and bright it is.
 
H

HomerSimpson-Man

Member
MickeyKnox said:
It';s the early access sequel to the old simulation, fun for fucking around with shit like this

Here's the earth next to our sun

http://abload.de/img/universesandbox-201507eurc.png

now pulled back to show the sun in full

http://abload.de/img/universesandbox-20150osuz3.png

Now the sun compared to the black hole in question at the edge of the event horizon (I had to turn on the trails in the ui so it could be distinguished from the lensing effect.)

http://abload.de/img/universesandbox-20150rgu9g.png

and finally in comparison to the black hole with the singularity in frame

universesandbox-20150bfuvf.png


It's a great little time suck
Click to expand...

Haha, man, I nearly shit my pants.
 
A

AtomicSymphonic

Banned
NullPointer said:
Considering that I can barely attempt to begin to fathom the magnitude of the gargantuan explosion of light and heat and life in equilibrium that is our sun, Sol, and find my understanding of the magnitude of a billion to be seriously lacking, the idea that something out there is twelve billion times the enormity of our local neighborhood secular godhead is just...

... hnnngggggkkkk*pop*swoooOOOSHHH
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, were you looking for this visual metaphor?

giphy.gif
 
K

kyser73

Member
Dragonborn said:
Black holes scare the hell out of me.
Click to expand...

Gamma Ray Bursts scare me.

They're like the galactic equivalent of a cerebral embolism, only on a planetwide scale.

Earth just happily doing its thing around the sun...

BUT LIGHT YEARS AWAY TWO NEUTRON STARS COLLIDE!

People of Earth look up to see a new star in the daytime sky...and die as the GRB strips the atmosphere on the receiving side, leaving the night side to asphyxiate and then die from solar radiation.

They could potentially sterilise the planet and we'd get zero warning.
 
S

Slavik81

Member
terrisus said:
You might not enjoy the whole "Time slowing down" thing though...
Click to expand...
It's not like it matters. Time passing slowly isn't like Max Payne. It feels normal because your thoughts are slow too.

It's also relative. You could alternatively say that as you fall into a black hole, the rest of the universe speeds up. Neither perspective is more correct. It just depends on your point of view.
 
H

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
The Technomancer said:
maybe but probably not? So if the article is accurate and this is larger then previously accounted for, it does raise questions about the current "control" on black holes, which is that as they increase in size they begin to shed radiation, causing them to shrink again. That model says that there's a maximum cap on how large a black hole is, although the final state of the universe might certainly look like a collection of black holes
Click to expand...

How certain would they be that they are measuring this correctly? Like with super large stars there mass and size are often corrected over time, usually ending up far smaller than we thought.
 
H

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Then dont click on the thread, Baikal. This thing is an unreasonable amount of distance from us.
 
H

HolyBaikal

Banned
Why would I assume something awful like that would be in a thread about black holes? ;_;

Yes, black holes are scary and dangerous. But that doesn't mean I should be seeing pictures of violence with people in them.
 
H

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Wait you are talking about the Scanners gif? You have never seen that on the internet before?
 
S

SliceSabre

Banned
12 billion times as big as our Sun means nothing to to me because my mind is simply unable to process just how absurdly large that is.
 
cripterion

cripterion

Member
Hip Hop said:
My mind......my mind can't process that size.
Click to expand...

I was thinking that too. It's just... I mean we are so unsignificant in such scales it's mindblowing.

By the way, I love reading these topics but always wonder how can they pinpoint with such accuracy. I mean we know so little about our own Solar System, hell even our own planet. How can we know the age of something so far away or its size, how was this created and so on. I mean I'm trying to understand here, I appreciate science but to me everything seems like hypothesis. Kinda like Pluto is a planet then it no longer is, discovery of planets orbiting 2 suns, etc...

m_shortpants said:
I'm pretty ignorant on modern astronomer methods. How do they determine how far away something is? And how can they determine how large something is? When it was formed, etc?
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly
 
A

akira28

Member
HolyBaikal said:
I don't know what scanners is. And no, I haven't! And I wish I never did!
Click to expand...

it's just a visual demonstration of what a black hole does to the mind. It's mostly ketchup though. Look closely and you can see the rubber dummy mask. At the time it was considered really decent practical special effect. And if you look closely the mystique goes away, as should your fear.
 
S

squarerootofpie

Neo Member
DarkFlow said:
A safe distance would be too way to far for you see it.
Click to expand...

Well not really, you should be able to see it through some form of infrared camera if you have the right tech (because they produce heat or something along those lines).

EDIT: Plus as long as you're not past the event horizon you should be able to observe it (although obviously not without risk)
 
A

Auto-Reply

Member
I figured as much last year when I was calculating serveral equations about energy preservation. It's pretty self explanatory really!
 
G

Glass

Member
Kind of makes our every day lives seem very small and irrelevant. You know what, I'm not going to get dressed for the electrician coming round in an hour. What difference does it make, I mean really?
 
TheLaughingStock

TheLaughingStock

Member
Glass said:
Kind of makes our every day lives seem very small and irrelevant. You know what, I'm not going to get dressed for the electrician coming round in an hour. What difference does it make, I mean really?
Click to expand...

Go through the black hole, leak out the other side, and see an alternate history where you married the electrician.
 
U

User 73706

Banned
Opiate said:
The easiest way to conceptualize it as a "hole" is to imagine how space is warped by the immense gravity. Once you are beyond the event horizon (if you were able to survive somehow), turning around and looking "out" of the black hole would still look towards the black hole, because there is no direction for even light to escape. Space has been warped so completely that every single direction points towards the black hole: up, down, left, right, backwards, forwards. These directions no longer have meaning as we think of them. Every direction is towards the black hole.
Click to expand...

A more pedestrian way to look at it is dropping a bowling ball on a bedsheet and hoisting the corners up into a knot; if you happen to enter the pocket the bowling ball has made (the event horizon), you're completely "sealed in" no matter what direction you try and go in.
 
S

Shuggananas

Banned
Opiate said:
The easiest way to conceptualize it as a "hole" is to imagine how space is warped by the immense gravity. Once you are beyond the event horizon (if you were able to survive somehow), turning around and looking "out" of the black hole would still look towards the black hole, because there is no direction for even light to escape. Space has been warped so completely that every single direction points towards the black hole: up, down, left, right, backwards, forwards. These directions no longer have meaning as we think of them. Every direction is towards the black hole.
Click to expand...

Well just use a mirror then
 
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