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NASA / ESA / STScI / OSU / SRON
is image of Markarian 509 was taken in April 2007 with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 2. Observations reveal bullets of gas being driven away from the galaxy's supermassive black hole, and a corona of hot gas hovering above the disk of in-falling matter.
Astronomers have taken an unprecedented look at the tumult surrounding a supermassive black hole, using a quintet of space telescopes. And they're finding out that it's a horribly messy eater.
The black hole in question is at the center of the galaxy Markarian 509, which is nearly 500 million light-years away. Unlike the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, Markarian 509's colossal black hole is sucking huge amounts of dust and gas into its gravitational maw. Its mass is 300 million times that of the sun, or roughly 75 times the mass of the Milky Way's central black hole.
Five space telescopes focused on Markarian 509: the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope and Integral gamma-ray observatory, NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Swift gamma-ray probe, and the Hubble Space Telescope. The ground-based William Herschel Telescope and PARITEL telescope were also put on the case.
The telescopes couldn't see the black hole itself, but they could see the strong emissions of radiation in various wavelengths from the wreckage that's swirling around it. The X-ray observatories — XMM-Newton and Chandra — were particularly useful.
Markarian 509's gravitational monster is known for its variability. During the 100-day observing campaign, its brightness in the soft X-ray band jumped up by 60 percent, signaling a cosmic feeding frenzy. In a news release, the European Space Agency said giant, blobby bullets of gas were stripped away from the whirlpool and ejected at speeds of millions of miles per hour.
The astronomers were surprised to find that the bullets were coming from a dusty reservoir of matter waiting to fall into the black hole, situated more than 15 light-years away. That's farther away than some astronomers thought was possible.
"There has been a debate in astronomy for some time about the origin of the outflowing gas," said Jelle Kaastra of the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research. Kaastra coordinated the international black-hole research team of 26 astronomers from 21 institutes.
M. Weiss / CXC / NASA
In this artist's illustration, turbulent winds of gas swirl around a black hole. Some of the gas is spiraling inward toward the black hole, but another part is blown away.
The dusty reservoir forms a doughnut-shaped torus around the black hole. Material spirals in toward the black hole, creating a whirling accretion disk. The disk appears to give rise to a "corona" that hovers above it.
"This corona absorbs and reprocesses the ultraviolet light from the disk, energizing it and converting it into X-ray light," Kaastra said in a SRON news release. "It must have a temperature of a few million degrees. ... This discovery allows us to make sense of some of the observations of active galaxies that have been hard to explain so far."
The researchers said the corona appears to be the source of the X-rays and gamma rays that drive the bullets outward.
The initial results are being published as a series of seven papers in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, titled "Multiwavelength Campaign on Mrk 509." SRON said still more results are in preparation.
More about black holes:
- Snapshot reveals a black hole's jets
- Inside a celestial super-volcano
- Scientists size up a monster black hole
- PlayStation 3 tackles black-hole vibrations
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Trying to think of something to say here, but all I can come up with is amazing!
I can only say I am glad it is 500 million light years away.
Wow. Great job on a huge story, Alan. Between this and the speeding neutrinos it's been a big news week in the world of science. ;)
Greater mass objects not fully envolved with the event horizon being bombarded by lesser mass at near light speed should release this amount of energy. Energy released should radiate in every direction.
I would be concerned if it wasn't messy. Regards, Rod
Let's just hope it's friendly
Don't play with your food ... :c)
Now if we could just see the other side of the black hole, or do we know which side we're looking at? Is there any case of the numerous galaxies where we could determine we were looking at opposite sides of a black hole? If they're compressed to a singularity they probably won't have any sides to them, but again I think an anti-matter engine is what drives black holes and when infalling matter comes into contact with the core of a black hole it's annihilated, so nothing would escape out the other end, and what does escape is the radiation given off by the annhilation of matter and anti-matter.
If we could produce enough anti-matter, superheat it and compress it we might achieve a black hole in the laboratory. And if we feed it matter it might even grow, but it must convert matter into anti-matter at those densities and temperatures...something we are just beginning to observe in the colllisions at the LHC resulting in the creation of anti-protons, in that moment of pressure, density, and temperature of the collision. Unfortunately not enough anti-protons are created to organize their mass and there is no constant density, temperature, or gravity to hold such a mass of anti-matter together.
For black holes, anti-matter must be the ruling elite, the largest collections of anti-matter in the universe.
"Now if we could just see the other side of the black hole, or do we know which side we're looking at?"
It's spherical. (or oblate, depending on its rotational speed) No matter how you look at it, you're looking at the 'outside.'
A black hole that doesn't rotate and is electrically neutral, has its singularity at its center. If it does rotate and/or has electric charge, then it's more...complicated.
"If we could produce enough anti-matter, superheat it and compress it we might achieve a black hole in the laboratory."
Sufficient mass and density is what makes a black hole. (you can have less of one, if you have more of the other, as long as there's enough of both that escape velocity from its surface is greater than the speed of light) That it starts as matter or antimatter is irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. Once the event horizon forms, you can't tell from the outside what it initially was, or what might have fallen in later. All you know anymore, is the objects total mass, charge and angular momentum.
Succinct and patient answers Frank. +1
Nominated for today's "Understatement of the Day"!
Maybe black holes are the answer to where did all the anti-matter go and why it would seem matter won out over anti-matter. maybe its just the nature of anti-matter to coalesce into super dense black holes and that might account for the "missing anti-matter" in the universe, its all sitting in black holes at the centers of galaxies, pulsar, quasars, and other collapsed stars thought to contain black holes. So maybe there are equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, and it takes matter to create more anti-matter allowing black holes to grow.
Though it will be a long time before we can understand the processes governing matter and anti-matter to invent new sources of energy or propulsion systems which would need a constant source of matter to convert into anti-matter and the technology for maintaining those reactions...perhaps even special space warping fields or gravitational force fields could be created and used in future space travel, there's still alot to learn of the properties and interactions, and which elements of matter would best support or create exotic anti-matter constituents.
So when do we start colliding anti-matter particles in search of those other exotic anti-matter particles...slowing them down to preserve them for 15 minutes to get a glimpse of an anti-protons properties sounds great....but we want to speed them up and collide them, subject them to magnetic containment and fusion plasma experiments, possibly even splitting them to realize the energy potential of fissionable anti-matter.
Now if we could just see the other side of the black hole - Eric-420884
I think that what happens when a black hole forms is that Dark Matter occupies the space that is left behind when a sun collapses. Think of it this way. You have a balloon that is filled with air that will represent the sun. The air will represent the molecules within the balloon creating pressure back on the outside pressure to give the balloon its shape. The outside pressure in this instance will be water that will represent Dark Matter. The weight of Dark Matter creates a pressure against the layers of the sun that creates a pressure against the suns core that causes various reactions to occur within the suns core that creates a continued exchange of pressure between the Sun and Dark Matter. Since Dark Matter weighs more when the sun uses all of its energy up the weight of the Dark Matter and the velocity at which Dark Matter is occupying the space left behind by the process encounters Dark Matter from the other side of the sun thus causing a super dense singularity to occur that effects space or Dark Matter around the blackhole. Since Dark Matter is the only medium in which a light photon resides in and is effected by any light photons traveling close by the blackhole would be effectively pulled into the blackhole based upon the reactions that occur between Dark Matter and the particles within Dark Matter responsible for limiting the velocity of the light photon.
Once the blackhole is formed I believed that it could operate in the same manner as that of a bath tub drain. Fill a bath tub full of water and then pull the drain plug. You can watch as the water occupied the space of the empty pipe that leads into the drain. Basically you are creating a mini-tornado. Tornadoes and hurricans are always calm at their center so why wouldn't the center of a black hole be just as calm?
Once passing through the eye of the blackhole you would be sucked at an extreme rate of velocity through the black holes "tunnel" until the "tunnel" came to a point where the energy of the black hole had diminished allowing you to exit the black hole. Such an exit can possible explain the reason for Ripple Evidence across a sun.
I love this kind of news! I soak it up!
First time I had learned about supermassive black holes I was blown away. Ever since, any news on them is cool to read/watch. I wish I had job in one of these fields just to be in the wonder of it all before the rest of the world, and be a part of it.
What controls the orientation of the axis of rotation of the black hole?
Would black holes swallow neutrinos?
No, Blacks and Italians don't get along.
I guess you have never been in Queens New York?
It seems that neutrinos can pass through matter as if it wasn't even there, so, is it possible for them to escape the power of a black hole and if so could they be used to study them.
Neutrinos are elementary particles born in the decay of other particles and have mass...just very lilttle...as they pass through the empty space between mass units. The newely uncovered hypothetical +1 flavor is the latest goodie being considered to reflect a "massless exchange to mass' by the labcoats.
ie; Neutrino's would get sucked in just like everything else that has mass and got to close.
Some body get thing a napkin!!Radiation output must be incredible!Yeah, glad it's eating someone else's galaxy!