Nasa finds monster black hole sucking up gas, dust and stars at centre of galaxy

[emad]

Nasa have found a monster black hole 100 million times the mass of the Sun feeding off gas, dust and stars at the centre of a galaxy 50 million light-years away.


By Heidi Blake
24 Jul 2009



The star-ringed black hole forms the eye of a galaxy called NGC-1097 which was photographed by the US space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope in California.

A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational pull is so powerful that nothing, including whole planets, can escape being sucked in if they come within its reach.

The galaxy in the photograph is spiral-shaped, like our Milky Way, and extends long arms of red stars into space. But Nasa said the black hole at the centre of the galaxy in which Earth is situated is tame by comparison, with the mass of just a few million suns.

"The fate of this black hole and others like it is an active area of research," said George Helou, deputy director of Nasa's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Some theories hold that the black hole might quiet down and eventually enter a more dormant state like our Milky Way black hole."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5899913/Nasa-finds-monster-black-hole-sucking-up-gas-dust-and-stars-at-centre-of-galaxy.html

[a la izquierda]

1. What are the odds this affects us...

in our lifetime? Hopefully slim.

[BadgerKid]

2. The speed of gravity seems

to be near, if not exactly, the speed of light; hence any influence on Earth would happen in 50 million years.

[Ready4Change]

3. Affecting us as we speak.

If we can see the light of the stars that surround that black hole being affected by it, and gravity takes effect at the same speed as that light, then it is affecting us right now.

However, 50 million light years is a LONG distance, so the gravitational power of even a massive black hole like that gets lost in the gravitational background static of the rest of the universe.

[rusty fender]

4. monster black hole, at center of galaxy, sucking everything in...

sounds like the health insurance companies

[a la izquierda]

5. too true.