Black Hole Makes Plumes that Span Intergalactic Space

[emad]

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer

Newfound plumes of material 300,000 light-years across are forced outward by the explosive venting of a supermassive black hole, astronomers announced today.

Observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed the energetic plumes of particles associated with a massive galaxy cluster called Perseus. The results provide evidence that a black hole can influence the space around it to intergalactic distances, researchers said.

"In relative terms, it is as if a heat source the size of a fingernail affects the behavior of a region the size of Earth," said Andrew Fabian of Cambridge University.

Fabian is lead author of a report to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051201_blackhole_plumes.html

[soothsayer]

1. What happened to 'gravity so strong that not even light can

escape?"----except when they're exhaling, is that it? How do things 'vent' out of that gravitational pull?

[benburch]

2. The material they "vent" never enters the hole.

It is swung around the hole in a gravitational slingshot, or pushed out by radiation from material that falls into the hole.

[soothsayer]

4. See, this is why the big bang doesn't work for me. If all matter

(and space/time) are being blown apart, what makes things suddenly stop and form stars, galaxies, planets, etc.?

[benburch]

5. It doesn't suddenly stop!

It is still flying apart!

But some tiny quantum fluctuations in the original fireball become magnified into the large density fluctuations we call galaxies, which are held together by gravity even though all the rest of the universe is still flying away from them.

[soothsayer]

6. yes, yes, we're all still winging thru space, but why does ANY

of this original primordial goo come together to form matter (the stuff we see). I guess if you argue that everywhere we don't see matter there's dark matter (as opposed to void) then I guess it makes more sense. But if there's just emptiness between pieces of 'stuff' then how did the stuff ever come to form? everything should have just blown into a million bits and been moving away from each other without ever coming together to form 'stuff'. I mean, put a lump of (i don't know---peanut butter or something?) on a deflated balloon and then blow it up and the peanut butter thins out and the pieces move away from each other---you don't suddenly get sammitches!

[htuttle]

7. But if you sprayed 1000 tons of peanut butter into space

...the cloud of nutty goodness should be heavy enough for it's own gravity to eventually 'condense' the cloud into a delicious artificial peanut butter satellite.

There have been several recent discoveries of stars and planetary systems in the process of formation, undergoing this same sort of matter 'condensation' and clumping. Galaxies formed the same way, but on a much bigger scale. Space is big, very big.

[rman]

8. how does goo come together to form matter: gravity

the energy of the BB 'explosion' declines over time so at some point it becomes weaker then gravity. this effect is stronger on smaller scales. that's how stars and galaxies form, while galaxies are (on average) still moving away from one another.

[Bill McBlueState]

9. gravity.

On spatial scales that are small enough, gravity is stronger than the force of the expansion, and structure forms.

[emad]

3. "Gravity is a myth, the earth sucks?"

?