Tag: Black-Holes

PLANETS and asteroids may be smashing into each other by the thousand around monster black holes.
Dust from the collisions could explain why many of these colossal objects, which would otherwise shine brightly as they swallow nearby matter, are hidden from view.

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New look at x-ray data reveals monsters at hearts of first galaxies.

Long gazes into deep space have turned up something huge: Signs of supermassive black holes devouring matter at the hearts of the universe's first galaxies.

Theorists had suspected that such enormous black holes existed just a billion years after the big bang, since most if not all of mature large galaxies have the matter-gobbling monsters at their centers.

Giant Black HolesFrom the NASA Swift team, watch full screen 1080p! Most large galaxies contain a giant central black hole. In an active galaxy, matter falling toward the supermassive black hole powers high-energy emissions so intense that two classes of active galaxies, quasars and blazars, rank as the most luminous objects in the universe.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2009) An international team of scientists has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate.

Their findings are published in December's first issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

These super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies are called active galactic nuclei. For the first time, the team observed a quasar with an active galactic nucleus, as part of the group of four, which is located more than a billion light years from Earth. The scientists used the two Keck telescopes on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These are the largest optical/infrared telescopes in the world.