, radio waves (yellow), and x-rays (purple). The suspected location of its massive black hole is marked with a cross.)
DWARF GALAXY, BIG BLACK HOLE: The star-forming dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 in optical light (red, green and blue), radio waves (yellow), and x-rays (purple). The suspected location of its massive black hole is marked with a cross.
Image: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Virginia/A.Reines et al.), radio (NRAO/AUI/NSF/Virginia/A.Reines et al.), optical (NASA/STScI/Virginia/A.Reines et al.)
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The co-evolution of black holes, almost unfathomable in their bulk, and the even more massive galaxies that host them remains poorly understood—a kind of chicken-and-egg problem on mammoth scales. Do black holes, such as the lunker in our own Milky Way Galaxy, which contains the mass of four million suns (that's about eight undecillion, or 8 x 10^36 kilograms), drive the evolution of galaxies around them; or do galaxies naturally nurture the gravitational gobblers at their centers; or perhaps do they come into being together, as a matched pair?
A serendipitous discovery in a relatively close-by dwarf galaxy may help answer that question. Amy Reines, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Virginia (U.V.A.), was looking at bursts of star formation in a galaxy known as Henize 2-10, which serves as a kind of observational proxy for galaxies that existed in the early universe. She noticed a suspicious radio wave source coming from a small region of the galaxy, a good distance removed from the active stellar nurseries. A comparison with archival data showed x-ray radiation from the same location within Henize 2-10; the balance of radiation levels in different wavelengths pointed to the presence of a giant black hole accreting material from its surroundings.
That is notable because Henize 2-10 lacks a detectable spheroid, or galactic bulge, in its center, which is usually directly related to the mass of a galaxy's black hole. "That suggests that you just don't need one to make a black hole," Reines says. "People have thought that galaxies and their black holes have grown synchronously," she adds. "This really challenges this notion and suggests that a massive black hole could form ahead of its galaxy." Reines and her colleagues from U.V.A. and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., reported the finding online January 9 in Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)
The presence of the black hole is also of interest because the galaxy, about 30 million light-years from Earth, is still forming stars at a rapid clip and is thought to resemble galaxies that were prevalent many billions of years ago. "We think we may be witnessing an early stage of galaxy formation and black hole evolution," Reines says.
Based on its luminosity in x-rays and radio waves, the newfound black hole seems to have the mass of a million suns, about one quarter the mass of the black hole in the Milky Way's center. But considering that our galaxy may have more than 10 times the stellar mass of Henize 2-10, the dwarf galaxy's black hole is nothing to sneeze at.
Without a telltale galactic bulge it can be difficult to locate a black hole, which may be why Henize 2-10 and similar galaxies have not been known to harbor massive black holes. "We've been avoiding galaxies like this, because where's the center?" says Jenny Greene, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote a commentary to accompany the research in Nature. "We've just avoided them like the plague because you just don't know where to look for a black hole."
But if giant black holes in star-forming dwarf galaxies prove to be common—that is, if Henize 2-10 is not an outlier but a representative of a larger population—they may have much to tell about the formation of primordial black holes and galaxies in the early universe. "There are all kinds of interesting relationships" between black holes and their host galaxies, says astronomer James Ulvestad, director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences. "But we don't really know very well how that happens or how these things get started." (Ulvestad commented on the research as an astronomer in the field, not as an NSF representative.)
There are reasons to think that diminutive star-formers such as Henize 2-10 were prevalent in the early universe, before mergers incorporated those dwarfs into larger galaxies. "The early galaxies in the universe were all kind of like this," Ulvestad says. But the kinds of objects that astronomers can actually see in the early universe, by peering far across the cosmos, all give off far more radiation than the black hole found in Henize 2-10, so the question of how many black holes of that ilk existed early on remains open.
The key to the new discovery, Greene says, "is really opening a new realm for us to search." There exist many more dwarf galaxies that may also have black holes, which would hold even more clues to the history and evolution of black holes and their galaxies. "If you can find a few more of them nearby then that tells you that it's common," Ulvestad says. "Then you can say by extrapolation, 'okay, we're looking at some common phenomenon that was happening early in the universe.'"
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29 Comments
Add CommentIf this is correct and there are many more black holes; does this mean that the dark matter theory effectively goes out of the window as we would have 'found' the missing mass of the universe?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore directly, as I recall, astronomers have considered dwarf galaxies, based on their mass estimated from stellar luminosity and the gravitational effect derived from that mass, to require a large amount of dark matter to produce observed gravitational effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps the presence of a unusually massive black hole would reduce the amount of dark matter required to compensate for the discrepancy between astronomers' gravitational estimates and those observed.
"does this mean that the dark matter theory effectively goes out of the window as we would have 'found' the missing mass of the universe?" - Yahoodie
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo. It is too small by 4 orders of magnitude.
Further the problem of the "missing mass" is also a problem of mass distribution. If there is such a thing as dark matter then there is 4 to 5 times more of it than can be observed, and it is diffusely distributed around galaxies rather than being concentrated in large mass point sources.
A halo of intermediate mass point sources might diffusely cluster around galaxies but like tree faries and bridge trolls, there is no evidence for their existence, no observed collisions between such things, no observed gravitational lensing caused by them, no x-ray emissions from them, and no working theory as to how they might have formed.
Every time I read about a possible cause for recalculating the 'weight' of the Universe, I wonder if the calculators get as excited. I try to keep in mind that our 'real' knowledge of all things is probably about the same as the estimated known composition of the Universe; under 25%. How could 'they' overlook such a possibility, that black holes come in many varieties, and be so apparently casual about such profound issues? The ever increasing amount of data pouring into existence is just filled with wonder; I wonder if this is true, I wonder if that was ever true...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisblack holes having small amounts of gas and dust to feed on would form tiny dwarf galaxies, and the dark matter invisible halo is phony. EM forces, not dark matter nor black holes, maintain galaxy shapes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo there can only be one way for black holes and galaxies to form and evolve, irrespective of the conditions and density of materials present at the time of inception, why should it all sit in one small pigeon hole, can you fit all life on earth into one such slot? is it not possible for galaxies and black holes to form in different ways?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisby itself blackholes dont add mass, so i'm not sure if they are missing from their calculations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso blackholes rather convert mass to space and energy.
maybe the whole universe is just the inside of another blackhole
If you're saying that black holes do not contain any matter then I agree with you, but I think that they do convert the mass energy of 'ingested' matter into radially contracted (curved) spacetime, locally retaining the gravitational effect of its velocity field.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn that sense, I do think the gravitational energy of black holes must be considered in the total mass-energy of the universe.
As I have mentioned repeatedly, the primary justification for additional undetected mass in the universe is that the rotational curves of galaxies do not conform to the laws of Planetary Motion, as the rotational velocity of their peripheral stars do not diminish as a function of their distance from the galactic center of mass. You know, like the planets in our Solar system do.
That invalid expectation failed to consider that, unlike relatively isolated planets in our Solar system, the vast distribution of massive objects in galaxies locally self-gravitate: they rotate not as independent masses but loosely bound structures such as the arms of spiral galaxies.
The greater than expect gravitational velocity exhibited by dwarf galaxies may well be entirely produced by the existence of a previously undetected, relatively 'massive' (in terms of gravitational effects) central black hole rather than any exceptional amount of undetectable dark matter.
The disperse configuration of star producing gaseous masses apparently being collected by this unusually 'massive' black hole, illustrated by the composite image above, would seem to indicate that they are not contained within a regularly configured dark matter halo. If that were the case, the dark matter halo could be expected to produce a geometrically regular configuration of gaseous masses.
Perhaps black holes are produced in some way independent from galaxies, locally acquiring free gases from intergalactic space, contracting those gases to produce star forming regions, eventually producing a galaxy of stars and gases. That might also happen, even without dark matter.
The short answer is, "No." In fact this has no impact at all on theories about dark matter, because this does not represent the discovery of any new mass. We already know how much galaxies weigh. It's easy to determine from their gravitational interactions. If it turns out more galaxies have black holes in them, or have larger ones than we thought, this just tells us that a greater percentage of that known mass is in the form of black holes. It has no impact at all on dark matter theories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose who would modify the affects of gravity would disagree with your assessment, since they consider the mass estimated from luminosity to produce the apparent increasing gravitational effects observed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou stated:
"If it turns out more galaxies have black holes in them, or have larger ones than we thought, this just tells us that a greater percentage of that known mass is in the form of black holes. It has no impact at all on dark matter theories."
The amount of the newly identified black hole mass-energy that was previously undetected certainly reduces the estimated amount of undetected dark matter that would be required to produce observed gravitational effects.
Moreover, how many additional undetected black holes are there in this picture? How many undetected brown dwarfs? How many stars' luminosity is obscured by the opaque gas clouds? What is the mass of those gas clouds that repeatedly give birth to massive stars? These potential uncertainties in galactic mass provided 'ordinary matter' may affect the certainty of the total estimation dark matter in the universe.
The whole black hole mystery and dark matter mystery can readily be resolved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst of all the Big Bang probably arose from a cosmic black hole, considerably (1 billion times) heavier than our observable Universe, but confined to approxoimately 9 km. Effectively at this point, it formed a black hole within a black hole, it then had to explode into the BIg Bang. The resulting release of energy produced inflation, and when that settled the larger remnant primordial black hole formed the seeds of the galaxies we see today.
Chicken and egg, it was definitely the egg that came first - the cosmic egg. Then remnant large black holes which seeded the galaxies -as this article shows and as was predicted by a number of published papers (see below for references.
What question remains is: are galaxies surrounded by smaller black hole remnants to form the dark matter halo. Any thoughts please.
Available online
1.An advanced dynamic adaptation of Newtonian equations of gravity. Physics Essays 21: 222-228.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4006/1.3027501
2. String quintessence and the formulation of advanced quantum gravity. Physics Essays 22: 364-377. http://dx.doi.org/10.4006/1.3182733.
P.S. you can jooin Physics Essays free, and access the papers free.
""This really challenges this notion and suggests that a massive black hole could form ahead of its galaxy.""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis makes sense to me as what one would expect. After the Big Bang the Universe, as it stood, must have started out pretty homogenous. Just like a super solution ... and condensation of the homogenous material/energy mix would have been greater the greater the local disturbances. Hence black holes with their intense gravity would produce the greatest disturbance and seed the formation of the largest material entities, galaxies.
Black holes themselves may therefore have been the very first singular entities formed after the big bang.
You stated that "the vast distribution of massive objects in galaxies locally self-gravitate: they rotate not as independent masses but loosely-bound structures such as the arms of spiral galaxies." The part after the full colon contradicts the part before the full colon! The part after the colon is closest to being correct. Spiral arms, made up of single stars and multi-star systems still revolve around the galaxy's center of gravity which will be somewhere within the central black hole.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBlack holes do have mass and it is all held at the event horizon where time equals 0.It is there that all wave function stops.This means that a singularity has a fixed limit and all other mass in an black hole is forever held at the event horizon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry if my statement was confusing - thanks for pointing that out. I'd intended that the "vast distribution of massive objects... locally self gravitate" be understood to mean that groups of stars and other masses are locally gravitationally bound, that they (to varying extents) rotate around the galaxy as loosely bound structures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn that case, individual stars should not be expected to necessarily rotate within the galaxy at a velocity determined by its distance from the galactic center, since they do not (necessarily) rotate independently. Especially in the case of bound spiral arms, centripetal forces applied to stars within the inner disc may be transferred to stars in the outer disk by the spiral structures, producing the observed greater than expected rotational velocities of peripheral stars.
Those same local gravitational bindings likely prevent the expulsion of peripheral stars rotating at greater than expected velocities.
By the way, unlike the Solar system in which the Sun contains 98.8% of total system mass, the galactic center of mass is not likely located within the supermassive black hole, which had previously been empirically determined to consistently contain about 0.5% of total galactic mass (although the article state that this black hole contains 10 times that percentage). As a result, the galactic center of collective mass and its rotational axis likely vary.
IMO, the majority of mass in most galaxies may be contained within a central elliptical bulge, not (yet) present in this dwarf galaxy. These bulges surrounding supermassive black holes contain mostly independently orbiting stars and little gaseous mass, which may have been ingested by the black hole.
However, unlike the Solar system, a very significant percentage of the total galactic mass of spiral galaxies is contained within their planar discs.
The highly luminous galactic bulge of spiral galaxies may have originally been perceived to contain most of the galactic mass, but the galactic disc and spiral arms contain much of the obscuring opaque clouds of gas.
My above statement is true of individual and super black holes like at the center of the galaxy which is a combination of many black holes like a bunch held together by their mutual gravity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn that case, where do the elementary particles that are ejected from the polar jets of active galaxies come from? I suggest that black holes do not retain matter but rather decompose matter in extremely high velocity collisions, locally retaining its gravitational energy, velocity directed to the black hole's singular focal point. I could be wrong, but I think this is also the view of some experts in the field.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch particles never reach the event horizon,they are spun off in the polar jets from the accretion disk.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPossibly - that is one of the theories proposed, but the mechanism producing the collimated jets has not yet been determined: none of the current theories can be determined by observational evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, why would some matter be spun off of the accretion disk into the polar jets while some matter advances to the event horizon?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIMO, retention of gravitational energy directed to the singularity is all that's necessary to produce black holes' predicted and observed effects. Retention of matter in any form requires the occupation of dimensional space - otherwise the black hole remains as I describe: retained gravitational energy without retention of its previously associated matter.
BLACK HOLE
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-- James Ph. Kotsybar
Containing nothing that’s ambivalent,
more than dark, which would only be dreary,
death’s non-spiritual equivalent
crushes our intellect to theory.
Passage through is most certainly one way,
and thus it incites our speculation.
What would occur, if we wandered astray
into this singular aberration?
It’s relative to where you’ve placed your clocks.
From outside we’d seem to fall forever.
Beyond that, it’s puzzling paradox.
We only know that we’d leave it never.
A downward orbit is how it begins,
and nothing’s jolly when gravity wins.
Those who fear that the onstorming Uniting Black Holes will devour them may send a twin from the telepathic geranium plant into outer space. When it gets swallowed the leaves of its brother at the window will shiver from disgust and that gives just enough time for a last short prayer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBlack holes do not exist according the new theory of Vasily Yanchilin in his book The Quantum Theory of Gravitation (2003), but giant masses do. The general theory of relativity is outdated, was conceived before quantummechanics appeared and does not explain gravity qualitatively. The new theory has as fundamental hypothesis that mass reduces uncertainty. So a body near a mass will have in its half nearer to that mass less uncertainty and more probability of its elements appearing closer to that mass in the Heisenberg sphere of uncertainty. More than in the other more distant half.
A consequence of the new theory is that the speed of light changes with the expansion of the universe, with its dilution. This enables describing mathematics in which the cosmological constant, inflation, negative energy, accellerated expansion of the univers disappear. Only real matter and dark matter (perhaps some new form of light, of electro-magnetic energy?) remain.
The new theory also explains the red shift of sunlight completely, while according to the Einstein addicts there is retardation because of gravity and because of time delay at the sun. Not both are measured but only one, which means the general theory of relativity is not correct. Light rays are curved by mass; the potential energy of the photons then increases, which means shift towards shorter wavelength.This contradicts retardation of time near mass.
Read the book and invite Vasily Yanchilin (and me as listener) for a guest lecture (before everybody does!)
It is very sad that on so many universities the book of Yanchilin is boycotted and students get not the best education.
hi there everyone,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfinally the Dark Matter myth is solved..article will be released on Feb 14, if not before..
exotic DM seems to be the biggest scientific blunder of the 20th century..
cheers.
This is obvious as predicted by DURGADAS DATTA in his Balloon inside balloon theory of two universes of matter and antimatter on opposite entropy path. What happens is that outer universe reach tends to zero entropy as time progress and our universe reach a state of high entropy when a huge number of massive black holes still survive HAWKINGS EVAPORATION and due to GRAND EQUILIBRIUM THEORY -a BIG BOUNCE occur to form again two universes on CP VIOLATION so that the black holes --the seeds of another new matter universe will form galaxies etcetc and this kind of re cycle is again again for ever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBlack holes Can not absorb anything
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is a big scientific error that black holes absorb anything. Black holes are such objects into which nothing including light, could either enter, or get out of. There exists a “light & matter restriction” area around it, and also Stars are such objects into which no matter or antimatter either enter or get out of it.
See the mathematical interpretation.
V²R (Mercury) = Vₑ²R (Venus) = Vₐ²R (Earth) = GM (mass of Sun) = Constant = 1.32746 e+20 m²sˉ
Now imagine a model, where a given object is revolving around the Sun with the velocity of light, and on computing its distance from Sun,
C²R (object with Light Velocity) = GM = 1.32746 e+20 m²sˉ
R = GM / C² = 1.32746 e+20 m²sˉ / C²
R= 1474.956530667 meter
It is clear that even if any given object revolves around Sun at the velocity of light, it will only be revolving in an orbit of the radius of 1474.956530667 meter. Which means that any given object speeding in a circular orbit will neither fall into the Sun.
Shweta limit (S-limit), S-type object
Formation of black holes
When the value of the orbital radius of an imaginary object revolving around a central object rotating at its axis considering the Ds velocity is equal to the distance covered by light in one second, then such central object is called S-type object, and that least mass of the central object of the universe that produces this this property, is called as the Shweta limit or S-limit for that central object. Since even the light cannot pass through such objects, all such black holes are called as the S-type objects. The S-limit generates a “light restriction” zone around all such rotating objects, which is called as the Shweta-effect or S-effect. S-limit is shown by $ symbol.
$ = gr² / C² + 300000 km + x
If the value of $ for an object is more than 1, then only will the central object have S-limit, otherwise it will have K-limit. Where g is the surface gravity, r is its radius, and c is the velocity of light. And x is the linear error generated because of the entrance or exit of the light into the attraction zone of that central object.
Since gr² = GM, therefore if we place GM in the above equation,
$ = GM / C² + 300000 km + x
where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the object/mass. If S-limit is taken as a unit then S-limit will only exercise on any projection only when its mass is more than 1.35*e+35 kg ± X kg, and if the mass of the rotating object is more than this mass, then it shall be a black hole.
Imagine these first stars,these huge gas clouds collapsing under their own mass.Some of these clouds could have been hundreds perhaps thousands of light years across,creating huge black holes and a cosmic ray burst as well.With the rest of the gas clouds around them forming the galaxy's we now see.What an exciting time it must have been,to bad no life as we know it was around to see it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr it could be that stars had formed independent of any galaxies and collapsed into black holes following a supernova explosion and the stars and galaxies we have now are simply the remains of old stars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust a thought.
Oh look jtdwyer is pretending to be an expert on astrophysics again and arguing about dark matter!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease learn math and physics. Your comment makes no sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this