Science
Related: About this forumThe White Dots in This Image Are Not Stars or Galaxies. They're Black Holes
MICHELLE STARR 22 FEBRUARY 2021
The image above may look like a fairly normal picture of the night sky, but what you're looking at is a lot more special than just glittering stars. Each of those white dots is an active supermassive black hole.
And each of those black holes is devouring material at the heart of a galaxy millions of light-years away - that's how they could be pinpointed at all.
Totalling 25,000 such dots, astronomers have created the most detailed map to date of black holes at low radio frequencies, an achievement that took years and a Europe-sized radio telescope to compile.
"This is the result of many years of work on incredibly difficult data," explained astronomer Francesco de Gasperin of the University of Hamburg in Germany. "We had to invent new methods to convert the radio signals into images of the sky."
More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/every-white-dot-in-this-image-is-a-black-hole-at-the-heart-of-a-distant-galaxy
Fullduplexxx
(7,857 posts)lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Also, galaxies wouldn't exist without dark matter, which vastly outweighs visible matter.
The supermassive black hole and the dark matter are the structure. Stars, planets, nebulae, and people are just lightweight decorations hanging on that structure.
JohnnyRingo
(18,624 posts)Javaman
(62,517 posts)lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)packman
(16,296 posts)makes one wonder where all that devoured material goes - perhaps to another galaxy, another parallel universe?
Per the article, those are supermassive black holes (SMBH), not stellar mass black holes. SMBHs form the gravitational heart/center of most galaxies, including our own, and formed in the early stages of the universe (although current hypotheses arent quite adequate for explaining exactly how).
Stellar mass black holes, are the kind that you will find all around the galaxy, as the creation of those are the result of massive stars exploding in a supernova, and in doing so, causes an implosion/compression of the core into a black hole. Stellar mass black holes usually weigh between 10 to several hundred solar masses. That compared to SMBHs which come in at millions to billions of solar masses.
So far, there hasnt been much in terms of finding black holes in the mass category between the two.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)But we probably have billions of "normal" black holes.
housecat
(3,121 posts)oldsoftie
(12,531 posts)rambler_american
(789 posts)Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
denbot
(9,899 posts)Hungry monsters..
LudwigPastorius
(9,137 posts)"Avoid these places. They suck."
paleotn
(17,911 posts)None of those 25K+ would be particularly good neighbors.
getagrip_already
(14,708 posts)White Fox
(69 posts)of the universe....it's the size and importance of us that is made clear.