Black Hole without galaxy believed to be found., page 1

posted on Sep, 15 2005 @ 08:54 AM

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During another little hunt for quasars by European astronomers, NASA's Hubble Telescope has picked up what is believed to be a black hole that appears to be independant of any galaxy. Apparently most black holes of this size tend to be at the center of a large galaxy, slowly sucking it in. However this one appears to be simply lost in space.

www.cnn.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A supermassive black hole appears to be homeless in the cosmos without a galaxy to nestle in, Hubble Space Telescope scientists reported on Wednesday.

Most monster black holes lurk at the heart of massive galaxies, slurping up matter from the galactic center with a pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.

But a team of European astronomers reported in the journal Nature that a particular black hole some 5 billion light-years away has no evidence of a host galaxy. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year.

The black hole was detected when the scientists went hunting for quasars -- extremely bright, small, distant objects that are strongly associated with black holes. Astronomers believe a quasar is produced by cosmic gas as it is drawn toward the edge of a supermassive black hole.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

This is quite an interesting story that if investigated could prove to be very beneficial to science. If more information could be gathered it's possible that we might learn more about how black holes work and form. We might also learn the importance of quasars. But I must say it's quite interesting that this is apparently the only black hole of it's size that is not in a host galaxy. Is it possible that it has swalloed a galaxy hole?

Related News Links:
www.space.com
news.bbc.co.uk
www.physorg.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
The Elegant Universe... Black Holes, SuperStrings, Quantam Physics, Wormholes all explained (mostly)
black holes=wormholes?

[edit on 22-9-2005 by asala]

Umbrax

posted on Sep, 23 2005 @ 08:24 PM

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Very interesting. It would seem if we spent more time learning about this black hole then we should be able to learn more about the nature of all black holes.

ShadowXIX

posted on Sep, 23 2005 @ 08:55 PM

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Theres still alot we dont know about these Super Massive black holes. What makes them start feeding and what keeps other ones from feeding. Its not impossible that it could have consumed its host Galaxy IMHO.

Its also a interesting theory that the galaxy is made up almost entirely dark matter. This might be able to prove the existence of Dark matter in that regoin the same way we can detect planets by looking at the way the host star reacts without ever seeing the planet itself. Perhaps we can prove there is dark matter there by the way the black hole acts.