A Sense of Doubt blog post #1746 - Monster BLACK HOLE that should not exist and Planet X the black hole plus more
Cool space news!!
https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/11/28/1728244/monster-black-hole-that-should-not-exist-discovered-in-the-milky-way
Monster Black Hole That 'Should Not Exist' Discovered in the Milky Way (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report:Astronomers think our home galaxy -- the Milky Way -- is practically bursting with black holes, with estimates of up to 100 million of the invisible beasts hiding across the galactic neighborhood. It was generally assumed these black holes could reach a mass of up to 20 times that of the sun, but the discovery of a "monster" black hole, with about 70 times the mass of the sun, has surprised Chinese astronomers. In a new study, published in the journal Nature on Nov. 27, a research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences peered across the galaxy with the Large sky Area Multi-Object fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (Lamost), based at Xinglong Observatory in China. Black holes don't emit light, so astronomers have to get crafty when they go hunting for them.
Usually, this involves looking for signs a black hole is feasting on a nearby star or the gas and dust that swirls around them. If the black hole isn't feasting and if it isn't surrounded by bright gas and dust, it becomes a little trickier to locate. But, using Lamost, the team examined the movement of stars across the sky, searching for those that seemed to be orbiting an invisible object. Follow-up observations with telescopes in Spain and the US helped the researchers discover a star about eight times bigger than the sun. Intriguingly, it was orbiting a "dark companion": The monster black hole, dubbed LB-1. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of China and first author of the study, in a press release. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."
Usually, this involves looking for signs a black hole is feasting on a nearby star or the gas and dust that swirls around them. If the black hole isn't feasting and if it isn't surrounded by bright gas and dust, it becomes a little trickier to locate. But, using Lamost, the team examined the movement of stars across the sky, searching for those that seemed to be orbiting an invisible object. Follow-up observations with telescopes in Spain and the US helped the researchers discover a star about eight times bigger than the sun. Intriguingly, it was orbiting a "dark companion": The monster black hole, dubbed LB-1. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of China and first author of the study, in a press release. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/11/space-news-is-planet-x-black-hole-and.html
Space News - is Planet X a black hole? And those Russian rocket explosions... and more...
Planetary Radio gives you an hour-long podcast on solar system news! Especially glimpses of the weird and wonderful projects we’re funding at NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). Plus a tribute to Alexei Leonov. Matt Kaplan is a terrific and engaging host…. and the projects truly are worth your tax dollars! (Well, most of them ;-)
A new paper suggests the gravitational pull that we’ve long associated with a missing Planet X could come from a primordial black hole – a type of small singularity that scientists have theorised formed during the Big Bang. "We advocate that rather than just looking for it in visible light, maybe look for it in gamma rays. Or cosmic rays." Or else maybe the distortion of background stars? Or Hawking Radiation?
On average, the mysterious body is calculated to orbit the Sun 20 times farther than Neptune, every 10,000 to 20,000 years, versus Pluto's 248 years. Far-out!
Separately, at the recent Starship Conference in San Diego, Matt Kaplan, the Voice of the Planetary Society, interviewed me for Planetary Radio.
Need more Brin-blather about what might be going on out there? Let’s move out from the mere solar system. “Should we be revealing ourselves to the cosmos? What if the first aliens to discover us do so thanks to our own transmissions, and, more disturbingly, what if those aliens are less than benevolent?” On StarTalk All-Stars, astrobiologist and host David Grinspoon also tackles METI, or “Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” With co-host Chuck Nice, Dr. FunkySpoon invited David Brin, the Hugo award-winning science fiction author, scientist and NASA consultant who was on the committee that drew up the protocols for what to do if we do make contact with aliens.
You’ll learn why the “barn door excuse” – that we’ve already sent out radio and television transmissions that may have sealed our fate – is scientifically incorrect, but why new plans to send planetary radar focused beams into space would pump up the volume exponentially. We discuss whether the general public has the right to determine whether we broadcast our presence to the universe, or whether a “scientific elite” gets to decide humanity’s fate.
One proposed theory explaining the "Fermi Paradox" is that civilizations reach a "competence limit," especially if they do what elites always do in feudal-oligarchic-despotic societies -- crush the corrective light of criticism. Want a daunting example? Here's an interesting dissection of the kinds of "nuclear rocket that Russians may have been testing in Archangelsk, before that recent, horrific explosion. And yes, such desperation plus incompetence combinations are really scary.
Note also it was one of three disasters just that month! Watch this amazing footage from the munitions dump going off in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. And then ponder how that gangster mafia is on the verge of ruling the world.
== Planet "X"? Or a hole? ==
On average, the mysterious body is calculated to orbit the Sun 20 times farther than Neptune, every 10,000 to 20,000 years, versus Pluto's 248 years. Far-out!
Another possibility…. A wormhole gateway? For alien lurkers? Or waiting for us, as in the Expanse
More mundane (slightly.) Scientists have discovered what could be the largest neutron star on record. Starting at around 1.4 solar masses, more recent measurements have revealed increasingly huge examples. This one is estimated at 2.14x solar mass and 20 km across. Once a star reaches 2.17 times the mass of the sun, that star is doomed to collapse into a black hole. This suggests that J0740+6620 is "really pushing that" limit, providing an amazing laboratory for gravity radiation and stellar evolution, plus the possibility of something dramatic.
The second verified interstellar visitor object is more active than ‘Oumuamua. It’s cometary activity will be visible for months, allowing analysis of many elemental/chemical traits. Astronomers will attempt to compare C/2019 Q4's shape to the (arguably) cigar-like structure (or even odder) of 'Oumuamua, which looked different from anything we've yet seen in our solar system. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, expected to come online next year, should be able to spot large numbers of interstellar objects as they fly through our solar system.
Another spectacular new ‘eye’ (among many) is , the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Mayall Telescope in Arizona, is a huge leap in our ability to measure galaxy distances – enabling a new era of mapping the structures in the Universe. See the amazing new map of the filamentary nature of our universe.
Dust from a huge asteroid collision out there might have obscured enough sunlight to trigger the Kirschvink or Iceball epochs on Earth, about 466 million years ago.
== A few curiosities ==
The mass of the proposed superheavy gravitino lies in the region of the Planck mass—that is, around a hundred millionth of a kilogram. That’s immense. In comparison, protons and neutrons—the building blocks of the atomic nucleus—are around ten quintillion (ten million trillion) times lighter. Their large mass means that these particles could only occur in very dilute form in the universe – “one actually wouldn't need very many of them to explain the dark matter content in the universe and in our galaxy—one particle per 10,000 cubic kilometres would be sufficient.” This has another effect. It means these particles needn’t be invisible to EM interactions… they could interact with light and matter relatively normally and still not have been detected till now.
If so, interplanetary space contains them sparsely but everywhere. Might 4.6 billion years of collisions with Earth left ‘tracks’ in old rocks? (Much as my gravity laser beans do, in Earth?) Might these present obstacles to fast ships, and hence help to explain the Fermi Paradox?
And finally... Though almost desperately fluffy, the “In Search of” shows can be amusing and occasionally interesting. Here’s one about aliens where I go along…
Heh! NIAC has even funded some Mach Effect studies. I think just to keep a reputation for openmindedness that keeps the better minds hanging around.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1911.29 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1609 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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