Do You Think The New Black Hole Discovery Will Get A Bbt Mention?

[Superlovelexi]

http://news.yahoo.com/super-giant-black-hole-baffles-scientists-174556589--abc-news-tech.html

 

 

You would probably not enjoy the galaxy NGC 1277. Never mind that it's far - 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The problem is that at its center is a giant, giant black hole, 17 billion times as massive as our sun, so big that scientists calculate it makes up 59 percent of the mass of the galaxy's disc.

Astrophysicists have long believed that there's a black hole at the center of our Milky Way, but it probably accounts for something like 0.1 percent of the galaxy's center. The one in NGC 1277, scientists report in today's edition of the journal Nature, is the second largest they've ever observed, and it upends what they thought about how galaxies form.

 

Black holes, as you'll recall, are objects in space so massive that their gravity consumes everything around them - stars, planets, matter, energy, even light. Earthly scientists can only observe their effect on the space around them, not see them directly. Be grateful we're not close to one. They're actually useful to astrophysicists in explaining the nice spiral shape of many galaxies - you need something massive in the middle for the stars to circle - but NGC 1277 is an extreme.

"This is a really oddball galaxy," said Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin, a member of the team that made the find. "It's almost all black hole. This could be the first object in a new class of galaxy-black hole systems." Gebhardt and colleagues at the McDonald Observatory have been calculating the mass of different black holes - no small task considering their powerful gravity.

The researchers put together an animation of how stars in that distant galaxy would behave, whipping around the center to avoid falling in.

 

What would you see if you lived on a habitable planet in that far-away galaxy and could look toward the center? Probably nothing that makes sense to human eyes. Black holes have such powerful gravity that they distort the space around them.

[Superlovelexi]

I just saw this article and it totally made me think of Big Bang Theory even weirder on Yahoo this is one of the trending articles and right next to it on the Yahoo main page right now is a video of his interview on Ellen about Kunal's huge wedding http://shine.yahoo.com/video/kunal-nayyars-6-day-wedding-053015245.html   So of course it made me think about them possibly discussing this discovery on show like they did with the Higgs Boson, imagine all silly jokes they can make about how Sheldon almost getting a peek into Amy's black hole in the back of the car and Raj saying that calling it a black hole is racist lol you know stuff like that.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Superlovelexi

[Moonbase]

Sorry but that's just awful on so many levels…
 

[MJistheBOMB]

Black holes are no joke. I was watching a documentary on them hosted by the main character of Jurassic Park (who btw, has a dreamy British accent that I didn't know he had).

 

Monique

[Tensor]

In one of my other forums. I spend a couple of nights each week (not on Thursdays), going through the different astrophysical papers that are due to be released the next day to pick four to six that I think might interest the posters in the other forum.   Well, I just happened to pick this paper on Wednesday night.  For those that are interested, below is the entry for the paper.  The link is to the abstract of the paper, which then lets you chose the format (PDF, HTML, PS) to read the paper.  I then include the title of the paper and the authors.  Finally, I write a little blurb about the paper.  So, here's the entry:

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6429 An Over-Massive Black Hole in the Compact Lenticular Galaxy NGC1277

Remco C. E. van den Bosch (1), Karl Gebhardt (2), Kayhan Gültekin (3), Glenn van de Ven (1), Arjen van der Wel (1), Jonelle L. Walsh 

 

Observations show that a typical galaxy has a central black hole mass of ~.01% of the central bulge mass.  NGC 4486B has the largest current published black hole mass at 11%.  This paper looks at NGC1277, who’s black hole mass is 59% of the central bulge.   Four other galaxies with similar properties may also contain black holes with a larger than normal mass relation.   It also references three galaxies with smaller than normal black hole mass.   Whether these over and below typical mass black holes represent the ends of the distributions or separate classes of objects is currently unknown. 

 

So, enjoy.

 

 

[phantagrae]

Cool--I do wonder if it will get a mention. There was also an article about a week ago, I think, about an experiment set up in an old mineshaft in South Dakota to try to detect Dark Matter. I think that should could be worthy of a show mention, as well.

[Guest I'm not dead Cheryl]

I dunno. I am an astrophysicist myself and is not such a big deal, not even to us. Pretty much every galaxy has supermassive black hole at it's center. This one is larger than expected though, but it is certainly not outside of the theoretical framework.

Perhaps Raj would.

[Tensor]

I dunno. I am an astrophysicist myself and is not such a big deal, not even to us. Pretty much every galaxy has supermassive black hole at it's center. This one is larger than expected though, but it is certainly not outside of the theoretical framework.

Perhaps Raj would.

 

Had you seen that paper, Sursonica?

[Moonbase]

I dunno. I am an astrophysicist myself and is not such a big deal, not even to us. Pretty much every galaxy has supermassive black hole at it's center. This one is larger than expected though, but it is certainly not outside of the theoretical framework.

Perhaps Raj would.

 

He might.

 

And yes I have seen other articles about black holes from time to time... and dark matter experiments underground have been going on for donkeys years. Do you still get excited about astrophycics these days? It's exciting to me because it's not my field, so it's all new. When I was little, I wanted to be a scientist but went in to the arts instead. What can you do?

Edited November 30, 2012 by Moonbase

[phantagrae]

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of getting excited about it so much as it's something they can mention in passing that's related to their work.

They might not necessarily go, "Ooh, did you see that paper about that black hole?!?!", but they might mention it--like Sheldon dismissing it or mocking whatever scientists were involved, something like that.

Edited November 30, 2012 by phantagrae

[Tensor]

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of getting excited about it so much as it's something they can mention in passing that's related to their work.

They might not necessarily go, "Ooh, did you see that paper about that black hole?!?!", but they might mention it--like Sheldon dismissing it or mocking whatever scientists were involved, something like that.

 

They could put it on the white board also.  Pomita and I had a discussion about this.   In "The Higgs Boson Observation", at the end of the episode, back at the apartment, when Sheldon is telling Alex to notice people on her own time,  there is a numbered reference to the archive where preprint papers are put up on the internet.   This was on the whiteboard in the kitchen and is visible over Sheldon's right shoulder.  The only numbers you can't see are the last two, but the rest of the numbers are the same as the paper announcing the Higgs discovery.   Pomita noted that, considering the title of the episode, it could very well have been that paper.  

[Moonbase]

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of getting excited about it so much as it's something they can mention in passing that's related to their work.

They might not necessarily go, "Ooh, did you see that paper about that black hole?!?!", but they might mention it--like Sheldon dismissing it or mocking whatever scientists were involved, something like that.

 

Yet again, I was not arguing. I was asking Sursonica if she still gets excited about astrophysics because she has a degree in the field. Yes I think they might mention it.

 

 

@Tensor

I remember that post with Pomita. I didn't know about the reference numbers, it's a nice touch. They have a guy called David Saltzberg who is reponsible for writing on the whiteboards and making sure the science on the show is correct. Pretty smart guy I imagine.

 

Edited November 30, 2012 by Moonbase

[Superlovelexi]

I think it would be interesting if they mentioned it, or really any major scientific discoveries because I think this kind of information most people who are not scientists don't get to hear about often so I find it interesting when its brought up on the show and then it makes me want to know more about black holes.

[Superlovelexi]

Sorry but that's just awful on so many levels…

 

 

What the part about Amy's black hole or the Raj thinking its racist part?    After Sheldon's oral sex/pecking a chicken comment I don't think I'm so far out of line to bring up  Amy's black hole, worm hole or whatever you want to call it though it sounds more like something Amy would say than Sheldon as for Raj he is an astrophysicist so black holes would likely interest him a great deal   Even if they don't joke about them bringing up black holes could make for some interesting subject matter. 

Edited December 1, 2012 by Superlovelexi

[Superlovelexi]

Well whatever season it is he always looks adorable to me

[Guest I'm not dead Cheryl]

@Moonbase. I wrote an answer to you the other day, but I don't see my post now... I don't know what happenned to it. Oh well., Yes, I am still excited about Astrophysics and I love it with all my soul of course  

 

Black Holes IMO are one of the most fascinating subjects not only in my field but also for Physics in general. But they are so fascinating that it gets frustrating because we know so little about them, and what we do know doesn't even make sense most of the time. It's a subject that brings astrophysicists, theoretical physicists and cosmologists close but also want to rip each other's eyes out LOL. Until we can finally make a unified theory that includes both Quantum Theory and Relativity we are royally screwed though. We are kinda stuck and have been for decades :D

 

So yeah, I know Black Holes are always in the news because so many people find them fascinating (including myself) but for Physicists, they can also been a royal pain in the a** 

 

@Tensor

I did read the paper as soon as it came out Brilliant work and it is very awesome that they were able to observe it with such detail (which is NO easy task). To me, the big news about this is not the Black Hole itself, but the detail that they were able to gather. 

[Moonbase]

@Moonbase. I wrote an answer to you the other day, but I don't see my post now... I don't know what happenned to it. Oh well., Yes, I am still excited about Astrophysics and I love it with all my soul of course

 

Black Holes IMO are one of the most fascinating subjects not only in my field but also for Physics in general. But they are so fascinating that it gets frustrating because we know so little about them, and what we do know doesn't even make sense most of the time. It's a subject that brings astrophysicists, theoretical physicists and cosmologists close but also want to rip each other's eyes out LOL. Until we can finally make a unified theory that includes both Quantum Theory and Relativity we are royally screwed though. We are kinda stuck and have been for decades :D

 

So yeah, I know Black Holes are always in the news because so many people find them fascinating (including myself) but for Physicists, they can also been a royal pain in the a** 

 

@Tensor

I did read the paper as soon as it came out Brilliant work and it is very awesome that they were able to observe it with such detail (which is NO easy task). To me, the big news about this is not the Black Hole itself, but the detail that they were able to gather. 

 

What amazes me is how scientists could hypothesise the existence of black holes before we could even find them. Or anything about the universe for that matter. I wanted to go into science but failed maths because I have dyslexia. Calculations are all just pretty pictures to me, so physics was out of the question. I wish my mind worked like that, I admire people like you so much. My father was an engineer and we all thought I was going to be a scientist… but alas, he got arty farty me.

When you are small you think there's nothing up there, just blackness and a few stars and planets hanging about. When I learnt that the universe was not empty, but full of dark matter and how time and space bend in an enormous storm of electromagnetic force I was blown away. What's out there is just as fascinating as the planet we live on, if not more so because it's terrifying and otherworldly. I have symphonies of the planets which I listen to sometimes just to freak myself out and make me realise how insignificant I am. Somehow listening to the swirl of intergalactic solar winds puts things into perspective.

 

@ superlovelexi

I guess we just have different perspectives on what we find funny.

Edited December 1, 2012 by Moonbase

[Kyzzx]

For visual, this is supposed to be a representation of the black hole's "event horizon." It's not the ACTUAL size of the black hole. Sursonica could explain that. I'm not a scientist or astrophysicist, so...

 

 

 

[bigbangsheldon]

science 

[Moonbase]

Holy shimoly! It's like our planet is a speck of dust. Black holes are like massive vacuum cleaners sucking in galaxies. What happens to the matter sucked in? Does it get obliterated and spat out the other side like the smoke from Jims cigarette? Or compacted into a big dustbag in the sky? 

[Guest I'm not dead Cheryl]

Holy shimoly! It's like our planet is a speck of dust. Black holes are like massive vacuum cleaners sucking in galaxies. What happens to the matter sucked in? Does it get obliterated and spat out the other side like the smoke from Jims cigarette? Or compacted into a big dustbag in the sky?

Matter gets compressed into infinite density. Inside the Black Hole all laws of physics are no longer valid.

And yes, we are really small and unimportant in the universe: D

[annieogly]

Matter gets compressed into infinite density. Inside the Black Hole all laws of physics are no longer valid.

And yes, we are really small and unimportant in the universe: D

 

If the laws of physics don't hold in a black hole, I know that Sheldon is dancing    I thought it would make for a funny show if Sheldon and Raj went down the mine in Homestake....

[bigbangsheldon]

i find it scary how much is out there

[bostrich]

I am curious if any of the physicists here know what kind of problem Sheldon was working on his board last week? There were some interesting squares with different boxes drawn in them. It has been bugging me since the original promo shots were released. It's not something that is easy to look up on Wikipedia. Thanks.

[Guest I'm not dead Cheryl]

I am curious if any of the physicists here know what kind of problem Sheldon was working on his board last week? There were some interesting squares with different boxes drawn in them. It has been bugging me since the original promo shots were released. It's not something that is easy to look up on Wikipedia. Thanks.

 

He was doing calculations using Feynman diagrams (that is what those boxes are), which is a graphical method to make large calculations and get rid of the infinites. That's why he says to the other professor "this is my math". It is used a LOT for string theory mainly for gravity calculations. I didn't really get to distinguish the ecuations, but that's what those boxes are.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Sursonica