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Psycho
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Quote:
Originally posted by taog
I'm an Astronomy nerd. I'm taking it in school starting in the fall.
I just wanted to point out that the black hole would be as massive as 1,000 of our solar systems. They don't mean as large. The black hole is probably smaller than our sun, but way more massive. You were correct, black holes are very small. They collapse on themselves constantly, which makes them very small, and their gravity is more forceful than any other known thing, and can even pull in light, this the reason why it's a black hole.
Anyway, something like this doesn't surprise me at all. We have recently discovered that supermassive black holes reside at the centre of most, if not all galaxies in our universe.
There are many different things you have to put into play when looking at the age of this black hole, which wasn't mentioned in the article, and should have been.
When astronomers looked at a recent discovery of a distant supernovae, it appeared that the redshift (how fast it is moving away from us) didn't match with it's brightness based on the current calculations for what it should be.
In other words, when using two different ways to calculate distance, they didn't match.
What did this in turn tell us?
It showed that it's possible that the universe is a) Expanding at an accelerating rate, rather than a constant one, or b) Time is actually slowing down.
If either of these are true, the universe is much older than previously thought with Hubbles calculations, or time was actually moving faster in the past, which would explain why the blackhole looks so old now.
Also, it's thought that the universe is about 13 billion years old, but the actual numbers that Hubbles law proves is between 13 and 17 billion years old. If it's 17, it's more likely that something like this isn't such a huge deal, and it's more likely for something like this to exist.
It is very interesting, however. Thank you for pointing this out. I'll have to do some more research on the topic.
Also, here's a little bit of a better explanation for the above about the supernovae. I am kind of going out on a tangent here, but this will kind of help you understand the unknowns about related subjects such as this, and the fact that they are huge findings, but always played as something bigger than they actually are, in a way. We don't have rethink all of our theories regarding astronomy, but we might have to think about some theories, and what this supports. That's basically what astronomy does. You find something new, figure out everything you can about it, and find out what theories it supports.
Astronomy is one of the most precise sciences. It becomes hard for people to understand when you start talking about things, such as the black hole, that a lot of people don't really understand. Black holes have just recently been proven to exist, and were just theories before this. We don't know what existed before that black hole, or around it, and we will never know. It's possible that our calculations for finding out the age of this black hole is wrong. We might just have to figure out more about black holes, and what they do exactly. Since we can't see inside them, it's hard to know exactly what is going on.
Anyway, now for my whole tangent part of my post. I just thought this was interesting, and might help to explain the 'mysterious' age of this black hole. It's also just to show you that the age factor isn't that big of a deal, and isn't concrete either. The size of it is insanely huge, which makes this black hole amazing.
Recently astronomers took a look at a far off supernova. This supernova was quite interesting, because it appeared that the redshift (how fast it is moving away from us) didn't match with it's brightness based on the current calculations for what it should be.
What does this tell us?
Well, one of 3 things, now.
At first it was believed that this could have been caused by an accelerating universe, rather than an expanding universe at a constant rate.
If this were true then, back when this supernova emitted the light rays that we are seeing today the universe would have been expanding at a different rate. A slower rate. Which would thus explain why the supernova isn't as bright as it's redshift suggests. The redshifts suggests that the supernova should be closer than it actually is, but since the universe was expanding at a slower rate in the past, if this theory were true, then this would explain things a little better.
At this time another theory was also suggested to explain why this supernova appears to be further than what the redshift suggests.
To understand this, you must first understand that the speed of light and time are directly related. It's called time dilation, which is explained by the general (or special) theory of relativity.
Time dilation basically states as your speed increases, time decreases. Or, the faster you move, the slower time goes.
Now, in physics, and astronomy and anything related, we set time as a constant, c. However, if you were to change that constant, it would also change the value of how fast time goes by compared to how fast you are moving.
So, relating to this situation, if you were to set the speed of light, c, at a lower rate for the past than it is now, you come up with a pretty interesting conclusion.
It's kind of confusing to understand, so i'll try my best to explain it.
If the speed of light were moving at a faster rate in the past, this means that the light coming from the supernova would have taken less time to get to us than what we would expect.
Basically look at it this way. If something was moving very fast 10 minutes ago and you measured how fast it got to you, but it was slowing down, you would get some number, lets say x.
If you then measured something that was moving at the rate that this object you just observed at the time it got to you, you would get another number, lets say y.
y has to be greater than x, because it would have taken less time to get to you, since it was moving faster to begin with.
Same thing here. Our first view would be the second object from the above. This is what we would expect from this supernova. But, if the speed of light were slowing down, the objects light would have taken that much less time to get to us, because the light was travelling at a faster rate to begin with.
This would explain why the object seems to be much further than we thought.
The interesting thing about this is, if the speed of light is in fact slowing down, this means that the speed of time is speeding up. If this theory is true, it also changes many formulas, including E=mc^2, because c can no longer be looked at as a constant.
Now, very recently it has also been suggested that another force might cause this to happen. This theory is also supported by many other strange occurences in the universe, such as gravity. The way some cosmological objects move and act, such as black holes and galaxies and such, compared to what is around them, is sometimes very strange.
The theory that 'dark matter' exists in the universe has been around for many years, but you can also apply it to this specific case too.
Dark matter is basically what a lot of things point to. It's kind of there to explain the unknown things that happen in the universe. It's there to explain why some objects act the way they do, and why there is this missing piece of energy (referred to as dark energy).
If you figure out the makeup of the entire universe, with what we know today, and you find the mass of the entire universe, you will end up getting errors, and you will end up getting numbers that aren't consistant with other theories and fomulas to figure out the same thing.
The reason why this happens is summerized by this mysterious 'dark matter', and 'dark energy'.
Basically what they are is, something that is unobservable. It's there, but you can't see it or detect it. It's the opposite of everything else, but produces effects that counter balance our universe into what our theories show. Dark energy is the opposite of gravity, it pushes rather than pulls.
If there is this 'dark matter' in the universe, it could also explain why this might happen with this supernova. The distance that this object has travelled away from us is in fact where the light shows (neglecting dark matter) and is in fact where the redshift shows (because of dark matter).
Basically, the light has to travel though the dark matter, but it doesn't change the properties of the light, except for the redshift. It's hard to imagine, and i don't know much about it, but it's an interesting thought.
Basically if there is this mysterious dark matter, the light that came from that supernova would have traveled through it, thus giving the redshift and brightness of the supernova different conclusions regarding figuring out how far away this supernova is.
EDIT:
I just read my post over, and, well, i didn't do the best job at explaining some things. I'll come back tomorrow and explain anything that anyone has any questions about, and explain myself and thoughts on it a little better. I'm way too tired right now, which is why some of this might not make a whole lot of sense.
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Jesus, that is one long post.
But good stuff never the less.
Always interesting to study things much larger than ourselves.
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It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl
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