Supermassive black holes common in early Universe BY DR EMILY BALDWIN ASTRONOMY NOW
Posted: October 17, 2008 Observations of a spectacular collision of galaxies in the distant Universe have revealed that colossal black holes were present when galaxies were just beginning to form. The observations were made with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii, which focuses on wavelengths of 200 microns to 1 millimetre that are most sensitive to the very cold gas and dust associated with the earliest evolutionary stages of stars, galaxies and planets. The SMA can peer into these primordial interstellar clouds and witness the birth of stars. "This new image reveals two galaxies where we only expected to find one," says Professor Rob Ivison, lead author of the study that will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Remarkably, both galaxies contain super-massive black holes. Such monsters are rare and we now suspect that the radio galaxy had only `turned on' because it is involved in a collision with a previously unknown galaxy, which helps feed its black hole and thus power the radio jets." The two galaxies and their central black holes smashed together in a dramatic collision, but because this cataclysmic event occurred less than two billion years after the big bang, the galaxies will have long since merged, creating a single monstrous black hole. The implications are wide reaching, and the astronomers can't help but wonder how many other colossal black holes may be lurking unseen in the distant Universe. Whole story: http://tinyurl.com/6ckmdc __________________________________________ So that's a black hole with at least 30,000,000,000 solar masses wandering around out there. And there are probably billions of them as most (if not all) galaxies have a large black hole at the centre. Luckily there's no chance of them affecting us, they are so far away in time as well as space that, should they wander near our little corner of creation we'd notice huge changes in the orbits and trajectories of our close neighbouring galaxies. And as they are millions of light years away the human race will be long dead by the time one reaches us. So we can all sleep safe in our beds. We're so lucky we live somewhere nice and quiet where we can evolve in peace. There aren't even any stars about to go supernova near enough to us to affect life for many years yet. Humanity will be long gone or will have evolved into something else, hopefully still sentient, by the time our suns orbit of the galactic centre takes us anywhere near something dangerous. A billion years is how long our little star takes wander once round the galaxy. It'll be happy 5th galactic birthday in 300 million years. Shame there won't be anyone around to buy a card.
