Top image is compliments of scitechdaily.com and lower image is compliments of Phys.org.
Super Massive Black Holes exist at the center of every galaxy. Their gravitational distortion of space is so large that everything in a galaxy revolves around them. Some super massive black holes are more active than others. Some produce enormous jets of x-rays, and some produce jets of super heated gas. The top image above shows the anatomy of a super massive black hole jet. See how the gas is super heated to a plasma and is ejected from the event horizon following the lines of a magnetic field. A simplified explanation for these jets is that material entering the black hole becomes "jammed up" at the entry point, the event horizon. As the material is drawn into the black hole it interacts more severely, super-heating it to a plasma and this interaction can create enormous jets of gas and sometimes x-rays. A colourized image of actual supermassive blackhole with jets is shown in the lower image above. A black hole can also suck the mass of a star which gets too close creating an accreation disk of material surrounding the black hole and then creating an enormous jet from the center, emitting super-heated gas in the form of plasma. Although the top image is an animated reproduction, it accurately depicts what astronomers have actually seen occurring in space. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena In these photos, complements of NASA and their CHANDRA X-ray space telescope, we get a view of multiple black holes in the galaxy Centaurus A. This is the nearest galaxy to our own that contains Super Massive Black Holes.
Given enough time, Super Massive Black Holes are created by the merging of smaller galaxies and smaller black holes. The photo above is thought to be a picture of 1 step in the process, where smaller black holes from several galaxies are merging to form 1 Super Massive Black Hole of immense size. The huge jet (in lower photo) is being emitted from one of the Super Massive Black holes and is approximately 13,000 light years in length! There is a second, smaller jet being emitted in the opposite direction. These jets are composed of X-rays being emitted by the intense interraction of matter at or near the Event Horizon of the black hole. Just outside the Event Horizon there is an accretion disk of material. The pull of the Super Massive Black hole essentially creates a traffic jam of material within the accretion disk, resulting in immense interaction and ejection of X-ray jets. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena Top Image compliments of NASA and bottom image compliments of California, Berkeley
Black holes were first discovered with radio telescopes. The first scientific proof of Black Hole existence at the center of our galaxy was demonstrated indirectly by measuring how observable objects moving around a central area in space. While the Black Hole cannot be observed directly, scientists pain-stakingly mapped the orbits of enormous stars orbiting the Black Hole (eg. lower image). They also provide a good description of the anatomy of a Black Hole, the event horizon, the accretion disk and what happens to objects that get too close. Extremely bright objects initially discovered using radio telescopes called Quasars, were actually Black Holes. They also discovered that the mass of a Black Hole at the center of most galaxies is directly related (linear relationship) to the mass of the galaxy surrounding it. It has been determined that the mass of a Black Hole is consistently approximately 0.5% of the mass of its galaxy. This is extremely important and may indicate that the size of the galaxy is controlled by the size of it's black hole at the center. At this writing, a massive cloud of gas is approaching the center of our Milky Way. A super-massive black hole called Sagittarius A is at the center. As the massive gas cloud approaches Sagittarius A, at the center of our Milky Way it will give astronomers incredible insight on how a Super Massive Black hole devours mass. In fact with this huge injection of gas (approximately the volume of the Earth) our Black Hole should get much brighter as friction of mass in the accretion disk increases to create a searing plasma. This should be very ineteresting. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena, Top Image compliments of space.com and bottom image compliments of Simrat Arri on Prezi.
Einstein predicted through calculation, that singularities or black holes, exist and how they are thought to distort space and time. Einstein's theory in a nutshell, describes how massive objects in space were calculated to distort space and time. A simple observation of very accurate clocks in orbit above the earth are known to run slightly faster than the same clock on Earth. The difference in time is only a small fraction of a second, but it proves Einstein's theory of how massive objects (eg. Earth) distort space and slow time. Extrapolate this observation to a supermassive black hole with gravity 1000's of times more than the Earth, and you get a significant slowing of time and huge distortion of space that is so large that light cannot escape. The calculated distortion of space created by a black hole is portrayed in the second figure, showing space as a conical structure. the amount of distortion increases with the mass and gravity of the objects compared (Sun, Neutron Star, black hole). As intensity of gravity grows, the size of the distorted cone grows with it. It is this distortion of space that explains why smaller objects orbit larger objects in space (ie. moons around planets, planets around stars and stars around black holes. Distortion of space and time at a black hole are theoretical of course, and it is unlikely that we will ever get direct measurements of anything at the edge of a black hole because of its destructive power and the immense distance to the nearest one. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena Image compliments of ZME Science
As a scientist, I have always been interested in Astronomy, but especially since viewing the stunning pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. I find the study of outer space fascinating, as it gives us clues to origins of the universe and our own planet. The Hubble Space Telescope was instrumental in changing many scientists’ conceptions of how big the universe really is and how everything works. It has changed concepts in physics and has provided clues to scientific concepts relating the very large to the very small. One of these concepts is illustrated in an artist’s conception above. Here we see a super-massive black hole that has been determined to be the heaviest detected in the known universe thus far. The main component of photograph is an artist’s representation of M33 X-7, a binary system (a binary system contains 2 stars) in the nearby galaxy M33. In this system, a black hole is orbiting around a star (large blue object), which is about 70 times more massive than our Sun. This black hole is almost 16 times the Sun’s mass (even though it appears smaller). Before the black hole was created, it was formerly a giant star that reached the end of its life. It burned up most of its mass, thereby reducing the amount of fusion taking place. The huge reduction in fusion reactions, then allowed it’s massive gravity to dominate, causing a super-massive implosion (collapse) to form a black hole. However, in this situation, the resulting black hole is a record for those created from the collapse of a giant star. Other black holes at the centers of galaxies are much more massive, but this object has set a record for a so-called “stellar mass” black hole. In this artist conception, the orange disk surrounds the black hole (which cannot actually be seen). The visible orange disk is material fed by a wind from the blue star, which has been swept into orbit around the black hole. Material from the star is being pulled into the black hole by its powerful gravity. The material that makes it past the black hole is disrupted, causing turbulence beyond the disk. The blue star is also distorted by gravity from the black hole. The star is stretched slightly in the direction of the black hole, causing it to become less dense. The inset shows the actual system. It is derived from a composite of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright objects in the inset image are young, massive stars around M33 X-7, and the bright, blue Chandra source is M33 X-7 itself. By using X-rays detected by Chandra it is possible for scientists to determine how long the black hole is eclipsed by the companion star, which indicates the size of the companion. Observations by the Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii track the orbital motion of the companion star around the black hole, giving information about the mass of the both members of this binary system. These observations from both the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope, clearly demonstrate their important scientific contributions and the need for their continued funding. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena |