Did anyone catch the program on the Discovery channel about supermassive BH's? I found it interesting that the speed of outermost stars, galaxy size and anchoring supermassive BH mass are all related. This is really neet. It was suggested that as a galaxy anchoring sumpermassive BH feeds, it eventually imparts enough velocity to the galaxy that mass is pushed out enough where matter no longer falls into the BH.
It is also suggested that our own galaxy's anchoring supermassive BH has started feeding recently.

Thoughts anyone?

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Valiant Dancer

I haven't seen the show but it does sound interesting. There was an article in Scientific American a few month back on the SMBH's at the center of galaxies. They speculated at length about why ours was so quiescent. They did note that there has been a recent up turn in the energy output but it was by no means anything spectacular. They thought a gas cloud or small star may have deorbited into it.

The SA article also had a bit about the SMBH imparting enough angular momentum to the galaxy to keep most of the matter out of its' own reach. They indicated that this would be cyclical as the "gravitational drag" of the galaxy would tend to slow the system and more mass would fall into the BH and give it more momentum speeding the system up again, etc.

Definately interesting stuff.

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It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

I saw that show. It was quite interesting. They had a show on just before it about the snowball earth theory that was rather interesting as well. Discovery Channel can be vexing but sometimes they have some really good stuff.