Chatroom
 

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum > Space and Astronomy > Astronomy
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Mark Forums Read

   

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #1 (permalink)  
Old 03-January-2007, 07:59 PM
Blob's Avatar
Blob Blob is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 3,410
Default Black hole in dense star cluster

A black hole has been found slowly devouring a companion star at the heart of a dense star cluster – providing the first clear sign that black holes inhabit the dense stellar cities known as globular clusters.
Strong evidence for colossal black holes weighing millions or billions of times the Sun's mass has been found at the centres of galaxies. And smaller black holes have been discovered in a range of environments, including within the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
But there has previously been no clear-cut evidence for black holes of any size within globular clusters, spherical groupings of millions of stars. That is of interest because there are competing theories about what would happen to such black holes.

Read more
__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...
Reply With Quote
  #2 (permalink)  
Old 03-January-2007, 08:10 PM
antoniseb's Avatar
antoniseb antoniseb is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Marlborough, MA
Posts: 14,979
Default

I was interested in reading this. The article I saw made no estimate as to the mas of this black hole, but since globular clusters are mostly fairly mature collections of stars with no new gas & dust left, any IMBHs in them will spend most of their time quiet and invisible. If there were a freak alignment of a globular between us and the LMC, or maybe M31, we might be able to examine it closely for central long-lasting & bright lensing events, but aside from that... move along, nothing to see here.
__________________
Forming opinions as we speak
Reply With Quote
  #3 (permalink)  
Old 04-January-2007, 02:38 AM
Blob's Avatar
Blob Blob is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 3,410
Default

Hum,
There is a bit more here

Quote:
Astronomers have found a black hole where few thought they could ever exist, inside a globular star cluster. The finding has broad implications for the dynamics of stars clusters and also for the existence of a still-speculative new class of black holes called 'intermediate-mass' black holes.
The discovery is reported in the current issue of Nature. Tom Maccarone of the University of Southampton in England leads an international team on the finding, made primarily with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite.
Maccarone's team found one such stellar-mass black hole by chance feeding in a globular cluster in a galaxy named NGC 4472, about fifty million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster.
Read more

Artist’s impression of stellar-mass black hole
Attached Images
File Type: gif blackhole.gif (759 Bytes, 16 views)
__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...
Reply With Quote
  #4 (permalink)  
Old 04-January-2007, 07:28 AM
loglo's Avatar
loglo loglo is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Sydney,AU
Posts: 640
Default

Quote:
Artist’s impression of stellar-mass black hole
Obviously in its dormant state.
Reply With Quote
  #5 (permalink)  
Old 04-January-2007, 04:10 PM
StupendousMan's Avatar
StupendousMan StupendousMan is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 502
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by antoniseb View Post
I was interested in reading this. The article I saw made no estimate as to the mas of this black hole, but since globular clusters are mostly fairly mature collections of stars with no new gas & dust left, any IMBHs in them will spend most of their time quiet and invisible. If there were a freak alignment of a globular between us and the LMC, or maybe M31, we might be able to examine it closely for central long-lasting & bright lensing events, but aside from that... move along, nothing to see here.
Well, actually, there is another way that black holes might produce visible effects in globular clusters. The central regions of GCs are dense enough that gravitational interactions between stars can be frequent enough (especially over billions of years) to modify the density of stars. For example, three-body interactions between a close binary and a single star can give the single star a jolt of kinetic energy -- causing it to fly into an orbit which takes it far from the center of the GC -- which comes from the orbit of the binary -- which shrinks and turns into a "harder" binary system. Over very long periods of time, such interactions can modify the overall density distribution in the GC by a significant amount.

So, some people study GCs very carefully to measure the distribution of stars as a function of distance from the center. In some cases, the distributions can provide indirect evidence for very massive objects at the centers of GCs -- perhaps black holes.

For more information on this subject, look up papers by David Merritt. He's just one of the many players in this field, but he happens to be a member of my department, so I hear a lot about it from him ....
Reply With Quote
  #6 (permalink)  
Old 05-January-2007, 01:46 AM
Blob's Avatar
Blob Blob is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 3,410
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by antoniseb View Post
The article I saw made no estimate as to the mas of this black hole
Hum,
a stellar-mass black hole.

Quote:
British astronomers said they found a small black hole where it shouldn't be -- tucked in the middle of a densely packed star cluster.
The black hole, estimated to be about 10 times more massive than the Sun, was found inside a globular cluster in a galaxy about 50 million light-years from Earth.
Source
__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...
Reply With Quote
  #7 (permalink)  
Old 06-January-2007, 09:49 PM
Disinfo Agent Disinfo Agent is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 6,507
Default

UT story.
__________________
"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire
Reply With Quote
  #8 (permalink)  
Old 07-January-2007, 02:34 AM
RussT RussT is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Sacramento, California
Posts: 2,577
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Blob View Post
Hum,
a stellar-mass black hole.



Source
This certainly does not sound like a IMBH.

If this is a stellar black hole is it from a 1a or a typeII supernova?

And if it is a STELLAR black hole, why would it be unusual to find one of these in a STELLAR globular custer of stars?
__________________
RussT
________________________________
Everything is, as it should be, otherwise, it wouldn't be!
Reply With Quote
  #9 (permalink)  
Old 07-January-2007, 06:20 AM
Ken G's Avatar
Ken G Ken G is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 10,541
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by RussT View Post
If this is a stellar black hole is it from a 1a or a typeII supernova?
Not Ia if it has 10 solar masses-- Ia's are made from 1.4 solar masses. It sounds like core collapse, unless there have been mergers of black holes. The reference to IMBHs suggest that mergers is one possible idea, however.
Quote:
And if it is a STELLAR black hole, why would it be unusual to find one of these in a STELLAR globular custer of stars?
Good question, I don't know-- the parts quoted didn't say what the competing ideas were on the "fates" of such black holes.
Reply With Quote
  #10 (permalink)  
Old 07-January-2007, 08:51 AM
loglo's Avatar
loglo loglo is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Sydney,AU
Posts: 640
Default

The arguments against BHs in GCs are because of the dynamics:-

Quote:
Some theorists believe any black holes formed there – through the deaths of massive stars – would tend to be thrown out of the clusters after gravitational interactions with other stars. Others argue that the star-sized black holes would eventually glom together, forming ever larger black holes that might one day become the supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies.
Reply With Quote
  #11 (permalink)  
Old 07-January-2007, 12:14 PM
Kullat Nunu's Avatar
Kullat Nunu Kullat Nunu is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Earth
Posts: 2,742
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by RussT View Post
If this is a stellar black hole is it from a 1a or a typeII supernova?
Type Ia supernovae cannot create black holes. The progenitor white dwarf is completely destroyed in the process. It seems that stellar-mass black holes can only be created in core-collapse supernovae or in mergers of two neutron stars.
__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman
Reply With Quote
  #12 (permalink)  
Old 07-January-2007, 04:12 PM
Ken G's Avatar
Ken G Ken G is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 10,541
Default

Good point-- that rules out Ia completely.
Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Why a Black Hole like object can't collapse in a singularity ? czeslaw Against the Mainstream 13 06-October-2006 10:18 PM
Giant Black Hole Seen Tearing a Star Apart Fraser Universe Today Story Comments 0 07-September-2005 02:28 AM
Middleweight black hole found ToSeek Astronomy 6 09-June-2004 06:28 PM
Discussion: Star Mimics a Black Hole Fraser Universe Today Story Comments 7 17-January-2004 04:12 AM


All times are GMT. The time now is 06:18 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.3
Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
LinkBacks Enabled by vBSEO 3.0.0
©  2006 Bad Astronomy and Universe Today