'Ultramassive' black hole discovered by Durham astronomers Astronomers say they have found one of the universe's largest black holes to date using a new technique. Scientists at Durham University discovered the "ultramassive" black hole by observing its pull on passing light, called gravitational lensing. Dr James Nightingale who led the study said even he struggled to "comprehend how big this thing is". Their findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The academics said the black hole was 30 billion times the size of our Sun and was the first to be measured using gravitational lensing. Dr Nightingale told BBC Radio Newcastle: "Even as an astronomer, I find it hard to comprehend how big this thing is. "If you look at the night sky and count up all the stars and planets you can see and put them in a single point, it would be a fraction of a percent the size of this black hole. "This black hole is bigger than the majority of galaxies in the universe." He said the discovery "pushes our understanding of astronomy to the limits", adding: "How do you form a black hole this big in just 13 billions years of the universe's existence?" please log in to view this image What is a black hole? A black hole is a region of space where matter has collapsed in on itself. The gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes will emerge from the explosive demise of certain large stars. But some are truly huge and are billions of times the mass of our Sun. How these monsters - found at galaxy centres - formed is unknown. But it is clear they energise the galaxy and will influence its evolution. please log in to view this image The discovery began in 2004 when Durham University Professor Alastair Edge noticed a giant arc of light when reviewing images of a galaxy survey. The study, which also involved Germany's Max Planck Institute, used extremely high-resolution images from NASA's Hubble telescope and the university's DiRAC COSMA8 supercomputer facilities to explore further and confirm the black hole's existence. Dr Nightingale said as light travels through the universe it "appears to be pulled towards the mass of nearby objects". "We found this very special light ray that travelled extremely close to this black hole," he said, adding: "Roughly 40 billion times the distance of the Sun to the Earth is how close it was which in astronomical terms is a very small amount." Dr Nightingale said the use of gravitational lensing could "let us detect many more black holes beyond our local universe and reveal how these exotic objects evolved further back in cosmic time". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-65109663
a work mate and his wife seen one of those when leaving house for work half 5 in the morning……was slowly moving down street below the height of the street lighting.
Dumb fck american's first thought was to grab his rifle and start firing at it. Only thing that doesn't work is that the orb flies past at a slow speed and the fighter jets race past the same screen in a fraction of a second and yet still remain behind it. Doesn't make sense.
Think it was trebs said speeds were off ….I said a mate of mine seen a thing similar to that on vid but not with military jet fighter……wasn’t fast either just slowly moved down street Oops only just realised you got an answer lol
This on dark matter. Although dark matter makes up about 85% of all mass in the Universe, it's extremely difficult to detect and defies a ready description. But dark matter influences the large scale structure of everything we see - where all the galaxies are, where the voids in space are. It's the scaffolding on which the visible structure of the Universe is hung. It neither emits nor absorbs light. The only way you can very obviously infer its presence is through its interplay with gravity. Big rotating galaxies of stars would fly apart were it not for the inclusion of some unseen mass pulling on them and keeping them intact. But dark matter will bend, or lens, background light, and this is how its whereabouts was mapped by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65243132
Civilisation as we know it has only been around 6,000 years and we are trying to understand billions of years of creation. The first human only went into space 62 years ago. Sixty two years lol....opening a treasure trove of billions of years, the mind boggles.
I still don't know what to make of the dark matter theory yet, I feel we need more evidence, but how we obtain that could be beyond our capabilities. I saw a video one time that described it like lights on a Christmas tree....in daylight you just see lots of branches, with the lights out, but during darkness, the braches disappear and you see the lights, all appearing to hold themselves in the air. Not sure if I've described that right, but the best I can remember it.
It's good what we as a species have achieved in such a short space of time. I can't rule out anything, not even light speed and hibernation type stuff in space travel.
