An Ancient Black Hole as Heavy as a Billion Suns Is Pointed Right At Us
Scientists have discovered the most ancient and distant “blazar,” a galaxy with a supermassive black hole that spews out mind-boggling amounts of light, at the edge of space and time. The object is roughly 13 billion light years away, but scientists were able to detect it because it is so “radio-loud,” meaning it is incredibly luminous even from afar.
Blazars are a special class of active galactic nuclei (AGN), which are galactic centers defined by supermassive black holes that feed on large volumes of infalling gas, dust, and stars. As this material falls toward the black hole, it becomes extremely hot and energetic, sparking the release of luminous jets of matter and radiation that travel close to the speed of light.
The combined observations enabled the team to estimate that the supermassive black hole at the heart of PSO J0309+27 is about a billion times more massive than the Sun. By comparison, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is puny, at only four million times the mass of the Sun.
What separates blazars from regular AGN is their orientation toward Earth: In order to be considered a blazar, the jets from these objects have to be pointed directly at us.... :smoking:
We like all that cosmic radiation and secondary particles of electromagnetic and ionizing radiation that penetrate down to surface and probably cause mutations in our DNA long term. Programming? Forced evolution? Anything is possible me thinks.... :scratch2:
Coincidence? :scratch2: Way too many incredible coincidences in this universe of ours. :smoking:
|
