Oversized Black Hole Confounds Scientists

[Pikeperch]

This article fails to note whether the galaxy is spiral, elliptical, or irregular, and important note to determine the approximate age of the galaxy. If it was irregular, I'd guess a trick of gravity robbed the host of most of its stars after a run in with a couple other galaxies, or perhaps the interactions between a couple black holes were strong enough that most of the stars were kicked off when galaxies came together and the black holes merged.

Maybe it ate the rest of it's galaxy? (Could imply that Black Holes eventually eat their galaxy, maybe they even grow so large they begin to interact and eventually it's just one galaxy-spanning black hole or BOOM, universe reset. It's a theory at least )

Not something i'm worried about. where we are in our galaxy, we do not feel any real gravitational influence from the black hole at the galactic center-- we feel the influence from all the stuff between us and the center.

In the original letter they say it's lenticular.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/full/nature11592.html

Speaking of which, could you you please include a reference to the original report in future scientific posts?
I get that most people probably aren't interested in them, but it would be nice to be able to go directly to it.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Maybe it ate the rest of it's galaxy? (Could imply that Black Holes eventually eat their galaxy, maybe they even grow so large they begin to interact and eventually it's just one galaxy-spanning black hole or BOOM, universe reset. It's a theory at least )

Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. I guess the outer-most stars would be at a stable orbit, but couldn't everything else eventually be absorbed by it? And if that galaxy is so old... mind, I'm no astronomer.

I think the issue is that the blackhole wouldn't change the outer radius of the galaxy, which is how we tell it's size.

So even if this blackhole ate the rest of the galaxy, it was still a smallish galaxy to begin with due to it's small radius.

I do know that the outer radius of a galaxy doesn't shrink as the blackhole in the center expands (because of conservation of mass - the mass is the same, no matter how compact, so the gravity on the outer stars is the same) so I know that part is correct. I do not know how they measure the size of a galaxy - I assume it is the diameter or radius of the galaxy, but that's only a guess.

 

[Stordarth]

Maybe it ate the rest of it's galaxy? (Could imply that Black Holes eventually eat their galaxy, maybe they even grow so large they begin to interact and eventually it's just one galaxy-spanning black hole or BOOM, universe reset. It's a theory at least )

My thoughts exactly. Right down to the black hole assimilation and subsequent 'Big Bounce'.

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, what do ya say NOW, Mr. Hawking? The rules have just changed again.

 

[Olrod]

Black hole expanded with mass it sucked. evnetually in the end of its life black hole eats whole galaxy. what we see here, is a big black hole that has ate half of the galaxy, maknig the remaining part look proportionately small. it is likely that "soon" the black hole will finish eating whole galaxy and if it has enough mass, explode and create new stars, if not, then its going to attempt to such neighboars.
what is worrying, is that explosion is very likely to hit our galaxy as well, and thats not nice believe me.

I don't think Black Holes explode, they evaporate.

Virtual particle/anti-particle pairs fizz into existence all the time, and very quickly rejoin and cancel each other out again.

Sometimes at the very edge of a Black Hole one of those pairs falls in, leaving the other to fly off into space. Thusly, to offset the existence of this virtual particle, the Black Hole loses that amount of mass from itself.

Over time, the offset of all these virtual particles causes the Black Hole to gradually lose mass, due to the other particles in this pair to flying off into space, in essence they're "taking" away the mass of the Black Hole with them as they go.

This is Hawking Radiation and explains why a Black Hole evaporates into nothingness, eventually.