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The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 45 posts

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. From what I understand, any material caught in the accretion disk is merely funnelling down into the black hole's event horizon, i.e. the centre. It will not affect any orbiting bodies, such as our solar system, but it will make the black hole pseudo-visible to astronomers because the material in the accretion disk will admit some light.

It will add mass to the black hole though, right? So that will affect orbits, no? Or is that just so infinitesimally small that it can reasonably be ignored?

The black hole is estimated around 4 million solar masses, the gas cloud around 3 earth masses.

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. From what I understand, any material caught in the accretion disk is merely funnelling down into the black hole's event horizon, i.e. the centre. It will not affect any orbiting bodies, such as our solar system, but it will make the black hole pseudo-visible to astronomers because the material in the accretion disk will admit some light.

It will add mass to the black hole though, right? So that will affect orbits, no? Or is that just so infinitesimally small that it can reasonably be ignored?

The mass is already roughly there. One thing to bear in mind - if you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass, planets wouldn't change orbits. It's the same gravity and centre of mass, just a different density/volume.

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#14
post #12

Can somebody explain why the black hole at the center of our galaxy is called "Sgr A*"? Is there some system behind the name or are astronomers just like programmers in naming stuff (it took me a while to figure out how to pronounce nginx >:().

That stands for Sagittarius A* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#15
post #12

Can somebody explain why the black hole at the center of our galaxy is called "Sgr A*"? Is there some system behind the name or are astronomers just like programmers in naming stuff (it took me a while to figure out how to pronounce nginx >:().

Sgr is short for Sagitarrius, a constellation. If you mark off the boundary of Sagitarrius, Sgr A* would be in that region. The black hole itself does not have the name, but rather the radio source associated with it. (conjecture alert)I'm not sure where the * comes from, but I believe the A is associated with the fact that Sgr A is a super nova remnant. Supernova are typically named "SN [year] [alpha]" where [year] is the year discovered and [alpha] is an alphabetical character in order of discovery. A supernova remant wouldnt have a year associated, so i'm guessing it's given a constellation and then alphabetical marking.

Typically, astronomers have a mix of common names and many systematic naming schemes, but they get obsoleted when better instruments find darker objects. There was once a catalog of nebula called Messier with about 130 objects (M1,M2,..). We still use these designations, but suddely they found thousands more of these objects and had to rename using the New General Catalog, (NGC1,NGC2,NGC496). Even further the IC goes into many thousands.

For constellations, stars in each constellation are usually named alphabetically with greek chars in terms of their apparent brightness. Alpha Centauri is the brightest star, for example, in Centarus. Then there are common names like Polaris, the north star, whch is alpha ursa minoris.

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will add mass to the black hole though, right? So that will affect orbits, no? Or is that just so infinitesimally small that it can reasonably be ignored?

The mass is already roughly there. One thing to bear in mind - if you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass, planets wouldn't change orbits. It's the same gravity and centre of mass, just a different density/volume.

This is true for Newtonian gravity, but only approximately true for general relativity (or so I understand it).

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mass is already roughly there. One thing to bear in mind - if you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass, planets wouldn't change orbits. It's the same gravity and centre of mass, just a different density/volume.

This is true for Newtonian gravity, but only approximately true for general relativity (or so I understand it).

This includes the effects of general relativity. As long as the mass is the same, the orbits of planets will remain the same.

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mass is already roughly there. One thing to bear in mind - if you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass, planets wouldn't change orbits. It's the same gravity and centre of mass, just a different density/volume.

This is true for Newtonian gravity, but only approximately true for general relativity (or so I understand it).

[deleted]

Re: The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will add mass to the black hole though, right? So that will affect orbits, no? Or is that just so infinitesimally small that it can reasonably be ignored?

The black hole is estimated around 4 million solar masses, the gas cloud around 3 earth masses.

So by "spring to life" the writer meant "we may, if we're lucky, finally see a glint of something". It's very exciting, yet the writer put it in terms that will scare the living hell of any uneducated person like me. Glad there's always HN.
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