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Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

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31–40 of 191 posts

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#31

What I don’t understand is where the material for the stars is coming from? Is there that much dust in deep space? Or did it collect it from the galaxy?

Discarded material from the accretion disc, or (well, more likely) material that was more loosely gravitationally bound.

A galactic core has a lot of mass that could be stolen.

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#32
post #22

I wonder if this is an opportunity to detect intelligent life. If the black hole is affecting any intelligent life on the way, they might do something to save themselves or their planet, which might be detectable?

Unlikely. It has been seen no where else.

And what would we do if we saw it? It's likely beyond the cosmological horizon, meaning that a reply is impossible.

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#36

If you lived on a planet going around one of those stars it sure would be hard to make sense of the universe. "Oh I have it! In addition to all the incomprehensible things in the universe, we happen to live in a star system that is extremely, extremely rare and exeptional, unlike the rest of the universe!"

“Why aren’t we in a galaxy?!?”

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#37
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get incredibly frustrated with popular science articles that use only artist’s impressions and avoid the real images. To me, the real images are much more exciting. You don’t need fake clarity and fake colour when you’re seeing a (candidate) high speed black hole sucking the life out of some fricking ginormous balls of flaming nuclear fusion.

This article is even worse, that it shows an illustration without a caption identifying it as an illustration, which is very misleading. (Later they show it again with the caption saying it's an illustration.)

In their defense, NASA did use the same artistic rendition...

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#38
post #28

If you lived on a planet going around one of those stars it sure would be hard to make sense of the universe. "Oh I have it! In addition to all the incomprehensible things in the universe, we happen to live in a star system that is extremely, extremely rare and exeptional, unlike the rest of the universe!"

Before any of that is possible, a "Cambrian Explosion" is required. It may be that prokaryotic life is common, but the mitochondria and plastids of eukaryotes took a very long time to emerge (absent for more than half of the total habitable life of the earth).

also, how long does it stay emerged

Was it this billion years or that billion years

probability of our experience matching another planet’s experience in the same time frame is low

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#39
post #28

If you lived on a planet going around one of those stars it sure would be hard to make sense of the universe. "Oh I have it! In addition to all the incomprehensible things in the universe, we happen to live in a star system that is extremely, extremely rare and exeptional, unlike the rest of the universe!"

Before any of that is possible, a "Cambrian Explosion" is required. It may be that prokaryotic life is common, but the mitochondria and plastids of eukaryotes took a very long time to emerge (absent for more than half of the total habitable life of the earth).

> but the mitochondria and plastids of eukaryotes took a very long time to emerge.

Not an expert, but mitochondria didn't "emerge." Mitochondria co-evolved as bacteria, merged and became organelles through complex protein-import machinery and insertion into inner membranes of protein carriers for extracting energy for the host cell.

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#40
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before any of that is possible, a "Cambrian Explosion" is required. It may be that prokaryotic life is common, but the mitochondria and plastids of eukaryotes took a very long time to emerge (absent for more than half of the total habitable life of the earth).

also, how long does it stay emerged Was it this billion years or that billion years probability of our experience matching another planet’s experience in the same time frame is low

There haven't been that many billion-year periods. The big bang was 13.7 billion years ago.
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