Huge Black Hole In Milky Way Galaxy

Something a lot of people don't understand about black holes. Say, for example, our Sun suddenly turned into a black hole. The planets in our Solar System would be just as happy to circle about the black hole in the same orbits that they have now. I wouldn't worry about it.

Now, you have to be careful with the press. I had a good laugh at the article you posted. It claims that a black hole 70 times the mass of our Sun is unprecidented and that theory couldn't account for it. Well, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Galaxy has a mass of several million Suns. The writer screwed this one up.

Now, I will say that the beast at the center of the Galaxy could be an anomoly due to it's location, but many of the black holes we've discovered are in binary star systems. The black hole will usually be busy eating the second star, but this star itself could mass out to thousands of Suns. LB - 1 does seem to be at the top of the list but it's hardly a big deal.

-Dan
 
Dan, I took the article to mean that a black hole that is the result of a single stellar death of that mass is unprecedented, which doesn't include the supermassive monsters at the center of galaxies, which I assume are the result of accretion and merging with other black holes.
 
I've read other articles on this beast, and the 'unprecedented' part of it is that it is a weird mass.
Black holes can be classified by solar masses, and our current understanding states that it is impossible (when formed from a single stellar death) to be bigger than 25 stellar masses.
The mass of 70 stellar masses, is just a weird number - something we haven't come across before, and doesn't stand up to our current understanding.

So, your answer - you don't have to worry, this black hole is 13,000 light years away; There are much closer ones that that!
Besides, there are black holes dotted all around the cosmos that contribute to the interstellar harmonious dance that our solar system participates in; we are all being sucked into the super-massive one in the center any way, like water down a plug hole: so that's the one you have to watch out for (if you are alive in billions of years)!

A bit of useless trivia for you: With every orbit we make, we edge ever so slightly closer to the center - but it takes a long time to orbit... the dinosaurs were alive only a half rotation ago.
 
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I haven't read that, but want to look into it.
I think that black holes are interesting because they are so theoretical--hard to find, trace, etc.
The physics behind them are mind-boggling.
 
firemath said:
The physics behind them are mind-boggling.
Click to expand...

The physics behind them right up to within a Planck length of the singularity is plain old general relativity.

GR is definitely some formidable math. I confess I was never able to rigorously get through it. But probably millions by now have.
It's not really considered a big deal any more.

The physics beyond that point, i.e. where a theory of quantum gravity is required is one of the key areas of theoretical research at the
moment and is pointing to unexpected results. Quantum gravity and quantum information theory seemed to be tied together in
ways no one would have expected 10 years ago. It's still very much an open problem.
 
Romsek said:
The physics behind them right up to within a Planck length of the singularity is plain old general relativity.

GR is definitely some formidable math. I confess I was never able to rigorously get through it. But probably millions by now have.
It's not really considered a big deal any more.

The physics beyond that point, i.e. where a theory of quantum gravity is required is one of the key areas of theoretical research at the
moment and is pointing to unexpected results. Quantum gravity and quantum information theory seemed to be tied together in
ways no one would have expected 10 years ago. It's still very much an open problem.
Click to expand...
I'm not a physicist, so they are mind boggling to me........... ;)
 
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