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posted by martyb on Monday May 25 2015, @07:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the so-far dept.

A remote galaxy shining with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The galaxy is the most luminous galaxy found to date and belongs to a new class of objects recently discovered by WISE -- extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs.

"We are looking at a very intense phase of galaxy evolution," said Chao-Wei Tsai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, lead author of a new report appearing in the May 22 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. "This dazzling light may be from the main growth spurt of the galaxy's black hole."

The brilliant galaxy, known as WISE J224607.57-052635.0, may have a behemoth black hole at its belly, gorging itself on gas. Supermassive black holes draw gas and matter into a disk around them, heating the disk to roaring temperatures of millions of degrees and blasting out high-energy, visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. The light is blocked by surrounding cocoons of dust. As the dust heats up, it radiates infrared light.

Immense black holes are common at the cores of galaxies, but finding one this big so "far back" in the cosmos is rare. Because light from the galaxy hosting the black hole has traveled 12.5 billion years to reach us, astronomers are seeing the object as it was in the distant past. The black hole was already billions of times the mass of our sun when our universe was only a tenth of its present age of 13.8 billion years.

The new study outlines three reasons why the black holes in the ELIRGs could have grown so massive. First, they may have been born big. In other words, the "seeds," or embryonic black holes, might be bigger than thought possible.

"How do you get an elephant?" asked Peter Eisenhardt, project scientist for WISE at JPL and a co-author on the paper. "One way is start with a baby elephant."

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-wise-spacecraft-discovers-most-luminous-galaxy-in-universe

[Paper]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.1751

 
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:18AM (#187547)

    No? Not interested.

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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Monday May 25 2015, @08:25AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday May 25 2015, @08:25AM (#187549) Journal

    Ah, now that we have heard from the oysters, any slightly more sentient beings care to comment? Rational beings preferred. Anyone? Bueller?

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:31AM (#187551)

      It's Bueller day off, idiot.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by KGIII on Monday May 25 2015, @05:57PM

      by KGIII (5261) on Monday May 25 2015, @05:57PM (#187668) Journal

      At risk of being pedantic (and a Grammar Nazi) when the summary pretty much begins with this "...has been discovered using data from NASA..." you may find people overlooking it? I do not know, really, but I am almost positive that this galaxy is not using NASA's data.

      Actually, it may be that it takes time for a community to develop and a while longer before it is seeing an influx of specialists in niche fields. Whilst I enjoy learning about a number of the sciences (physics and astronomy are two that I really enjoy that relate to this subject) I am not a scientist. While I may opine on the various subjects I am not a specialist. I doubt most of us here are scientists though I have seen a number of sites that scientists of all types seem to frequent. There are more comments on those sites than there are here, there are not very many comments compared to many other sites. I would not be surprised if many scientists do not post as they want credit for their work and forum accolades or posts are not credit in the professional or academic realm.

      I would further suggest that, as this site grows in popularity, the most growth we have here the more likely you will find those with niche information participate. In that case; participation by adding content, patience to await the tipping point, and perhaps even including links to this site (without SPAMing) on other sites to share the information that this site is here -- all may combine to result in more content from the specialists. Hard sciences are, well, hard which means that there are not so many experts in the various fields. My degree is in EE which is not applicable to some subjects though it does give a nice base for learning many things not directly related to my field but I am not an expert in those fields and I would not dare to be so full of ego as to make an authoritative statement on those subjects. Thus I rarely would post parent posts but I would certainly feel comfortable submitting replies.

      To wit, I don't have an accurate answer but have surmised the above. Patience, advocacy, and involvement may well net you the results you seem to be looking for. Those results you seek seem to be valuable and, as such, they are results I think we would all like to see. Personally, I have read the site and comments for a long time but did not join until yesterday (I won't post AC, my moniker is the same everywhere I post and what I post I own up to) but the additional specialist/niche content would be nice to read and learn from. Oddly, I have posted more here than I have posted in three months elsewhere (in just that short time). The lack of long-term embedded cabals and the quality of the submissions at this site are what attract me most. Extra, valuable, learning material in the form of submissions and comments are certainly something I'd would like to see no limit on and to see an increase of. That seems to be one of my primary reasons to add my comments.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:36AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:36AM (#187853)

        Yes, but you probably know as much science and math as those who comment in the other articles know about economics, sociology, psychology, etc., but that doesn't stop them from espousing spittle-flying, rage-inducing invectives against those who don't share their enlightened opinions. They can't do that here because they'll get bitch-slapped down by those of us who do know a thing or two about these science topics. In those other stories they can feel important, powerful, smart. They can climb their high horse and sneer down on the moral ingrates who aren't smart enough to be on their side.

        • (Score: 1) by KGIII on Tuesday May 26 2015, @12:51PM

          by KGIII (5261) on Tuesday May 26 2015, @12:51PM (#187989) Journal

          A very valid point and why I avoid making authoritative statements when the specialists should be.

          --
          "So long and thanks for all the fish."