SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Monday May 25 2015, @02:35PM
This may sound like nit-picking, but is intended to be constructive criticism. :-)
Unless I have misunderstood something, you have 'alternating universes of positive and negative matter'. Okay, fine, that sounds interesting.
Then imagining that one bunch escaped their big crunch...you lose me there, because the first question that popped into my head was: Escaped to WHERE?
Second question: 'give them a choice between eternity(escape to the next universe)' Next universe? the opposite-energy one?(WTF?) Or the next cycle of 'same-energy universe'?(where do they go for the interim?)
It does sound like an interesting idea for a story, and I think it has potential, but it also sounds difficult to 'pull off'. Good Luck!(I am being sincere, not sarcastic)
As for the 'lack of comments' on these types of articles, there isn't too much to discuss for the layman. (it does not help that the comment section here is starting to resemble the 'youtube' comment section *sigh*)
We are at one of those 'lull periods' in science where Big Discoveries temporarily are rare. If past history holds true, soon a discovery will be made that opens a floodgate of new and amazing areas to explore.
In some of the past 'lull periods', we heard proclamations that 'we now know everything worth learning...science is done', only to have that turned on it's head, and then the mad dash back to the 'drawing board'. At least I hope we have outgrown this attitude, and I await the next Big Discovery that has scientists scrambling. :-)
I personally see Neuroscience as a potential Big Discovery field. We shall see...
(Score: 1) by inertnet on Monday May 25 2015, @07:59PM
Escaped inside a galaxy sized galaxy :-)
In theory impossible, but maybe not for a civilization that's billions of years ahead of us.
This solution requires a 300 billion (?) year wait, but that's counting in universe time.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Tuesday May 26 2015, @01:50AM
Your comment reminded me of "The 3 body problem", a book about what life might be like on a planet in the 3 star Alpha-Centuri system.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]