Slumbering Black Hole Eats Planet 30 Times Mass Of Jupiter (VIDEO)

[marcus300]

for video press link

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013...p_ref=uk-space

A black hole has 'woken up' from a deep sleep - and eaten a planet 30 times the mass of Jupiter.

The European Space Agency reports that the black hole in galaxy NGC 4845, which is 47 million light years from Earth, had been dormant for decades.

But a planet - or perhaps a brown dwarf star - which strayed too close was swallowed up by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole.

ESA said that the observations were made by its Integral space observatory, with follow-up observations from ESA's XMM-Newton, NASA's Swift and Japan's MAXI X-ray monitor on the International Space Station.

"The observation was completely unexpected, from a galaxy that has been quiet for at least 20-30 years," said Marek Nikolajuk of the University of Bialystok, Poland, lead author of the paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

It is thought the swallowed-up planet is between 14 and 30 times the mass of Jupiter - but it might be much lower.

In any case the black hole has a mass 300,000 times that of our Sun - meaning the poor planet never stood a chance.

Take a look at an artist's impression of the event, above.

[thegodfather]

What is even more fascinating is that this event took place 47 million years ago, and we're seeing it now, but it has long since happened and gone...I sometimes wonder if we were to undertake interstellar space travel, and to plot a course to a nearby star thats light years away, if on our way there we were to find out that the star is gone, suddenly the lights go out on your ride to the star, as you close the gap on the star, and the last of the photons hit you.

[Times Roman]

if the planet had only been 2.5x larger, it would have been big enough to "ignite" (brown dwarf), and as it was ripped apart, then quite the fireworks display

[Hazard]

What is even more fascinating is that this event took place 47 million years ago, and we're seeing it now, but it has long since happened and gone...I sometimes wonder if we were to undertake interstellar space travel, and to plot a course to a nearby star thats light years away, if on our way there we were to find out that the star is gone, suddenly the lights go out on your ride to the star, as you close the gap on the star, and the last of the photons hit you.

Very cool thought.....

[gbrice75]

What is even more fascinating is that this event took place 47 million years ago, and we're seeing it now, but it has long since happened and gone...I sometimes wonder if we were to undertake interstellar space travel, and to plot a course to a nearby star thats light years away, if on our way there we were to find out that the star is gone, suddenly the lights go out on your ride to the star, as you close the gap on the star, and the last of the photons hit you.

IMO, this is time travel, as we can comprehend it today.

[Flagg]

This just goes to show how tiny we are and even everything in our solar system is.

Take our planet, you can pretty much reach anywhere on earth in under 24 hours.

EDIT: If you want to talk about something truly big, look at pictures of the Milky Way. Notice how it is swirling, almost like watching water disappear down a plug hole. Because that is exactly what is happening. If you look at the middle of the Milky Way, what you will see is a MEGA BLACK HOLE, the Galactic Core, and it is slowly pulling every single star in the galaxy into it's maw.

[marcus300]

Is that true Flagg

[Flagg]

I know it's wikipedia, but science based articles are usually backed up with sourced references at the bottom of each page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole

It is said that most galaxies probably have a galactic centre, and once a black hole has established at the centre of a galaxy, they will grow, as destroying stars simply creates, more black holes.

What the Godfather said earlier about approaching a star and not realising if it is dead or not is interesting as one of those articles also quoted this about it being possible to approach a Blackhole:

Since the volume of a spherical object (such as the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole) is directly proportional to the cube of the radius, the density of a black hole is inversely proportional to the square of the mass, and thus higher mass black holes have lower average density. Also, the tidal forces in the vicinity of the event horizon are significantly weaker. Since the central singularity is so far away from the horizon, a hypothetical astronaut traveling towards the black hole center would not experience significant tidal force until very deep into the black hole.

Time delay.

[Hazard]

Is that true Flagg

Yep..... He's right. The milky way black hole is huge as I understand.

[marcus300]

very interesting guys thanks