Supercomputer clue to black holes,
 

The colossal black holes at the centres of galaxies probably formed shortly after the Big Bang, a study suggests.

Some of these behemoths are billions of times more massive than our Sun.

Supercomputer simulations indicate the conditions for the birth and growth of these giants could have been set in play by the merger of galaxies when the cosmos was just a few hundred million years old.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11087715

http://imgur.com/PMdy7.jpg



Note: 25 August 2010 Last updated at 18:20 GMT

These numbers are just impossible to wrap your mind around.

"Billions of times more massive than our own sun" and only the size of an average planet if not smaller.

Still they cannot put the 'finger' on the elusive dark matter.

They might be getting close to dark matter, though. We have several promising WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) detection experiments occuring, including ones that have had several "hits". Plus, the LHC in Cern may be able to indirectly detect them as well.

Now Dark Energy ... well, that's another story altogether. :cool:

Some great space stuff, including 4-5 videos about blackholes here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SpaceRip

Nice, I saw something similar earlier,
 

thanks for the link :yep:

I watched a video recently that mentioned the largest known star in the universe, CY Canis Majoris - the video makes mention that if you were to fly a jet at 560 mph just above the surface it would take you 1,100 years to circle it once! :o

Distances are immense, as our high IQ,
 

can not imagine that kind of distance which is also not super PC can do, either, in theory only,just think of our "little" sun which we see as huge, but it takes only eight light-minutes to reach,btw thanks for the link great stuff :up:

:haha:

Wow. My knowledge of space an phenomena is limited, but I am always astounded to read statistics about them. It is enough to make our world seem very, very small.

Photo in the News: 1,000 Black Holes,
 

http://imgur.com/O7D99.jpg
http://imgur.com/T7agM.jpg
http://imgur.com/Xfdow.jpg

Ah you beat me to it! I love that video!

I had a weird dream when I was a kid . . . that I was flying above my bed and on top of me some feet away there was a big round swirl of seemingly black smoke like-hole that was sucking me extremely hard into it and that I felt it would bring me to a far far away place at some frakkin incredible speed once I entered.

It seems that I'm not alone:

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com...3430457767.jpg

and heres a video showing what happens when you get sucked into one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAyvMU8umUY

Sounds a lot like those Alien Abduction stories you hear. Which from what I've heard are more likely caused by temporary paralysis while asleep (a natural occurrence to keep you from moving around too much while asleep) and your brain no longer feels the bed below it making it believe you are flying.




Ummmmmmm.... point of interest the reason its called a "black hole" is because its gravity is so strong light cannot escape it so you can't see it.

if we cant se it how do we know it exists? i just blew a hole of that theory, hah!

Yea it was just a dream. Was just joking around

As for the black hole I think we do can see it just not in outer space where it's black :D

When light is sucked right in and never gets reflected back then it would mean the black hole would be just that: black.
At least that's how I understand it

Well well smartguy, you just had to ruin my day, and i felt so good about myself for almost busting the black hole conspiracy.

In other words, you are probably right, or atleast the scientists working with this.

From what I've read and seen on documentaries, Black Hole isn't black. Only the very center is black, the outer edges are quite colorful not to mention the stream of particles it's shooting out (check the pic on previous page by Vendor).

Dowly is on the right track, while the black hole is consuming matter its visible by the effect it is having on said matter. If it is consuming no matter than it becomes invisible to the eye once again, although you could still detect (in theory) it's gravitational distortion by gravity lensing a star behind the black hole (basically the star's light bends around the black hole so you can see it.)

Detecting them from their Hawking Radiation is another possibility although I'm not sure if that has yet been accomplished. :hmmm: