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.