Astronomy and Cosmology

back in March 2003 blike posted a news item about people measuring the mass of a distant black hole and finding that it was 3 billion solar masses. http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0303/20blackhole/ this is a good mass for a quasar-core black hole the mass of the stars in Milky galaxy is about 200 billion solar, IIRC anyway it is on the order of 100 billion so this hole in the news item is massing a few percent of all the stars in our galaxy how big is such a hole? the radius of a solar mass BH is about 2 miles and it is proportional] so the radius of the hole they got a mass for must be 6 billion miles. that is not so big for something far away…

Welcome to another exciting thread about black holes! be warned, it is quite long. ____________________________________________________ Black Holes 4/17/2003 by Keith Hillaire There are many beliefs to what belief to what Black Holes, (hereby knownas BH for time's sake,) are. One is that BHs are realy Worm Holes to other parts of our Universe. This is highly unlikely, seeing how anything pulled into a BH is "smashed" into the size of the BH itself. Others say it leads you into a parallel Universe. This is most improbable for the same reason as the above. Most schools, or science programs, will tell you a BH is collapsed star. A star that, instead of going…

In a late night conversation with a friend of mine, he brought up that some science show said that in some galaxy there are two black holes moving towads each other and asked me what I thought would happen if they collided. Well, somehow the conversation changed into being what would happen if two black holes passed each other perfectly and caught in each others event horizon perfectly so they spun around each other. Would they be stable enough to hold like that, and what would happen? Secondly, assuming they would be stable, I brought up the idea, what if a perfect sphere was placed at the perfect center of the two perfectly spinning blackholes, what would happen to …

Check out this yahoo news article. I found it rather interesting that a planet could be shrinking.

In a recent lecture i have heard that when we apply a force on the earth the earth also applies a equal and opposite force ..its is proved that there is acceleration of the earth in such cases ...well if its true why is the earth still in its orbit??... according to a few formulas P=f/a , therefore if the earth applies a force it should creat some pressure and space being vaccum the earth should be sucked up by it momentarly......how ever small the force may be eventully these small movements will result a shif of the earth out of its orbit and if that is true it would take a tagential part maybe into the sun.....

Are there any other good sites like this for self education.

I see mention of strings, and mention of Dark Matter, but why are they kept seperate. To me, they are the same thing. Pincho.

I bought a used reflecting telescope the other day and it turns out parts are missing. I'm missing the tube to the side to see the image, but I have a smaller refracting telescope and 2 small mirrors, too. Do you know of a way to use the reflecting telescope? Or maybe you could tell me how to determine the angles light reflects off a surface or something. That would help I think. Thanks.

This thought came to me as i was smoking a cigarette last night. As i blew the smoke out, a big cloud formed. A fan was blowing nearby and slightly contorted the shape of the cloud. I noticed that it took basically the same shape as the gas clouds we have seen that are involved with the birth of a star. It made me think that if there is no air resistance in a vacuum(space), how does a gas cloud spread out and take the form it does.

That is the title of this paper. What do you guys in particular Martin and Jana think about this? http://xxx.arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0407/0407476.pdf

Which is the nearest planet that has a 17 year cycle around its sun? The reason for this post is i recently discovered that the cicada only emerges once every 17 years, i find it hard to belive that beetles have a calander bellow ground and therefore have a theory that they originated from another solar system, from a world which had a 17 year cycle around its sun. I understand that my theory is ultimately open for critisism but any explination to why they only come out once every 17 years would be appriciated.. Thank alot, slihp

I've recently created a forum based on Astronomy, and it's really in need of members... To help us: please go to www.s3.invisionfree.com/WordOfAstronomy and register, then post, please. ^^' Thanks!

If there were a supernova in the milky way, would a backyard astronomer be able to see it. And what would it look like? Also, would a supernova in our galaxy have any effect on our solar system. I can imagine there would be a lot of meteors and things heading our way. Is it even possible? Are the timelines of star birth too close together in the milky way.

As most people know, there's a great deal of stuff in the universe. A fear is that a large hunk of this stuff will one day come crashing into the Earth, ending civilisation as we know it. So the ESA has decided to test a popular idea to combat this problem: shooting the asteroid from Earth. The idea is to just deflect the asteroid so that it misses Earth. For some reason the Spanish group behind the plan has decided to call the mission Don Quixote, after that crazy bastard that delusionally charged windmills. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1156884.htm

What would the sun sound like if we could hear it? How loud would it be?

If the universe is expanding, what are we filling up. It cant be space beacuse the universe is space right?

i've been wandering, since nasa will most likely abandon the hubble, what will possible cause them to reconsider? naturally their budget may be a bit tight, but to let it go to waiste w/o a fight is stupid. why are they simply willing to let it die(and don't tell me "no budget, dah" cause that's a given)? thinking of all the wonders that it has shows us thus far, it would be stupid and irresponcible to 'can' the 'scope. the plan bush proposed is ok, grossly underestimated financially and perhaps even technologically, but at least nasa now has a goal to get back to the moon and i don't know how practical is the notion of mars, but still they must maintain the hubble. i wa…

If i remember, most galaxies are within a few orders of magnitude of ours in size a lot of galaxies (most I think) are greater than 1/100 of Milkyway mass and less than 100 times Milkyway mass Why should that be? http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0407238 There also seems to be a tendency for stars to be between 1/10 and 100 solar masses. I dont know of any stars bigger than 100 solar masses. Why are stars that uniform in mass? I know there are some simple answers in the case of stars. Too small and fusion wont start and it wont shine. too big and its own starlight blows it apart. But what about galaxies? Has anyone thought through why gala…

Why doesn't NASA use firepaste instead of thier current heat shields? It is lighter, cheaper, and works better.

A New Hypothesis of The Creation of Lightning By, Ronny Rondonuwu. The process of how lightning is created is very simple this hypothesis hopefully could answer "The Great Mystery" of how the cloud acquires this charge and create lightning. *The atmosphere around the earth is constantly being hit by various kind of particles rays originating from the emission of the sun and stars in the Universe cause of a.o the thermonuclear reaction in Sun/Stars. *The particles and rays include alpha, beta, gamma rays, proton, electron photon etc. *The beta particles (electron) Containing negative electricity will be halted (stoped) and Accumulated on the bottom of the c…

does anyone know how to measure the earth's magnetic field at a particular location? how about a reporting source where I could look it up?

STING here, can some tell me why matter attracts other matter of it's own kind?? like hydrogen in space for the most part stays together in clouds and so on, and i know each Molecule has electrons protons nutrons and this b.s. but i'm wondering why the attraction....you must forgive me i know little on molecule shi?

I told my friend a riddle the other day and it had to do with the earth and the moon. I stumped him. I said the earth wasnt earth until the moon was created. But he said it was always earth but with poison gasses and no moon. We arugued and asked people for the last 2 days of school and the response was 50/50. SO...would the earth be earth even without the moon and life? Or would you say the earth wasnt earth until an asteroid (or whatever else you think) hit it? Please post im going to send him this link. Also another question i just thought up! Who named the earth and how did all of mankind come to an agreement naming it earth? Your response is greatly appreciated.

In Discover Magazine, April 2003 (I know it's old, I just now heard about it) there is an article about Joao Magueijo. Aparrently, he came up with the theory that the speed of light hasn't stayed the same over time. It also says that energy can be created and destroyed spontaneously. According to him, it would solve a few of the puzzles of cosmology. The first is how the universe (at the largest scale) appears the same (the galaxies are in a pattern). Because it is believed gravity travels at the speed of light, if the speed of light changed, it could "connect" the universe and let gravity move things into the pattern, except a lot faster. The second is that cosmologist…

Well are ya? It's almost to Saturn and I'm looking forward to hearing interesting stuff. The newest pic of Saturn taken by the probe is nice. It's taken seven years but I think it will be worth it.