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Black holes
Message
From
12/01/2008 19:57:00
Hilmar Zonneveld
Independent Consultant
Cochabamba, Bolivia
 
 
To
12/01/2008 19:27:04
General information
Forum:
Space
Category:
Galaxies
Title:
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01281383
Message ID:
01281386
Views:
6
>>Recently there were two interesting pieces of news, in the BBC, on the subject of supermassive black holes. Note: Every major galaxy is expected to have a supermassive black hole (millions or billions of Sun masses) in its center; the larger the galaxy, the larger the black hole.
>>
>>1. The largest black hole discovered so far - 16 billion Sun masses, 6 times the previous record: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7181877.stm
>>
>>2. Supermassive black holes are expected to rotate extremely fast: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7184526.stm
>
>Eventually and in spite of the expansion of the universe, black holes will come together and crush themselves into a singularity. Then another big bang. Then, a billion or so years later, I could be typing this nonsense again :) . . . . or not.
>(Take that, Hawking!!)

Please note that a billion years (American billion, or "short scale" billion - 1e9) is only a fraction of the current age of the Universe. From Wikipedia, article "Universe": "Based on experimental observations, the universe is 13.7±0.2 billion years old..."

Also, it is now believed that the Universe expands at an ever-increasing rate. That is to say, strangely enough, the speed of expansion is increasing, not decreasing as was believed in the past.
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)
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