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Discussion » Questions » Science and Technology » Science buffs, you might like this about great black holes. Let me know what you think. :)

Science buffs, you might like this about great black holes. Let me know what you think. :)

https://sciencebulletin.org/researchers-find-the-origin-and-the-maximum-mass-of-massive-black-holes/

Posted - July 2, 2020

Responses

  • .

    7268
    That is very interesting, thank you for sharing the information. 
      July 2, 2020 6:08 PM MDT
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  • 13395
    Interesting material. 
      July 2, 2020 6:17 PM MDT
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  • 44173
     There is also ongoing research about super-massive black holes at the center of most galaxies.



      July 3, 2020 7:00 AM MDT
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  • 19942
    As well as in the center of the president's massive rear port.
      July 3, 2020 7:55 AM MDT
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  • 44173
    Yeah...it sucks in republicans.
      July 3, 2020 5:45 PM MDT
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  • 3680
    A fascinating study - it seems the more we learn of the Universe the more beautiful it is, and the more questions it poses.

    A point I don't understand is that phrase, "oxygen burns". I know both that oxygen itself is not flammable, and that stars work by nuclear-fusion, so I don't know if what they mean here is either the oxygen is consumed in oxidising other elements (e.g. sweeping up remnant hydrogen atoms to form water) or its atoms fuse into the next element along the Periodic Table.   
      August 6, 2020 1:32 PM MDT
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  • 44173
    I chuckle when I hear that, too. (Oxygen burning)
      August 6, 2020 5:24 PM MDT
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  • 4631
    Maybe both?
    Or maybe a flaw in the scripting.
      August 8, 2020 2:14 AM MDT
    1

  • 3680
    I have an idea I have heard astronomers use the word "burning" rather loosely to mean nuclear fusing.

    A lot of the gas and dust floating about in galaxies is elements, but there also simple compounds, so the atoms are combining somewhere. I don't know if this has been established but I would have guessed the outer layers or atmosphere of stars, where the heat and pressure are insufficient to fuse atoms, allowing them to combine into molecules.  

    Oxygen will hook up with almost anything going - so water,  carbon-dioxide, silica and other rock-forming minerals, and so on.
      August 8, 2020 3:10 PM MDT
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  • 4631
    I feel that awe of the beauty too.
    And the sheer size and power of it. :)
      August 8, 2020 2:15 AM MDT
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  • 16197
    It's fusion. An "oxygen-rich" stellar core is mostly carbon, but retains sufficient energy and mass to continue to fuse and transmute heavy nuclei into still heavier elements - mainly iron, hence the "Fe core collapse" in the next stage on the diagram.
      August 8, 2020 4:48 AM MDT
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  • 3680
    Thank you.

    I've an idea I read that going further beyond Iron is quite a major step, and a lot of more modest stars end at that point.

    I have just realised the significance of something linked to this, but which I looked up when answering one of Rosie's questions the other day.

    All that nuclear fusion, and any chemical reactions among the generated elements, is making the raw materials for planets and the things on them. Among those elements is Uranium, whose main isotope (I found for her question) is not ever so strongly radioactive but has a staggeringly long half-life. If it were not so, I wonder what Earth would be like now? Its Mantle is molten but extremely viscous rock, kept hot by the decay of uranium and other radioactive elements. If all the Uranium from the planet's accretion had become lead by the time the Earth was even half its present age, would the Mantle have cooled so much that Continental Drift and volcanoes could not exist?  
      August 8, 2020 3:25 PM MDT
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  • 16197
    That's precisely what happened to Mars. It's solid, so it has no magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from being stripped by the solar wind.
      August 8, 2020 5:19 PM MDT
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  • 4631
    Great questions! :D
    These would be worth asking the physicists. They'd have the maths to calculate it.
    And they could work with geologists to get core samples for further proof.
      August 9, 2020 1:22 AM MDT
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