NASA's Spitzer Finds Hidden, Hungry Black Holes

[emad]

NASA's Spitzer Finds Hidden, Hungry Black Holes

Most of the biggest black holes in the universe have been eating cosmic meals behind closed doors -- until now.

With its sharp infrared eyes, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope peered through walls of galactic dust to uncover what may be the long-sought missing population of hungry black holes known as quasars.

"From past studies using X-rays, we expected there were a lot of hidden quasars, but we couldn't find them," said Alejo Mart’nez-Sansigre of the University of Oxford, England. He is lead author of a paper about the research in this week's Nature. "We had to wait for Spitzer to find an entire population of these dust-obscured objects."

Quasars are super-massive black holes that are circled by a giant ring of gas and dust. They live at the heart of distant galaxies and can consume up to the equivalent mass of one thousand stars in a single year. As their black holes suck in material from their dusty rings, the material lights up brilliantly, making quasars the brightest objects in the universe. This bright light comes in many forms, including X-rays, visible, and infrared light.

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-17/release.shtml


Godchild of ace NYC lawman Elliot Spitzer?????? An honor indeed.

[rman]

1. impressive find

[bemildred]

2. At last, someplace to store nuclear waste. nt

[sakabatou]

3. LOL