somewhere out there
September 20, 2024 2:40 AM Subscribe
"conventional wisdom has been that black hole jets can’t be larger than about a quarter the radius of a cosmic void, and none larger has ever been seen. That all changed with the discovery of Porphyrion..." [bigthink]
cosmic web [ucla, nasa, wiki]
previously: map, early image
cosmic web [ucla, nasa, wiki]
previously: map, early image
The Guardian also had an article about Porphyrion - two jets with their heads in the void beyond a super-massive black hole and their arse end in their host galaxy - both streaming out plumes 140 times longer than the width of the Milky Way and a power output equivalent more than a trillion times of our sun. Two of about 10,000 other such structures ... that we had somehow overlooked.
posted by rongorongo at 4:41 AM on September 20 [6 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 4:41 AM on September 20 [6 favorites]
That was a great article, except the word "whopping" appears three times, which is three times more than necessary, and 3^3 times more than desirable.
Also the LOFAR telescope is really fucking cool. Metal grids lying on the ground and a shitload of compute make a best-in-class radiotelescope.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:42 AM on September 20 [7 favorites]
Also the LOFAR telescope is really fucking cool. Metal grids lying on the ground and a shitload of compute make a best-in-class radiotelescope.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:42 AM on September 20 [7 favorites]
Mind boggling.
posted by gwint at 6:05 AM on September 20 [1 favorite]
posted by gwint at 6:05 AM on September 20 [1 favorite]
Just a note that BigThink occasionally posts "scientific" transphobic and misogynist articles, so keep that in mind if you choose to browse their content.
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:27 AM on September 20 [9 favorites]
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:27 AM on September 20 [9 favorites]
> except to marvel at how incredibly small we are, how incredibly rare and delicate life in this vast void must be.
I'm of the school of thought that believes Earth is "typically exotic," and that life probably arises as a matter of course under the right conditions. Though it's true, the more we learn about the Earth the more we realize that those right conditions might be pretty rare.
So I imagine that Porphyrion's host galaxy might once have had planets teeming with life, that have perhaps all been sterilized by the cataclysm of which the jet is a side-effect.
I find myself thinking about just-world cosmology more and more, and I wonder if humans might have an instinct of sorts to rely on that. If we really carried with us the understanding that the universe does not care about us at all, we might all kill ourselves sooner rather than later.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:56 AM on September 20 [6 favorites]
I'm of the school of thought that believes Earth is "typically exotic," and that life probably arises as a matter of course under the right conditions. Though it's true, the more we learn about the Earth the more we realize that those right conditions might be pretty rare.
So I imagine that Porphyrion's host galaxy might once have had planets teeming with life, that have perhaps all been sterilized by the cataclysm of which the jet is a side-effect.
I find myself thinking about just-world cosmology more and more, and I wonder if humans might have an instinct of sorts to rely on that. If we really carried with us the understanding that the universe does not care about us at all, we might all kill ourselves sooner rather than later.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:56 AM on September 20 [6 favorites]
https://bigthink.com/tag/transgender/
Interestingly, you get a larger set of articles when you do a search:
https://bigthink.com/?s=transgender
https://bigthink.com/?s=gender+pay+gap
posted by CynicalKnight at 11:08 AM on September 20 [2 favorites]
Interestingly, you get a larger set of articles when you do a search:
https://bigthink.com/?s=transgender
https://bigthink.com/?s=gender+pay+gap
posted by CynicalKnight at 11:08 AM on September 20 [2 favorites]
CynicalKnight, thank you. i had never seen this map before: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/these-104-countries-restrict-womens-right-to-work/
posted by HearHere at 11:20 AM on September 20 [2 favorites]
posted by HearHere at 11:20 AM on September 20 [2 favorites]
this is really amazing and I appreciate that the article's author is having fun with this absolutely mind-boggling scale.
"black holes are notoriously messy eaters — I frequently liken them to Cookie Monsters for how sloppily they eat"
posted by supermedusa at 1:04 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]
"black holes are notoriously messy eaters — I frequently liken them to Cookie Monsters for how sloppily they eat"
posted by supermedusa at 1:04 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]
There's a certain genre of anime where the power creep goes insane and you end up with robots bigger than galaxies fighting each other and one robot shoots an energy beam from its chest that blasts past several galaxies before hitting one and blowing up an entire galaxy.
This is that in real life.
posted by straight at 6:22 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]
This is that in real life.
posted by straight at 6:22 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]
I was gonna say: Er, it was in real life, 7.5 billion years ago.
But, fun fact that I recently learned that helped me understand better some of these astronomy articles is that there are stars whose life cycle is longer than the age of the universe, which means any stars like that which formed in the first billion years of the universe are still shining today.
The lifespan of black holes is estimated to be 10^60 years or 10^100 years. So 7.5 billion years later, this black hole certainly still exists, probably still blasting a jet into the void (with more or less power than this, I don't think we know).
posted by straight at 6:34 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]
But, fun fact that I recently learned that helped me understand better some of these astronomy articles is that there are stars whose life cycle is longer than the age of the universe, which means any stars like that which formed in the first billion years of the universe are still shining today.
The lifespan of black holes is estimated to be 10^60 years or 10^100 years. So 7.5 billion years later, this black hole certainly still exists, probably still blasting a jet into the void (with more or less power than this, I don't think we know).
posted by straight at 6:34 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]
seanmpuckett: I laid some of those grids. And indeed it's great. Looking forward to the SKA.
posted by edd at 4:57 AM on September 21 [3 favorites]
posted by edd at 4:57 AM on September 21 [3 favorites]
edd, I have a question. With the grids, were the positions mapped out before hand and the grids placed very carefully, or just more casually placed according to a general pattern and then mapped electronically via differential signal propagation? Quite curious about how much precision is involved in location of the dipoles.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:28 AM on September 21 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:28 AM on September 21 [1 favorite]
« Older Historiography is becoming stuck | "It's time once again to ask... WHERE IS HE NOW?" Newer »
- they aren’t merging,
- they aren’t interacting with a neighbor,
- they aren’t actively feeding on a source of matter,
- and they’re only forming stars at a slow, steady rate, dependent on the amount of gas they possess in their disks and halos.
Me too, galaxies. Me too. Apart from point four, I guess.
Jokes aside, the scale of this is incomprehensible. Completely beyond understanding, except to marvel at how incredibly small we are, how incredibly rare and delicate life in this vast void must be.
Imagine a swath of ionized destruction, hundreds of thousands of times the width of Pluto’s orbit, knowing this is millions of times that again.
posted by mhoye at 3:49 AM on September 20 [6 favorites]