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1 - The Black Hole

A "black hole" is an area in space warped by gravitation so powerful that theorists say it warps the greatest natural powers we can comprehend - time and space. These regions warp time and space to an infinite point: its density is infinite, which can stop, and perhaps digest, time and space as we know it. It is a difficult subject to explain, yet it can be said that it was as if man had grabbed hold of space and pulled said space (and time) into it¹ - a sort of cosmic dead end.

The fact that black holes come in all sizes is only a recent discovery. Where we might have at one time (ca ~ 1960-75) considered the singularity a unique supermassive object, now we have at least three classes of black holes to look out for. The class of supernova remnant was formerly dominated by the supermassive singularity and the primordial black hole - the very large and the very small.

Stellar black holes are the remains of dead stars several times heavier than the Sun, compressed to a diameter of a few miles or less. Supermassive black holes have masses of one million to one billion Suns and may have formed in the early universe from giant gas clouds or from the collapse of clusters of immense numbers of stars. These objects were identified as a new class of black holes through X-ray light.More recently (ca. ~ December 1999²³ⁱ), observers have discovered a mysterious class of "middleweight" black hole, weighing anywhere from 100 to 10,000 Suns (M_solar) yet being smaller than the moon, formed by an unknown process, and found in spiral galaxies throughout the Universe.

• In the constellation Cygnus (6,000 light years distant) astronomers have found an invisible companion to a giant blue star. This companion, designated Cygnus X-1, draws steadily from its blue-giant companion - perhaps causing a ring, or accretion disk, to form around the black hole. Alhough this is speculation on my part, many scientists believe this is a plausible conjecture².

• Another candidate presents itself for inclusion into our list of black holes, designated GX-339-4. The GX represents the station, in this case the radio telescope at Grand Banks, Australia; the 339-4 represents the stellar coordinates. Another possible black hole was detected by the High Energy Astronomical Observatory 2 (HEAO-2) in the Pleades cluster. In this star cluster are some of the oldest stars in the known universe.

• More recently, in probing the heart of the active galaxy NGC 6251, NASA's HST has provided a never-before-seen view of a warped disk or ring of dust caught in a blazing torrent of ultraviolet light from a suspected massive black hole. This discovery suggests that the environments around black holes may be more varied than thought previously, and may provide a new link in the evolution of black holes in the centers of galaxies. ²³ⁱ Black holes observed by the HST have been largely hidden from view because they are embedded inside a torus, or donut-shaped distribution of dust that forms a partial cocoon around the black hole. In galaxies, the intense light from super hot gas entrapped by the black hole's powerful gravitational field shines out from inside the center of the torus and is restricted to a narrow beam. This is the first clear example of an "exposed" black hole that illuminates the surrounding disk. Hubble sees ultraviolet light reflected only on one side of the disk, which leads some astronomers to conclude the disk must be warped like the brim of a hat.

2 - The Beginning

Stars with more than eight times our suns' mass are those within the Supernova spectrum of events³. They continue past the burning of Carbon (as our sun, referred to as "Sol" by astronomers, will do in a few hundred million years), consuming the heavier elements such as Oxygen, Neon, and Magnesium. These fusion reactions release small amounts of energy, though far less than the amount of energy released in the Hydrogen-Helium fusion process.

The later reactions must occur faster and faster so that in a few hundred million years, the star has converted most of its mass into progressively heavier elements (see The Periodic Table). With the production of Iron, the energy liberating process necessary for the continued existence of the star stops working. To make heavier elements, the star must consume energy. The Iron nuclei are liberated into their constituent protons and neutrons; thus more and more energy is consumed⁴.

In a complicated series of interactions, the star continues to implode while the outer layer suddenly receeds to the critical stage of compression. However, the energy of the free electrons is now sufficient to transform Iron into an isotope of Manganese, which will not decay. With this electron pressure removed, a catastrophic collapse sets in. The result is the setting up of a shock front, raising the temperature inside the envelope to several billion degrees Kelvin (^oK=^oC+273.15), thus indicating a thermonuclear explosion. This explosion literally blows away the envelope, and the occurrences of a supernova follow.

After this final energy liberation, the core collapses upon itself again and again until it reaches the "fetal black hole" stage - a Neutron star. A Neutron star is the point at which the only thing remaining of our world that would be recognizable by us is the neutron. After the final collapse to the black hole stage in its evolution, I theorize that even the sub-atomic particles⁵ may be compressed into some unrecognizeable form, yet have similar physical function.

Australian astronomers believe they may be witnessing what has never been seen before - a black hole being born as the core of a super-massive star collapses in on itself. ^23c They have been pulling out all the stops in the last few days as they scramble to get data on this remarkable event, which could be one key to explaining gamma-ray bursters.

Telescopes of Mt. Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, the Anglo-Australian Observatory and CSIRO's Australia Telescope near Narrabri are trained on a spectacular fireball in the nearby galaxy ESO 184-82. The fireball looks like a supernova, but there is a once-in-a-million chance of an exploding star being so massive that the neutron star core crushes itself into a black hole.

Such a possibility was predicted more than a decade ago but nobody knew what it would look like when it happened. The first sign of the current event was a blast of gamma rays seen by the Italian/Dutch BeppoSAX satellite on 25 April 1998. Southern Hemisphere telescopes in Australia and Chile swung into action, looking for light and radio waves from the explosion. On 2 May the Anglo-Australian Telescope near Coonabarabran got a spectrum of the light. This was used to work out the distance to the fireball - 100 million light-years, and pouring out light and radio waves - the object was rapidly getting brighter.

This is only the third gamma-ray burster that anyone has been able to see radio waves from, and those first two were extremely faint and distant, which made them very hard to study. By then, the 042598 event was already ten times stronger - it had doubled in strength since last week and was still increasing. This made it totally different from any other gamma-ray burster known, in that usually any light that was seen has quickly faded away after the initial burst.

Then the BeppoSAX satellite, the Keck II telescope in Hawaii, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Very Large Array radio telescope in the USA all played a part in showing that the bursters were explosions of mind-boggling power in the very distant Universe. On 6 May 1998, NASA announced that gamma ray burster GRB 971214, found 14 December 1997, had occurred 12 billion light-years away and was the most powerful explosion since the Big Bang that created the Universe. Colliding neutron stars or black holes has been the most popular idea for the cause of such events.

GRB980425 differs from all previous ones in happening to be extremely close to us, as opposed to being in the distant Universe and it is giving us light and radio waves. It is by far the closest such explosion known, which means it can be studied in much more detail. This is good, because it's remotely possible that the astronomers are seeing two separate events: a gamma-ray burst and a nearby supernova - although the chance of such a coincidence is calculated to be less than one in a million.

This could be the death of a really giant star, up to 100 times the mass of the Sun. There would only be a handful of stars that size out of the hundred million in our own Galaxy. As in the case of the giant distant explosion announced by NASA on 6 May, the intense burst of gamma rays in this event almost certainly came from the sudden collapse of matter into a black hole. In this particulae case, however, the black hole has formed in the center of a star.

The STIS data shows the rotational motion of stars and gas. The change in wavelength records whether an object is moving toward or away from the observer. The larger the excursion from the centerline, the greater the rotational velocity. If no black hole were present, the line would be nearly vertical across the scan. ^23d

Instead, STIS's detector found the S-shape at the center of this scan, indicating a rapidly swirling disk of trapped material encircling the black hole. Along the S-shape from top to bottom, velocities skyrocket, then the region in the center simultaneously records the enormous speeds of the gas both approaching and receding for orbits in the immediate vicinity of the black hole, and then an equivalent swing from the right, back to the center line.

STIS measures a velocity of 880,000 miles per hour (400 kilometers per second) within 26 light-years of the galaxy's center, where the black hole dwells. This motion allowed astronomers to calculate that the black hole contains at least 300 million solar masses, just as the mass of our Sun can be calculated from the orbital radii and speeds of the planets. This observation demonstrates a direct connection between a supermassive black hole and activity (such as radio emission) in the nucleus of an active galaxy.

3 - Conjectural Analysis

One of the most well-known physicists, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, once stated that if a star was heavy enough, no force, not nuclear force, Quark force, nor electrostatic repulsion, could resist that kind of gravity⁶. The density of the mass, as I calculate it, should reach 1.2689 x 10¹⁶ times the density of sea water at STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure), and as Einsteins' theory of special relativity indicates, space and time would come to an end at the center of a black hole. "There would be no escape, only annhilation so clean it would seem mystical."

In 1965, Roger Penrose was able to prove that a collapsed star would result in a real, physical, unpredictable singularity⁷. Penrose proved, in effect, that space and time could have an end. He stated later that any collapsing material would either hit the singularity, or miss - thus escaping through a "wormhole" to another point in space and time⁸. Around the same period of time, English Physicists N.D. Birrell and Paul Davies showed that if such a "worm hole" existed, fluctuations in the fields around them would slam the "worm hole" shut.

In 1973, Stephen Hawking, reknowned English physicist/theoretician, turned the theory of black holes inside-out when he discovered that some black holes were not completely black; they can emit particles, and eventually explode, becoming "white holes" from which energy and particles gush. I personally hypothesize that black holes, under conditions stated earlier in this paper, could eventually become Quasars, entities only a few hundred thousand miles in diameter (est.), yet which give off as much energy as several galaxies. Stephen Hawking views this as the probable final stage of life before it evaporates, leaving behind empty space⁹. Hawking showed that the loss of energy owing to radiation would eventually deflate a black hole, allowing it to evaporate. Someday it may explode, depending on the structure of matter, like a 100 million megaton bomb.

Now it is time to discuss what many people consider "taboo" - time dillation effect. Simply put, time dillation effect is time itself altering as one approaches the speed of light. The time dillation effect is real and is used to our advantage everyday in large particle accelerators like the 30 terawatt accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratories¹⁰. The debris from a typical experiment usually consists of elementary particles (previously mentioned: Quarks) that exist for one-trillionth of a second.

If time did not slow down for these particles, they would travel less than a millimeter before complete decay. Such particles are traveling so close to the speed of light that their time is slowed down to factors of 10,000 or more¹¹. It takes 2.0 x 10^-23 seconds (0.00000000000000000000002 sec.) for a fast elementary particle to through its nucleus. This means that a compound sucked into a black hole would have its molecular breakdown slowed to such a degree as to eventually allow one complete atom to strike the "plasmolyzed" nucleus of a black hole.

In recent years, Hawking has discovered that black holes do emit photons, electrons, and neutrinos (not to be mistaken for neutrons). Neutrinos give us an idea as to the age of a star, regarless of its size or form (Stars, Quuasars, Pulsars, and Black Holes emit these particles). Thus, I will discuss neutrinos in a little more detail, as I feel they will prove to be important in determining age and "potential" of a black hole.

A neutrino is a tiny particle of radioactive nature , escapes readily from the sun or any stellar object, and does not readily interact with matter as we know it, thus, it is very difficult to detect, whereas the highly energetic photon released in the same stellar reaction is absorbed and re-comitted many times before it escapes as light from said stellar object¹².

A neutrino flux emitted by our sun is at least one-hundred times less than expected, and this is cause for alarm in Physics, because these results mean one or more of the following:

I would not hesitate to say that this would be a major problem if any one of the above was found to be true, and should apply to stars similar in composition to our own; yet, logically, the same would hold true for considerably larger stars, with the exception of the very largest stars. I tend to follow Occams razor, and hence observation C seems closest to the "observed" truth.. However, I do not believe our knowledge is inaccurate, rather that it is incomplete. From this we can ascertain that regardless of how sure we are of our knowledge, there is still knowledge unbounded awaiting us in space.

Gamma-Ray Burster with black hole companion evident - courtesy

Classes of Black Holes

Dr. Edward Colbert and Dr. Richard Mushotzky, astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, first saw hints of the new class of black holes while studying X-rays from 39 relatively nearby galaxies. Dr. Andrew Ptak and Dr. Richard Griffiths at Carnegie Mellon University studied X-ray light from a galaxy not included in Colbert and Mushotzky's set, galaxy M82. Both teams found unique X-ray light indicative of a new black hole class.

The original intent was to understand what was producing an unusual class of X-ray luminosities near the centers of many galaxies. The luminosities that Colbert and Mushotzky analyzed have colors different from those found in Active Galactic Nuclei, suggesting the source is something other than a typical supermassive black hole. Supermassive black holes are thought to power a phenomenon called Active Galactic Nuclei, which are extremely compact and energetic objects seen in the core of one percent of all galaxies and are typically very bright X-ray sources.

Ptak and Griffiths acted on the belief among astronomers that black holes of various sizes must exist and likely reside in irregular galaxies. M82 is one such galaxy, called a starburst galaxy because of the high rate of star formation found inside. Such a scenario leads to a higher rate of supernovae, or star explosions, the precursor of stellar black holes.

Massive black holes, long-thought to produce only a mere fraction of the universe's total energy output, may turn out to be the force behind half of the universe's radiation produced after the Big Bang. ^23e Details about this energy theory are based on measurements of background X-ray radiation and the gas-obscured growth of massive black holes. It is possible that the total energy emitted by massive black holes could be 10-50 percent of that emitted by stars.

These black holes, by now thought to be present in the centers of most galaxies, contain the mass of millions to billions of suns compressed to a region smaller than our solar system. They produce energy by accretion, the process of gas swirling into the black hole and attaining great velocity and temperature under extreme gravitational force at it nears the black hole.

This hot, fast-moving gas emits very luminous radiation across a broad spectrum before disappearing within the event horizon of the black hole. Outside the event horizon, there is a larger area where the black hole exerts a powerful gravitational influence, but it is not so powerful that nothing can escape. This is the region where accretion occurs and powerful radiation is emitted. Distant galaxies suspected of having massive black holes within their exceptionally bright cores are commonly known as quasars.

The background of X-ray radiation found in space can not be explained by stars or by ordinary quasars, what is required is a population of obscured quasars. For every ordinary quasar about ten more obscured ones are needed, meaning that the growth of most massive black holes by accretion is hidden from view of the traditional optical and ultraviolet and near infrared wavebands.

Optical and ultraviolet radiation from the accreting gas tries to escape from the black hole region but is absorbed by nearby dust and gas. The higher energy X-rays are not absorbed and therefore provide a true measure of the emitted energy. The absorbed energy, however, can also provide a useful measure of black hole power. This absorbed energy is re-emitted in the form of far-infrared radiation and also penetrates the dust and gas. The far-infrared, also called the submillimeter, is a less energetic form of radiation, below optical light and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum but more energetic than radio waves.

Energy emitted from the regions of massive black holes is thought to be underestimated because previous X-ray satellites could not detect dust-penetrating X-rays from the distant massive black holes and also because there are no superior far-infrared telescopes to observe the re-emitted black hole radiation. Stars, on the other hand, are well documented because they radiate their energy largely as optical and ultraviolet light. This radiation is measured by world-class telescopes both in orbit and on Earth. The process of absorption and re-radiation does however conceal whether the energy is from stars or black holes.

Meanwhile, scientists for the first time have identified a direct link between a supernova and a black hole. Astronomers have long theorized that they are caused by an aging star -- a "red giant" -- that enters the last phases of gravitational collapse and then explodes into a brilliant source of radiation called a type II supernova. Until now there has never been any direct observational evidence to support this.

A team of three Spanish scientists at the Astrophysics Institute on the Canary Islands and an American at the University of California at Berkeley focused on a double-star system called GRO J1655-40, comprising a star and a suspected black hole, and found large amounts of oxygen, magnesium, silicon and sulphur in the atmosphere of the star that could only have been material ejected into space when the "red giant" exploded into a supernova and became a black hole.

The abundance of these elements suggest that the dying star had a mass between 25 and 40 times that of the Sun. This is not typical of a type I Supernovae, which are usually accretion-driven fission-fusion systems - but is more like what one expects from a type II Supernova. In addition, the mass of a "Catastrophic Variable" such as this is not supposed to be able to exceed the Chandrasekhar Limit (~ 1.44 M_solar) without undergoing a cataclysmic event. This is thought to destroy the remains of the star, and hence, the likelyhood of resurrection is vanishingly rare.

Scientists used the VLBA, part of the NSF's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), to observe the radio-wave-emitting object Sagittarius A* ("A-star")^23g, that has been thought to mark the exact center of the Milky Way since its discovery more than two decades ago. They were able to measure its position on the sky within nearly one ten-thousandth of a second of arc -- a precision 600,000 times greater than that of the human eye and more than 500 times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

With this precision, the astronomers were able to detect the slight apparent shift in position of Sagittarius A* compared to the positions of much more distant quasars behind it. That apparent shift was caused by the motion of the Solar System around the Galaxy's center.

In the visual wavelength, the Milky Way's center, a complex region containing not only Sagittarius A* but also numerous supernova remnants and magnetic features, is obscured from optical telescopes by dust. Sagittarius A* was discovered in 1974 by astronomers using radio telescopes at the NRAO facility in Green Bank, WV.

The measurements made with the VLBA place Sagittarius A* very close to the exact (dynamical) center of our Galaxy. The new data also indicate that the minimum mass for this object is about 1,000 times the mass of the Sun. This rules out a multiple-star system and strengthens the idea that this object, much smaller than our own Solar System, which contains a black hole about 2.6 million times more massive than the Sun. Future observations are anticipated to significantly increase the accuracy of the measurements, and perhaps raise the minimum mass for this object by as much as 100 times.

4 - Estimates of Gravitational Attraction

"If you take a mass and its gravity, and move it rapidly, you can create a new field; moreover, the stronger gravity field can be made to appear in a place where there is no mass or gravity - and it can be either attractive or repulsive." -Einstein¹⁴

The primordial black hole (the oldest) the size of a proton would have an attractivity of 10¹⁵ grams, whereas a larger black hole (thus, younger) would have an attractivity of 8.3075 x 10¹⁶ atmospheres (1 atm = 760 mm/Hg at STP). Therefore, a Deuterium atom, found in relatively large quantities in space, would (theoretically) approach the black hole at 1.4005 x 10¹⁹ Km/sec. (100,000,000 Km/sec or 1.0 x 10⁸ is the speed of light). This has some import in my final theorizing, so keep this in mind.

For some more background information, it would take a temperature of 100 Million^oC to fuse a deuterium atom into tritium, yet when this occurs¹⁶, as we saw previously ("envelope temperature is relative to mass and gravity in dynes"), output would exceed 30 terawatts¹⁷. We must remember that this is one deuterium atom, and not a group of atoms. Another important note is that X-ray gas temperature goes up to 500 Million^oKelvin, a temperature not normally attributed to stellar physics.

This represents the data obtainable by May 12, 1979, and the writer in no way indicates this paper as the final word. Radio Telescope and like data have yet to be analyzed and that could yield pertainent information, and I am sure there are a few unread books on the subject out there.

Millions of black holes and neutron stars have formed in M82 over the last 10 million years. Now, we are noticing that some of these may be coalescing into a larger-mass black hole. This appears to be the most viable current theory for intermediate black hole formation. The intermediate class suggested might be formed by the continual merging of stellar black holes. Stellar black holes that approach each other too closely under certain circumstances may merge to form a more massive single black hole. This process might build objects that produce the peculiar colors of these X-ray glows.

5 - Warpage of Time and Space

The density of a black hole is so great, in relation to its mass, that scientists have, until recently, believed that nothing - not even light or X-rays - could escape them¹⁸. Then our superscientists focused their attention on this phenomena. Penrose, Bell, Chandrasekhar, and Hawking and the like have discovered that things can occur inside black holes, and particles can move around outside the plasmolyzed nucleus, or as in the isotope of Manganese smashed into a liquid as previously mentioned. H.K. Bell, using the purest diamonds available¹⁹, in their record pressure of 1.72 megabars (1 Mbar=10¹⁶ dynes per cm²; 1 dyne= 2.248 x 10^-6 lbs)²⁰. This record is nothing when compared to the trillions of megabars produced by an "old" black hole the size of a proton producing 10¹⁵ (One billion) Kg. of gravitational attraction²¹.

This warpage of time and space would be noticeable in an imaginary space craft programmed to pass into an orbit just over the "point of no return," with sensitive cesium clocks on-board and being computer monitored display time relative to another set of calibrated cesium clocks in a satellite light-weeks or -months away from the calculated time dillation effect zone. I theorize that it will slow down time and in effect nullify all forces as we understand them, such that light-speed will be as walking, and flying in a light-ship around the influence of a black hole will take a correspondinng increase in power to reach escape velocity.

Such a warp could be due to gravitational perturbations in the galaxy's nucleus that keep the disk from being perfectly flat, or from precession of the rotation axis of the black hole relative to the rotation axis of the galaxy. Strong circumstantial evidence for the this configuration of this black hole is provided by the powerful 3 million light-year-long jet of radiation and particles emanating from the black hole's location at the hub of an elliptical galaxy located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Minor. Hubble's sensitivity to ultraviolet light and the exceptional resolution of the FOC (50 light-years) allowed the team to look for structure in the hot gas near the black hole at the base of the jet.

After comparing the FOC image to a visible light image taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), it was realized that the finger-like extension ran parallel to a 1,000 light-year-wide dust disk encircling the nucleus. Thus, it was concluded that the ultraviolet light must be reflecting off fine dust particles in a disk, or possibly the back wall of a ring. The Hubble astronomers are hoping to confirm ideas about scattering by looking at the disk's spectrum with ground-based telescopes. They will propose to use Hubble to look at several other extragalactic jet sources which have dust. It is theoretically possible for a ring-like structure to have been shaped by the torrent of radiation coming from the exposed black hole, which would have then created a cavity around the hole.

6 - Decaying of Orbit

Due to the fluctuations of the positive and negative staticon (up quark) production, being either attractive or repulsive, it would be very difficult to find a spot in space that would not be influenced by the gravitational attraction of a black hole. These positive and negative reactions are caused by the violent actions I believe occur within the "light shield" - actions violent beyond our comprehension. These actions, I believe, later give way to a resurgence of energy in what we know as a Quasar. These actions/reactions are probably of a radioacive nature due to their first detection by the HEAO-2 sattelite²², but on a scale far beyond our capabilities to reproduce.

Two teams of astronomers are releasing dramatic Hubble Space Telescope images today, which show that quasars live in a remarkable variety of galaxies, many of which are violently colliding. This complicated picture suggests there may be a variety of mechanisms -- some quite subtle -- for "turning on" quasars, the universe's most energetic objects. ^23a

The Hubble researchers are also intrigued by the fact that the quasars studied do not appear to have obviously damaged the galaxies in which they live. This could mean that quasars are relatively short lived phenomena which many galaxies, including the Milky Way, experienced long ago. If we thought we had a complete theory of quasars before, now we know we don't - No coherent, single pattern of quasar behavior emerges. The basic assumption was that there was only one kind of host galaxy, or catastrophic event, which feeds a quasar. In reality we do not have a simple picture. People had suspected that collisions might be an important mechanism for feeding black holes and generating the vast amounts of energy emitted by quasars.

Though a number of the images show collisions between pairs of galaxies which could trigger the birth of quasars, some pictures reveal apparently normal, undisturbed galaxies possessing quasars. Discovered only 33 years ago, quasars are among the most baffling objects in the universe because of their small size and prodigious energy output. Quasars are not much bigger than Earth's solar system but pour out 100 to 1,000 times as much light as an entire galaxy containing a hundred billion stars.

A super massive black hole, gobbling up stars, gas and dust, is theorized to be the "engine" powering a quasar. Most astronomers agree an active black hole is the only credible possibility that explains how quasars can be so compact, variable and powerful. Nevertheless, conclusive evidence has been elusive because quasars are so bright they mask any details of the "environment" where they live.

Observations by the European team reveal that quasars appear to be born in environments where two galaxies are interacting violently and probably colliding. In nearly every quasar we look at we clearly see one galaxy apparently swallowing another.

He selected three quasars known to be strong infrared emitters, suggesting that they might be in spiral galaxies, which typically contain an enormous amount of gas and dust. "When we image them with Hubble we see the most colossal smashups, where two giant spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way have crashed head on into one another and flung off pieces violently in all directions. Some of those bits seem to have finished up in the nucleus of one of the spirals where there is probably a giant black hole feeding on it."

Bahcall, Schneider and Sofia Kirkahos also used the WFPC2, but in wide-field mode, to survey 20 quasars. Bahcall finds about half of the quasars studied have host galaxies which look undisturbed. "Either the interacting companion is very close to the nucleus and below Hubble's resolution, or other mechanisms are at work in igniting quasars."

Both teams agree that Hubble images do show conclusively:

• That most quasars lie at the cores of luminous galaxies, both spiral and elliptical. Though underlying galaxies were suggested in ground-based quasar observations, astronomers had to wait for Hubble's capabilities to show the host galaxies clearly enough for astronomers to begin to classify their shapes.
• Interactions between galaxies, either through direct collisions or near encounters, can be important in "turning on" a quasar, by dumping fuel onto a black hole. However some quasars look unperturbed, so there may be other, more subtle mechanisms for feeding the black hole. "Some of the galaxies we observed don't appear to know they have a quasar in their cores," says Bahcall. "This may be a very important clue, since it was a completely unexpected result."
• Quasars that are "radio quiet" are often in elliptical galaxies, not always in spiral galaxies, as previously believed.

Further quasar research will be challenging because of the great distance and long time scales involved. Now that more is known about the environments in which quasars exist the teams emphasize astronomers must address even larger puzzles. Do most quasars flare up for a brief period of a galaxy's life (100 million years or less)? If so, then most galaxies, including our Milky Way, could be "burned out" quasars. If, alternatively, quasars are long-lived, it implies they are more rare. "This means a few extremely massive black holes formed very early in the universe," says Disney.^23b Astronomers also need to address a "chicken and egg" problem about the birth of quasars. Did the massive black holes form first and the galaxies formed around them, or did galaxies precede black holes, which quickly grew in their cores though stellar collision and merger?

Could it be that when a black hole resurges (possibly from another universe) it pours forth new elements? Elements we could use in a "star-drive?" Maybe it is merely a reversed polarity difference - same atomic structure, but differences in where the protons, neutrons, and electrons are (i.e. - antimatter of a sort). I believe the fusion of these antiparticles will be a form of power for us in the future.

7 - The Cause

Free particles of deuterium, representing the "positive" universe, in a cloud of minimum specific mass, spiral "in" towards the Plasmolyzed nucleus at a fantastic rate (near c). This deuterium enters the gravitational corona of the subject black hole. Making its final orbit, it winds its way down until gravity overcomes the objects forward momentum into "z-phase" kenetic energy.

This envelope adds mass or disperses mass as the "other" universe accepts and "swallows" the energy captured by the black hole, or rejects the energy because of its instability in "our" universe, and thereby spewing forth vast amounts of energy. One thing is certain - in my opinion - and that is the portal to the "other" universe must be of sufficient size to admit at least one atom from "our" universe.

Research in the field of Physics, and Astrophysics particularly, is rewarding, and bring about questions that have solutions that you and I need to know. Such research will see the rise of star travel in the 21st century if we learn to apply our knowledge peacefully.

Scientists from the Albert Einstein Institute have simulated grazing collisions of two black holes hoping such results will ultimately improve the search for gravitational waves. For the first time scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Golm near Potsdam, Germany, have simulated how two black holes merged into each other in a grazing collision. Fully three-dimensional simulations on supercomputers are essential for the planned detection of gravitational waves emited by two coalescing black holes. Scientists hope to make progress when they open a new window in space by monitoring gravitational waves - literaly ripples in the fabric of space - which should be detectable with new instruments at the beginning of the next century.

At the Albert Einstein Institute scientists arount Professor Ed Seidel are preparing for this search with numerical simulations which can provide the observers with reliable ways of recognizing the waves produced by black holes. "Colliding black holes are one of the hottest candidates for gravitational waves" says Prof. Seidel. In recents years he and others succeeded in simulating gravitational waveforms produced by disturbed black holes and in head-on collisions.

But interactions of two spinning black holes as they spiral in and coalesce are much more common and important in astronomy than directly head-on collisions. Such grazing collisions were calculated by Dr. Bernd Bruegmann of the Albert Einstein Institute for the first time. However, due to the limited computer power available to him at that time, he was not able to calculate crucial details such as the precise signature of the gravitational waves emitted. This signature carried important information about the nature of the black holes in the collision.

For the earlier calculation, Bruegmann used a powerful Origin 2000 supercomputer at the institute. It has 32 separate computer processors working in parallel performing 3 billion computations per second. In June 1999, an international team including Bruegmann, Seidel, and many others virtually owned a much larger 256-processor Origin 2000-Computer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. The machine was used to provide the first detailed simulations of the kinds of grazing collisions of black holes of unequal mass, and spin that Bruegmann had studied previously.

Werner Benger at the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum was able to create stunning visualizations of the collision process. They show how the "black monsters" from one to some hundred million solar masses merge, creating bursts of gravitational waves that may soon be detect by special instruments.

During the last moments, the black holes spiral inward, emitting weak gravitational signals periodicly. The symmetrical horizon of each object, from which light itself can't escape, is stretched. In a very short time of some milliseconds or less, the two horizons coalesce like waterdrops.

The amplitude and frequency of the gravitational waves are increasing strongly. What happens after that the scientist called ringing down -- a decreasing signal like the latests sounds of a churchbell. The two united black holes form a new common horizon, which oscillates as it rings down and settles to a quiet final black hole.

One of the important results of the research work is the very huge amount of energy coalescing black holes emit in the form of gravitational waves. If two objects with 10 and 15 solar masses get closer the 30 miles and collide, the amount of gravitational energie may be around one percent of its mass. "This is thousand times more than the energy our sun emits during the latest five billion years", Dr. Brueckmann says.

But most of the biggest crashes in the universe scientist occur far away from earth. The signals should be extremely weak by the time they arrive here. It is expected to induce a space strain, which would jerk masses spaced at 0.7 miles by one thousandth of the diameter of a proton!

Construction of several detectors has started around the world. One is the German-British Geo 600-Project, a 0.7 miles long laser interferometer, built by the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and the University Hanover near Hanover.

The scientists hope to measure the short transit of gravitational perturbations from inspiral black hole collisions but they expect only one event per year in a distance around 600 million lightyears. The computer models are needed to provide observers with reliable data of recognizing the waves produced by black holes. With the advancement of such supercomputer simulations, scientists now stand on the threshold of a new kind of experimental physics.

"Astronomers now tell us that they know the locations of many thousands of black holes, but we can't do any experiments with them on earth. The only way we will learn the details is to build numerical substitutes for them inside our computers and watch what they do" explains Prof. Bernard Schutz, a Director of the Albert Einstein Institute. "I believe that studying black holes will be a key theme of astronomy in the first decade of the next century." The team includes also researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis (USA) and the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum in Berlin (Germany).^23f

One of the long term goals is to simulate the interactions of two spinning black holes as they orbit around each other years before collision, but it will take much more computation time and needs new ideas to solve the equations of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

This is the first time anyone has seen the region in which a cosmic jet is formed into a narrow beam, although it has been speculated that the jet had to be made by some mechanism relatively near the black hole, producing an already-formed beam. Somehow the accretion disk and the jet were tapping into the enormous gravitational energy of the black hole and produce a relatively coherent jet. Astronomers have now shown that M87's jet is formed within a few tenths of a light-year of the galaxy's core, presumed to be a black hole three billion times more massive than the sun. In the formation region, the jet is seen opening widely, at an angle of about 60 degrees, nearest the black hole, but is squeezed down to only 6 degrees a few light-years away. The 60-degree angle of the inner part of M87's jet is the widest such angle yet seen in any jet in the universe.

At the center of M87, material being drawn inward by the strong gravitation of the black hole is formed into a rapidly-spinning flat disk, called an accretion disk. The subatomic particles are thought to be pushed outward from the poles of this disk, and the magnetic fields in the disk are twisted tightly as the disk spins and then channel the electrically-charged particles into a pair of narrow jets. The new image of M87 supports this idea of magnetic fields doing the work of forming the stream of particles into a narrow jet.

Jets such as the one in M87 are seen emerging from numerous galaxies throughout the universe. One can see such jets very far away, even at distances of billions of light-years. Astronomers studied M87 because it is one of the nearest jet-emitting galaxies and its strong radio emission made it an excellent target for radio telescopes. Radio observations with the VLBA and optical observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have measured the motions of concentrations of material in M87's jets, and have shown the material to be moving at apparent speeds greater than that of light. This "superluminal" motion is a geometric illusion created by material moving nearly, but under, the speed of light, but in a direction somewhat toward the Earth.

A View to A Black Hole ?

Within a few years, scientists should be able to "see" the shadow of the elusive black hole believed to suck matter and even light into the center of the Milky Way. A slight refinement of the ability to measure short-wavelength radiation generated from the area where the incredibly massive object is expected to be in our home galaxy is the only requirement. Researchers have already developed a computer model visualizing what the black hole's shadow may look like.^23j

Such direct observations, which would display radiation from the event horizon, would bring black holes out of the dark recesses of theory and into the realm of the known. Proving that there is an event horizon means there is a part of the world that is separated from our physics. The motivation to model the shadow stemmed from a 1973 theoretical paper by physicist James Bardeen.

This hypothetical method of observation relies on a relatively unique physical occurrence called gravitational lensing. The light and radio waves passing near a black hole are bent and refocused, giving researchers a larger apparent target to search for. Depending on how much refinement of current methods is needed, it could take anywhere from 1 to 15 years to image the shadow. Other scientists estimate five years or less before this technique can be utilized.

By tracing radiation, in the form of radio waves, emitted from all light around the black hole, scientists expect the black hole itself will appear as a shadow against the surrounding light. If the theory of general relativity is correct the shadow has to be there. That would be the final proof that black holes exist.

What are we looking for?

Black holes are theoretical massive objects that pull nearby matter into their relatively small areas. Even light cannot escape the intense gravity, so researchers have never seen a black hole. They detect them indirectly by noting the gravitational effects on nearby stars, or by detecting powerful radiation given off by gas and other matter that swirls into the object. A black hole is believed to exist at the center of the Milky Way, some 25,000 light-years away from Earth. But the density of intervening stars and other matter makes it difficult to see anything near our galactic center.

Around a star called Sagittarius A* near the Milky Ways center, astronomers have found a compact source of very strong radio emission which is thought to be created by highly ionized gas surrounding a black hole. To study the region, researchers have used Very Long Baseline Interferometry, which effectively creates a wide telescope by combining the results of telescopes at various locations on Earth. The technique allows for measuring very short wavelengths of radiation. Given the resolution achievable at short radio wavelengths, scientists calculations show a distinctive pattern in radiation from Sagittarius A*: a circular shadow. With the major observatories working together, and a further improvement of millimeter-VLBI, it should soon be possible to image the shadow of a black hole.

The image on the left, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary and Camera 2 shows the core of the galaxy where the suspected black hole dwells. Astronomers mapped the motions of gas in the grip of the black hole's powerful gravitational pull by aligning the STIS's spectroscopic slit across the nucleus in a single exposure.		The colorful "zigzag" on the right is not the work of a flamboyant artist, but the signature of a supermassive black hole in the center of galaxy M84, discovered by Hubble Space Telescope's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS).

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Astronomers have gained their first glimpse of the mysterious region near a black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy, where a powerful stream of subatomic particles spewing outward at nearly the speed of light is formed into a beam, or jet, that then goes nearly straight for thousands of light-years. The astronomers used radio telescopes in Europe and the U.S., including the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to make the most detailed images ever of the center of the galaxy M87, some 50 million light-years away.

Right: Centaurus A as viewed from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows two x-ray jets extending from a galactic center thought to be home to a huge black hole at the center. The image links to a 540x533-pixel, 138 KB JPG. Or, click here for a 2250x2221-pixel, 3.6MB TIFF. Image credit: NASA and Chandra Science Center

On Sept. 14, 1999, four bursts of X-ray energy alerted astronomers to the possibility of a black hole residing ~1,600 light years from Earth. The black hole, called V4641 Sagittari, was discovered last September after an Australian amateur astronomer noticed the suddenly brightening of the target star. Astronomers then focused X-ray detectors on V4641 Sgr., and were suprised by what they found therein.^46f

This black hole announced its presence with an eruption of X-rays that was brief, but dramatic. Three other eruptions followed, each lasting less than two hours. It was enough for a team of radio astronomers to determine that the energy was coming from a black hole. This is one of the fastest bursts ever seen, and although the bursts were brief, at peak output they were the brightest source of X-rays in the sky, except for the sun.

This particular black hole is located in constellation Sagittari and centers on a star called V4641 Sgr. Observations bear out the idea that the this event may be representative of a new subclass of X-ray-producing objects. Radio telescopes have detected twin jets of ejectae from the black hole moving at nearly the speed of light. Three other similar X-ray sources have been detected in distant parts of the universe and called ``microquasars'' by astronomers. They resemble quasars, but are much smaller. However, energy bursts from microquasars have been observed to fade more slowly than the emissions from this object.

Black holes are usually in the center of quasars and typically have accretion disks. As a black hole pulls matter into its center, gas and dust are heated to more than 10 million degrees Celsius. This gives off X-rays that can be detected by X-ray telescopes. Many black holes acquire an envelope of gas and dust called an accretion disk from which matter streams constantly into the black hole, triggering a steady X-ray signal. The brief bursts from the V4641 Sgr black hole suggests it is not being fed constantly by a reservoir of matter from an accretion disk, which indicates that either a) matter can flow into the black hole without forming an accretion disk or b) the black hole is significantly different in its mass, spin or charge.

Streamers Show a Black Hole Feeding

posted: 04:56 pm EST
17 January 2000 from Space.Com

Scientists are all but certain that there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy, raising the question of exactly what this great gobbler of matter eats for dinner.

For at least part of its diet, it now seems, the black hole dines on a steady stream of gas and dust that pours into the center of the galaxy, according to Robin S. McGary and Paul T. P. Ho of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Astronomers have long suspected the super-massive black hole, which is thought to be more than 2 million times more massive than our sun. It sits at the center of the Milky Way, some 27,000 light-years from Earth. A point-like source of radio emission called Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star") marks the location of this suspected black hole. (A light-year is 5.88 trillion miles.)

The black hole is surrounded by a ring of dust and gas orbiting Sagittarius A* at a radius of about 6.5 light-years. This "circum-nuclear disk," as researchers call it, revolves around the black hole at 246,000 m.p.h. (110 kilometers per hour). Gas and dust, stripped from the disk by the strong gravitational pull of the black hole, spiral toward Sagittarius A*.

McGary and Ho found ammonia molecules in the region around the disk. By tracing emissions from the ammonia, the researchers monitored the movement of the dense, hot gas known to exist near the center of the galaxy.

Narrow "streamers" of ammonia emission were observed connecting giant clouds of molecular gas to the circum-nuclear disk. These clouds are located from 25 to 50 light-years from the center of the galaxy.

The detection of these streamers may answer many of the questions about the formation of the circum-nuclear disk and the interactions that take place at the center of the Milky Way, researchers said.

The findings, made using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array radio telescope at Socorro, New Mexico, were presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.