Black Holes

[Foggy]

Personally, I'd like to see dark matter be beaten by a better theory. It's ugly, but it's the best we have.

I'm still hoping for a theory that includes the possibility of FTL travel.

Because honestly, without true FTL technology, we're stuck way out on the swirling arm of our little tiny galaxy - and there are two trillion galaxies to explore.

[Sam the Centipede]

Personally, I'd like to see dark matter be beaten by a better theory. It's ugly, but it's the best we have.

I'm certainly no physicist, so what follows is the words of an innocent.

Dark matter as A Thing doesn't bother me. Gravity has not been integrated into the Wonderful World of Quantum and it seems to me that the resolution of that glitch and a plausible description of dark matter (or missing gravity) are hiding together behind the same bush and giggling madly.

Higgs bosons mediate mass and mass is important to gravity so they're probably somewhere in the story. But maybe not.

There seems to be some serious suggestion that dark matter is neutrino-like: it's dark so it doesn't interact with photons, hence no electromagnetic behavior. I can't remember why but it must be something that isn't affected by the strong nuclear force (the one that bind the protons and neutrons into an atom's nucleus). So neutrinos interact with the the weak nuclear force, and, if massive, with gravity.

Somebody will work it out, and it will probably be quite elegant, and I hope more elegant that the superstring cat's cradles.

[Walt Tuttle]

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

IMG_5986.jpeg (51.69 KiB) Viewed 111 times

[RTH10260]

[RTH10260]

Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole – 33 times size of sun
BH3 spotted when scientists chanced upon star in Aquila constellation ‘wobbling’ under its gravitational force

Ian Sample Science editor
Tue 16 Apr 2024 09.00 CEST

Astronomers have discovered an enormous black hole which formed in the aftermath of an exploding star a mere 2,000 light years from Earth.

BH3 is the most massive stellar black hole yet found in the Milky Way and revealed itself to researchers through the powerful tug it exerts on a companion star that orbits the object in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle.

The serendipitous discovery is so important that scientists released details of the object earlier than planned to enable other astronomers to perform further observations as soon as possible.

“It’s a complete surprise,” said Dr Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer and member of the Gaia collaboration at the Observatoire de Paris. “It is the most massive stellar origin black hole in our galaxy and the second nearest discovered so far.”



https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ize-of-sun