MUFONET-BBS NETWORK - MUTUAL UFO NETWORK
ASTRONOMY NEWS - WIRE
=START= XMT: 11:56 Wed Apr 10 EXP: 12:00 Wed Apr 17
ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER MYSTERIOUS MASSIVE OBJECT: 40 BILLION
TIMES SIZE OF SUN
WASHINGTON (APRIL 10) UPI - Astronomers have discovered an
extremely massive, mysterious dark object inside two
colliding galaxies that could be a black hole much more
massive than ever thought possible.
If the object is indeed a black hole, it is at least 40
billion times more massive than the Earth's sun and 10 to
100 times more massive as any black hole previously believed
possible.
The object could also be a dormant quasar, from which
galaxies are believed to have been born more than 10 billion
years ago, astronomers speculated.
But scientists are uncertain what the object is and hope to
learn more about by studying it further, including observing
the object with the Gamma Ray Observatory, which was
launched by the space shuttle Atlantis on Sunday.
The object was discovered by Andrew Wilson of the University
of Maryland at College Park, Joss Bland-Hawthorn of Rice
University in Houston and Brent Tully of the University of
Hawaii. Their work is described in an article in Friday's
issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
The astronomers discovered the object while mapping a galaxy
called NGC 6240, which is about 300 million light years from
Earth.
The astronomers used a powerful three-dimensional light-
measuring instrument and an 88-inch telescope on an
observatory perched on the 14,000-foot-high extinct Mauna
Kea volcano in Hawaii.
The astronomers mapped the motions of swirling gas in the
object and found the galaxy contains not just one spinning
disk of gas like an ordinary spiral galaxy but two.
The first disk is rotating like a normal galaxy, with the
gases swirling around the center at speeds governed by the
mass in its stars and other material. But the second is
swirling at speeds that are close to 2 million miles an hour
at its center.
''The structure in the second disk is much more
remarkable,'' Bland- Hawthorn said. ''Instead of showing the
trail of a rotation induced by an extended distribution of
stars and gas, the rotation betrays the presence of an
extremely massive compact dark object.''
Using the velocity of the second disk, the astronomers
estimated the mass at the center of the second disk is at
least 40 billion times the mass of our sun and possibly as
high as 200 billion solar masses - the same mass as our
Milky Way galaxy but in a volume at least 10,000 times
smaller.
''This huge mass and its great concentration and darkness
are puzzling and unlike any found previously,'' Bland-
Hawthorn said.
''It may provide further evidence for the existence of dark
matter in space - matter that radiates little or no light,''
he said.
A black hole is a theorectical object so massive and tightly
packed that nothing, not even light, can escape its immense
gravitational force.
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