Massive "Dark Halo" Discovered Beyond Edge of the Milky Way

The biggest things in the universe just got bigger - or rather, they've always been bigger and we somehow missed it up to now.  Supercomputer simulations of galactic core black holes indicate that instead of being a mere two billion times the mass of the sun, so insignificant you'd surely lose them if you sneezed, some could be as large as six billion suns -not including the "dark halo" that surrounds the Milky Way, which is more than ten times as much mass as all of the visible stars, gas, and dust in the rest of the galaxy.

The biggest things in the universe just got bigger - or rather, they've always been bigger and we somehow missed it up to now.  Supercomputer simulations of galactic core black holes indicate that instead of being a mere two billion times the mass of the sun, so insignificant you'd surely lose them if you sneezed, some could be as large as six billion suns -not including the "dark halo" that surrounds the Milky Way, which is more than ten times as much mass as all of the visible stars, gas, and dust in the rest of the galaxy.

The study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Studies (which couldn't sound smarter if it was Lex Luthor's university degree) focused on Messier 87, a particularly bright active galaxy in the Virgo cluster whose size, strong signals and proximity to Earth make it a common astronomical experimentation subject.  Dr Karl Gebhart and colleagues ran a supercomputer simulation to calculate the mass of the monster at M87's core.

You need to simulate a black hole's size because there's no way to observe its mass directly - you can only infer its immensity by studying the effects on the mass around it (little things like entire galaxies).  Where the new model differs from past efforts is its inclusion of the "dark halo", an unobservable ring of dark matter which astrophysicists now believe surround galaxies.  Including something you can't see might sound like a great way to get any answer you like, but the simulation worked it out by observing the effects of this halo on the visible stars, then accounting for those calculated effects when simulating the black hole - which is why the program took several days to run on a computer that could probably calculate you to ten decimal places in one minute.

The dark matter halo is the single largest part of the Milky Way, covering the space between 100,000 light-years to 300,000 light-years from the galactic center. It is now believed that about 95% of the Galaxy is composed of dark matter, which does not seem to interact with the rest of the Galaxy's matter and energy in any way except through gravity. The dark matter halo is more than ten times as much mass as all of the visible stars, gas, and dust in the rest of the galaxy. While the luminous matter we see in the night skymakes up approximately 90,000,000,000 solar masses, he dark matter halo is believed to include around 600,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000,000 solar masses of dark matter.

Don't worry, the results aren't entirely dependent on the dark matter magic-factor which affects so much of current cosmology - the results seem to explain observations which previously puzzled many scientists (always a good sign for a new result).  Recordings of distant quasars show evidence of black holes far larger than anything we've ever seen closer to home.  Now it seems that they were here all along, we just weren't looking at them right.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Giant Black Holes Get Even Bigger

The study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Studies (which couldn't sound smarter if it was Lex Luthor's university degree) focused on Messier 87, a particularly bright active galaxy in the Virgo cluster whose size, strong signals and proximity to Earth make it a common astronomical experimentation subject.  Dr Karl Gebhart and colleagues ran a supercomputer simulation to calculate the mass of the monster at M87's core.

You need to simulate a black hole's size because there's no way to observe its mass directly - you can only infer its immensity by studying the effects on the mass around it (little things like entire galaxies).  Where the new model differs from past efforts is its inclusion of the "dark halo", an unobservable ring of dark matter which astrophysicists now believe surround galaxies.  Including something you can't see might sound like a great way to get any answer you like, but the simulation worked it out by observing the effects of this halo on the visible stars, then accounting for those calculated effects when simulating the black hole - which is why the program took several days to run on a computer that could probably calculate you to ten decimal places in one minute.

The dark matter halo is the single largest part of the Milky Way, covering the space between 100,000 light-years to 300,000 light-years from the galactic center. It is now believed that about 95% of the Galaxy is composed of dark matter, which does not seem to interact with the rest of the Galaxy's matter and energy in any way except through gravity. The dark matter halo is more than ten times as much mass as all of the visible stars, gas, and dust in the rest of the galaxy. While the luminous matter we see in the night skymakes up approximately 90,000,000,000 solar masses, he dark matter halo is believed to include around 600,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000,000 solar masses of dark matter.

Don't worry, the results aren't entirely dependent on the dark matter magic-factor which affects so much of current cosmology - the results seem to explain observations which previously puzzled many scientists (always a good sign for a new result).  Recordings of distant quasars show evidence of black holes far larger than anything we've ever seen closer to home.  Now it seems that they were here all along, we just weren't looking at them right.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Giant Black Holes Get Even Bigger

Comments

[o-dish-es]

What do the red dots represent?

[John Woods]

Wow, thats pretty cool dude, I like it.

RT
www.web-anonymity.de.tc

[WinWinWin]

"What do the red dots represent?" - o-dish-es

Intergalactic herpes.

[Real Estate Owner]

I also have the same query with that of o-dishes.

What does the red dots represent?

[Jacques]

Wait I remember this episode! If the Enterprise crosses the barrier into the dark matter halo, one or more of the crew members will become super powerful due to some bizarre quantum effects altering their consciousness.

[rapidshare search]

I also have the same query with that of o-dishes..

[howdidodee]

they are pimpels, dude

[Art 7]

This "mysterious" dark halo is only kept "mysterious" for lots more grant/research money. If anyone thinks that the galaxy has a hard border ("Stop, You have reached the end of the galaxy") then they're not much of a scientist. Deeper and deeper exposures of nearby galaxies show that matter (regular stars, dust, brown dwarfs, rocks, junk, gas) extends and tapers off 2-3 times the visible (what we call visible from our short term exposures) diameter of a galaxy. Of course it's dark... the number of stars "TAPER" off and if you don't have stars you have dark. Take a look at the newly discovered DUST ring around Saturn... is it dark matter... we never saw it before... so? No, not "mysterious" dark matter... just FAINTER than what our limited exposures were able to see before. Same with galaxies. Enough with this "mysterious" crap...

[Scott Houdek]

those dots could be very very large planets!, about the size of our Sun, i could be wrong, i think it's just a clump dark matter anyway!

[TheKing]

I honestly spit water out on my computer after reading ART7's comment, that was classic man. however, talking as if you know what you are actually talking about when you have no earthly clue doesn't make you smart it makes you ignorant beyond belief. go back to pumping someones mind full of smut so they can think just like you and make you feel good.

[Varmoo]

Perhaps all dark matter is composed of unincorporated Higgs bosons!

[AbuBakerSmith]

This sounds like the place described in the Book of Enoch .

[John]

The red dots appear to represent globular cluster distribution.

[memory foam mattress topper]

Wow... this discovery can be a sort of the biggest in this century...