meehawl writes "A video of what is currently thought to be the closest star to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The star orbits the black hole in a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 15 years or so, but at its closest approach it swings within 17 light hours of the black hole (around three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto). In the video, you can see the star ricochet past its closest approach to the black hole. This slingshot effect enabled astronomers to further pinpoint the mass of the black hole, which is confidently estimated at 2 million suns or so. The mass observation, coupled with the size constraints observed, indicates the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some exotically dense form of matter." Deep in the Core Log in/Create an Account | Top | 128 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 128 comments 0: 125 comments 1: 109 comments 2: 77 comments 3: 25 comments 4: 16 comments 5: 12 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. UPDATE (Score:3, Funny) by dirtsurfer (595452) on Sunday October 23, @07:40PM (#13860373) (Last Journal: Tuesday January 21, @05:54AM) this slashdot effect enabled astronomers to further pinpoint the mass of the black hole, which is confidently estimated to be somewhere in the server room [ Reply to This Circling the drain (Score:5, Funny) by Luigi30 (656867) on Sunday October 23, @07:42PM (#13860381) So our galaxy is like spit bubbles circling the great cosmic drain? [ Reply to ThisRe:Circling the drain by Tablizer (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @09:59PMRe:Circling the drain by RubberDogBone (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @11:27PM The video... (Score:5, Insightful) by Lord Flipper (627481) * <lord.flipper@gmail.com> on Sunday October 23, @07:43PM (#13860387) (Last Journal: Thursday July 17, @08:42PM) really is pretty awesome. I had no idea that this "slingshot effect" was so 'graphic'...wrong word, okay, 'extreme'. Quite amazing. [ Reply to ThisRe:The video... by Guppy06 (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @09:35PMRe:The video... by Basehart (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @10:12PMRe:The video... by Ariane 6 (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @11:25PMRe:The video... by Alamais (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @11:30PMRe:The video... by MustardMan (Score:2) Monday October 24, @12:06AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:The video... by DigiShaman (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @10:12PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:The video... by mbrother (Score:2) Monday October 24, @12:20AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Brilliant! (Score:4, Funny) by mboverload (657893) on Sunday October 23, @07:44PM (#13860391) (http://mboverload.no-ip.org/tech.html | Last Journal: Tuesday July 13, @02:54PM) meehawl: Lets link to a mpg video file on the front page of Slashdot! Nothing could go wrong!Zonk: Brilliant! [ Reply to This Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful) by Tyler Eaves (344284) on Sunday October 23, @07:53PM (#13860432) (http://www.cg2.org/) It's only 500kb. With all the bloat these days, maybe webpages are approaching that size, easily, if you count the size of the images. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Brilliant! by dtfinch (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:27PMPlus by Daath (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @10:13PMRe:Brilliant! by Hurricane78 (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @11:55PMRe:Brilliant! by ravenspear (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:04PMRe:Brilliant! by thrillseeker (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:39PMRe:Brilliant! by Short Circuit (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @11:14PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Press release from 2002... (Score:3, Informative) by mdobossy (674488) on Sunday October 23, @07:44PM (#13860393) Is this a 3 year old article?? Or did we just pass too close to a black hole, bending time or something??? [ Reply to ThisRe:Press release from 2002... by kryten_nl (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:08PMLongest Dupe by meehawl (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:12PM From the video.. (Score:2, Funny) by nrgy (835451) on Sunday October 23, @07:44PM (#13860394) (http://home.comcast.net/~thenrgy) it looks to me that the dot just changed his mind on which direction he wanted to go. That or maybe he didnt like one of the other dots in that direction. [ Reply to This Dave . . . (Score:5, Funny) by Seumas (6865) on Sunday October 23, @07:46PM (#13860402) the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some exotically dense form of matter.Oh my god . . . It's full of politicians and pundits . . . ! [ Reply to ThisTranslation by patricksevenlee (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:26PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Who was it that said... (Score:5, Funny) by FlyByPC (841016) on Sunday October 23, @07:47PM (#13860406) Black holes are where God divided by zero? [ Reply to ThisRe:Who was it that said... by oliverthered (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @07:58PMRe:Who was it that said... by Raseri (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:14PMRe:Who was it that said... by Daath (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @10:23PMRe:Who was it that said... by Slashdiddly (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:20PMRe:Who was it that said... by e.loser (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @09:04PMRe:Who was it that said... by mikael (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:11PMRe:Who was it that said... by Tablizer (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:52PM This Counts (Score:5, Interesting) by Markus Registrada (642224) on Sunday October 23, @07:51PM (#13860417) This certainly counts as positive evidence of a black hole or its moral equivalent. Note that the details date from 2002. Before 2002, we had a lot of conjecture. Now we have proof.Everybody who was skeptical before 2002 (or who hadn't heard about this yet) was right to be skeptical. Given this, there seems no room left for skepticism about supermassive whatsits.As they note, there remains now the mystery of how they got so much mass to concentrate in one place. Stars don't forget all about conventional orbital dynamics just because they've spotted a black hole somewhere not too far off. [ Reply to ThisRe:This Counts by Punchinello (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @10:35PMRe:This Counts by Ariane 6 (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @11:30PMRe:This Counts by pipingguy (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @11:29PMRe:This Counts by njh (Score:2) Monday October 24, @12:50AM Watch a little more closely ... (Score:5, Interesting) by SuperDuG (134989) <be&eclec,tk> on Sunday October 23, @07:51PM (#13860421) (http://www.eclec.tk/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 25, @04:37PM) While I agree this is a pretty impressive sight to see ... even the video shows this isn't exactly as it appears. That "ricochet" that plops it halfway around it's course so quickly, is actually almost an entire earth year. There is still quite [eurekalert.org] a bit [llnl.gov] of speculation [uiuc.edu] on whether or not Black Holes even exist.While the idea of black holes, dark matter, etc seems intringing, it is still a lot of theory. It is nice to see that people haven't given up, but that's not to say that this article is just as much speculation as the next.With that said, wouldn't it be nice to focus all of humanities efforts on answering the questions we don't yet know the answers for ... instead of killing each other? I know that we already have the answer, but 42 only answers the ultimate question, we can't even answer the simple things like "do black holes exist?" [ Reply to ThisRe:Watch a little more closely ... by xtal (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:01PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Ironsides (Score:3) Sunday October 23, @08:31PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Malor (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:29PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Bloater (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:30PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by timmarhy (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @09:58PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. DARPA (Score:5, Interesting) by vlad_petric (94134) on Sunday October 23, @08:03PM (#13860478) (http://slashdot.org/) You'd be surprised how much scientific research is sponsored by DARPA (in the States, of course). While it's likely that this particular piece of research was not, in general DARPA funds a lot more than NSF. In other words, "killing each other", to a certain extent, drives scientific research. "killing each other" gave us the IP stack of protocols, for instance ... [ Reply to This | ParentRe:DARPA by sirsnork (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:22PM Tin foil hat (Score:4, Funny) by SkyFire360 (889512) on Sunday October 23, @08:23PM (#13860578) "killing each other" gave us the IP stack of protocols It's true, it's true! They say that the war in Iraq is supposed to give us something called IPv6! [ Reply to This | ParentRe:DARPA by Tuross (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:52PMRe:DARPA by Tablizer (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:55PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Watch a little more closely ... by dnixon112 (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:04PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by potpie (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:21PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Haydn Fenton (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:10PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by dnixon112 (Score:3) Sunday October 23, @09:35PM Re:Watch a little more closely ... (Score:5, Informative) by potpie (706881) on Sunday October 23, @08:15PM (#13860541) (Last Journal: Monday November 29, @12:03AM) Apparently you haven't studied these things. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, it takes light from even the nearest star years to reach us, the Earth's mass is only a fraction of Jupiter's, Jupiter's mass is only a fraction of the sun's, the sun's mass is only a fraction of some other stars that exist, and on and on. So the general idea is that a lot of the things in the universe are a lot bigger than you and me and our tiny planet. So if a star (and just think how much mass is in a star compared to you) orbits something in 15 years, you don't think it's just a bit interesting that it covers about half of its entire orbit in one fifteenth of the total time? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Markus Registrada (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:06PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by wanerious (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:41PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Markus Registrada (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @11:45PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by mbrother (Score:2) Monday October 24, @12:28AM Re:Watch a little more closely ... (Score:4, Funny) by Sponge Bath (413667) on Sunday October 23, @09:18PM (#13860803) The universe is 13.7 billion years old, it takes light from even the nearest star years to reach us, the Earth's mass is only a fraction of Jupiter's, Jupiter's mass is only a fraction of the sun's, the sun's mass is only a fraction of some other stars that exist...... so remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,How amazingly unlikely is your birth,And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Fulcrum of Evil (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:18PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @10:22PM Re:Watch a little more closely ... (Score:5, Insightful) by wkitchen (581276) on Sunday October 23, @10:46PM (#13861150) So if a star (and just think how much mass is in a star compared to you) orbits something in 15 years, you don't think it's just a bit interesting that it covers about half of its entire orbit in one fifteenth of the total time?Good point. Also consider that Pluto orbits the sun once every 248 years. This star's nearest approach to the object is about 3 times the distance from pluto to the sun, and since it has an extremely eliptical orbit, it spends most of its time much further away than even that. For it to orbit in 15 years, and to cover the near half of that orbit in only about 1 year, means that the thing it's orbiting is incredibly massive. Even if it isn't a black hole, and even if the fundamental ideas about black holes turned out to be very wrong, you can still bet that, whatever it is, it is something that is similarly strange and interesting. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Watch a little more closely ... by emagery (Score:1) Monday October 24, @12:12AMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by GotenXiao (Score:1) Monday October 24, @12:07AMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Anti_Climax (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:32PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by Astro Dr Dave (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:40PMRe:Watch a little more closely ... by ScentCone (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @11:40PM Wee bit bigger than that (Score:5, Informative) by ottffssent (18387) on Sunday October 23, @07:54PM (#13860435) The http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0210426:linkedarticl e [arxiv.org] says the "enclosed point mass" (read: black hole) has a mass of 3.7 million solar masses, +- 1.5M solar masses. Not 2M solar masses, as the article summary indicates. For most people, myself included, this is a meaningless distinction, but in the interest of scientific accuracy, I thought I'd mention it. [ Reply to ThisReal Mass by meehawl (Score:3) Sunday October 23, @08:04PMRe:Real Mass by Simon Garlick (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:26PMCredit by meehawl (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:33PMRe:Credit by Simon Garlick (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:17PMRe:Wee bit bigger than that by Astro Dr Dave (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:50PM Video? (Score:3, Informative) by cbiltcliffe (186293) on Sunday October 23, @08:17PM (#13860549) (http://www.cbserviceslondon.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 14, @02:12PM) Anybody else get a plain black screen for the video?Running Media Player Classic, I get diddly squat in the way of moving dots.Of course, I suppose I could just be looking at the black hole itself...... [ Reply to ThisWierd.....Re:Video? by cbiltcliffe (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @08:21PMIrfanView by weighn (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @08:46PMRe:IrfanView by cbiltcliffe (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @10:24PMRe:Video? by slashname3 (Score:3) Sunday October 23, @09:49PM How much are 17 light-hours? (Score:2, Interesting) by nherm (889807) on Sunday October 23, @08:48PM (#13860662) nherm@localhost:~$ units2084 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units You have: 17 light-hoursYou want: au * 122.64411 / 0.0081536729nherm@localhost:~$ The Voyager I [wikipedia.org] is currently at a distance of 95 AU. 122 AU could be the distance from the sun to the heliopause [wikipedia.org]. [ Reply to ThisRe:How much are 17 light-hours? by Doc Ruby (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:19PMRe:How much are 17 light-hours? by Supurcell (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @09:30PMRe:How much are 17 light-hours? by Moocowsia (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @10:25PMRe:How much are 17 light-hours? by pookemon (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @10:25PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Look Beyond The Box (Score:1) by Morrog (706170) on Sunday October 23, @08:54PM (#13860697) Anyone else see that star that goes right through the area of the blackhole without even a flinch? I was under the impression black holes like to eat stars for breakfast/lunch/second lunch/dinner. Or maybe they're friends? [ Reply to ThisRe:Look Beyond The Box by potpie (Score:3) Sunday October 23, @09:04PMRe:Look Beyond The Box by mikael (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:29PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. It's really.. (Score:1) by dstrek (909218) on Sunday October 23, @08:58PM (#13860714) (http://dstrek.com/) just a dyson sphere are the centre of the universe. [ Reply to ThisRe:It's really.. by QuantumG (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @10:26PMRe:It's really.. by pintpusher (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @10:36PM 3 year old news, 3 year old video (Score:4, Informative) by Darth Cow (533706) on Sunday October 23, @08:58PM (#13860716) Take a look at the original press release [eso.org], dated 16 October 2002.The article was published in Nature [nature.com] at the same time, and the video isn't new either.Remind me why this is going up on Slashdot today? [ Reply to ThisRe:3 year old news, 3 year old video by slashname3 (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:56PM3 Year versus 3 Minute Dupe by meehawl (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @11:02PM Humm Humm (Score:2) by Inf0phreak (627499) on Sunday October 23, @09:01PM (#13860734) *Begins humming to himself*Deep in the Core, the galactic core, a black hole spins toniiiiight [ Reply to This milky away... (Score:1) by kahrytan (913147) on Sunday October 23, @09:21PM (#13860819) Ask yourself a question.          What type of Galaxy is the Milky Way Galaxy?The answer is, it is a spiral galaxy.  Though there is many theories on the origin of a spiral galaxy. This video only further supports the theory on the formations of a spiral galaxy. Of course, if Sol is being pulled towards the super massive black hole, time would be actually be slowing down for us.Do keep in mind, this video still does not show you a black hole but suggests stars is being effected by one. [ Reply to ThisRe:milky away... by corngrower (Score:2) Monday October 24, @12:09AM Puppeteers were unavailable for comment (Score:2) by snowwrestler (896305) on Sunday October 23, @09:35PM (#13860865) Calls to the General Products Corporation have not been returned. [ Reply to ThisRe:Puppeteers were unavailable for comment by slashname3 (Score:2) Sunday October 23, @09:58PMRe:Puppeteers were unavailable for comment by pintpusher (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @10:41PM What abou S2's Planets? (Score:1) by waraji (925193) on Sunday October 23, @11:01PM (#13861223) I wonder if S2 has any planets still and how the gravity of the Black Hole would affect them? Is it possible they have been stripped long ago when the star fell into the Black Hole's gravity? [ Reply to This And the most amazing thing... (Score:2) by constantnormal (512494) on Monday October 24, @12:08AM (#13861475) Is that unlike most astronomical images, which show events that have occurred in the distant past, this one shows events from the future!The datestamp in the upper left corner of the frame shows frames moving from 1992 to 2006.9 !!Cosmic Daylight Savings Time? [ Reply to This Best article summary ever (Score:1) by prurientknave (820507) on Monday October 24, @12:17AM (#13861501) My god this article summary should be held up as the shining example of summaries. Now let's hope it doesn't get duped in the next few hours. [ Reply to This I wonder if a black hole would.... (Score:1) by Brad1138 (590148) on Monday October 24, @12:43AM (#13861575) Radiate heat or is heat unable to escape just like light? [ Reply to This Re:Which way is it turning (Score:3, Informative) by mr_z_beeblebrox (591077) on Sunday October 23, @07:58PM (#13860452) (Last Journal: Tuesday August 17, @03:46PM) but seriously, since it is revolving around the black hole, does that mean it is slowly being sucked in?Revolving is kind of a 2 dimensional way to look at it. Instead it is orbiting, which is actually a perpetual fall. So the short answer is..."yes, it is not being sucked in". Really, I would have no idea how to do the math (as most of the variable are too...variable). But basically, for every object that can be orbited you can figure out a minimum sustainable orbit versus one that is catastrophic. [ Reply to This | Parent