Galaxies- Star and their Black Holes

1. GALAXIES – STARS AND THEIR BLACK HOLES Galaxy Formation Overview We need to start with our WMAP image of earlier, it shows the seeding pattern for the formation of galaxies in our universe observed today. Galaxy – Formation - The Milky Way – Zurich University – (3 minutes) View Video

2. Everything we see started from unevenly dense clumping of gas and dust. The gasses being mainly Hydrogen with a little Helium, all combine within the stellar nurseries of our universe, Nebulae. The smallest stars, typically less than half the size of our Sun, are known as Red Dwarf Stars, much cooler than our Sun and are the most abundant in the universe. Large Blue Stars are typically 20 times the mass of the Sun and 10,000 times more luminous living much shorter lives as they plough through their Hydrogen fuel much more quickly, living just a few million years, whereas, our Sun has already lived 4.5 billion years at only around half way through its life.

3. Once any stars drops from The Main Sequence, stops fusion, gravity takes over and they collapse. In the case of our Sun, when all of its Hydrogen has fused, it will make a short lived attempt to burn its then Helium core as it evolves into a Red Giant, before collapsing to a dead hot White Dwarf, on through to finally, a cold Black Dwarf. Our Sun will collapse to a White Dwarf around the size of planet Earth, it does not collapse further as it has not sufficient mass to do so due to the repelling force of Electrons at its core. In Binary Star systems the White Dwarf can sometimes gravitationally pull mass from its companion to growth to a critical size when it will ultimately explode as a Type 1A Supernova. Type 2 Supernovae are created by the implosion of stars more than 10 times greater than our Sun, which fuse beyond Helium right through as far as Iron, with a collapsing core overcoming the repulsive Electron force, to combine them with Protons, leaving an enormously dense and gravimetric Neutron Star as small as 15KM in diameter. When they spin they’re Pulsars. Stars typically 25 – 40 and up to 150 times the mass of the Sun, Supernova implode, to a Black Hole.

4. Video link – The Universe – Birth and Death of Stars – The History Channel – (45 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV9RXGMuUIo View videos offline

5. The Milky Way The first sub-division of the universe are the galaxies, ours is The Milky Way named by The Egyptians given its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky. It’s 100,000–120,000 light- years in diameter and contains 100–400 billion stars. This is where we live in The Milky Way some 30,000 light years from its centre.

6. The Milky Way, is a spiral galaxy, the other type being elliptical Journey through The Milky Way – (90 minutes) View Video

7. Andromeda Galaxy The Andromeda Galaxy the closest of the billions of other galaxies, approximately 2.5 million light- years from Earth. Edwin Hubble was first to isolate it from the night sky. It has a spiral disc shape similar to our own and spins on its centre. As noted earlier, when astronomers measured the spin of these galaxies they did so at speeds that would generate sufficient centrifugal forces to rip themselves apart unless Dark Matter is included to the Newtonian calculations. At the centre of most galaxies exist Super Massive Black Holes with smaller Black Holes dotted about.

8. The Local Group Our galactic postal address; Earth, Solar System, Local Group.

9. Virgo Supercluster Our galactic postal address; Earth, Solar System, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster.

10. Cloud Nebulae After the initial bang with inflation, the expansion of the universe began to slow and cool pretty uniformly but as per the WMAP image, however, there was sufficient variation to allow the cooler denser areas begin to cluster to form Nebulae, the Latin for Clouds. The Nebulae were composed mainly of Hydrogen, Helium and dust, remnants from the Big Bang. The most well recognised of these being The Eagle Nebula as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. These are the star making factories of galaxies and 100’s of millions of light years across in scale. Not all stars are born equally and yes, like us, they all die and yes, again, differently. New stars are born all the time and all that’s needed to get the process going is a slight change in the density of the Nebulae caused either by one Nebula colliding with another or a local cosmic event such as an exploding Supernova sending a triggering shock wave through a Nebula. The density change results in a collapsing inward of part of the Nebula accelerated by gravity. As this local density - compression increase continues it also becomes hotter and hotter. This process continues for many millions of years until the core reaches a critical temperature of around 15 million degrees Celsius, fusion starts and ‘A Star is Born’ as we know it. They come in 5 types; •Classical types

11. •Diffuse nebulae •Planetary nebulae •Protoplanetary nebula •Supernova remnants The Universe – Nebulae – The History Channel – (45 minutes) View Video The Orion Nebula

13. The Ring Nebula

14. The Eagle Nebula

16. The Crab Nebula

17. The Sun Our Sun is a star; it’s classified as a Yellow Dwarf, Main Sequence Star, its half way through its life cycle of 8 – 9 billion years and is currently at its most stable. It’s the size of a million Earths with a core temperature of 15 million degrees Celsius. In terms of star classifications, it’s mid-range in the Main Sequence grouping below, meaning its fusing it Hydrogen and or Helium fuel, were it further up in the Blue Light spectrum of the Main Sequence group it would pump out much brighter Blue UV light and heat, which planet Earth would not survive, as well as burning out with a much shorter lifespan, likely, not allowing the timescales needed for life to evolve. Much further down in the Main Sequence and more or less, vise-versa. Our Sun’s death will first involve becoming a Red Giant, outside and above the Main Sequence before imploding to become a White Dwarf outside and below the Main Sequence to a then Brown and finally a Black Dwarf as it cools down over time, becoming a dead ember floating to the background of Space. The Super-Giant Stars above the Main Sequence will implode as Supernovae, many of which, into Black Holes. The temperature of the Suns atmosphere, The Corona, is over 1.5 million degrees Celsius, 300 times hotter than the Suns surface, of only 5,500 degrees Celsius. The surface of the Sun ripples due to sound waves generated by churning gases deep within which allow us look inside to see what’s happening, through helio-seismological analysis, of its 10 million resonating frequencies. The Suns plasma core, its power house, whilst relatively small is still 25 times the diameter of Earth. Here 4 million ton of mass are converted to energy every second through Fusion, the equivalent of 10 billion Hydrogen bombs being exploded every second. Without the force of gravity pulling the outer layers of the Sun inward, it would have long since blown itself apart.

18. The next plasma layer out is less dense and does not generate energy, but it takes the photons of energy created in the core 100,000 years to cross through it, due to the continuous random collisions they incur there. The next layer out is the convection zone, with convection currents due to the circulation of cooler, more dense plasma sinking from the surface and hotter plasma at the bottom, rising. This layer is less dense again and takes the photons only a month to travel through. On the Suns surface, a weaken version of the photons energy is released, reaching Earth, with the speed of light, in 8 minutes, as Sunlight. The light coming from the Stars of the night sky is a result of the thermo nuclear fusion of Hydrogen, the same mechanism that powers our own Sun. We’re back to Einstein and his E=MC*2 equation to understand what’s going on. Hydrogen as the fuel has an atomic nucleus with just one Proton, which, under the extremes of heat and pressure, during the birth of a Star, are forced to collide with one another. When 4 such Protons fuse through collision, a new nucleus is created, Helium. The mass of the 4 Protons in the nucleus of Helium weigh less than that of the 4 individual Hydrogen Protons and it is this loss of mass converted to energy, the E=MC*2 equation, that powers all stars. Because of the significance of Einstein’sequation, it’s broken out further here. His genius was to make the connection between Energy, Matter - Mass and Light as to their interchangeability. Light

19. travels at a speed of just under 300 million metres per second which he squares in his equation generating an enormous multiplier. The outcome being a very small amount of Matter – Mass can therefore be converted to an enormous amount of Energy. We replicate the same energy conversion process on Earth but through a different mechanism. We don’t fuse atoms as in the Sun, nuclear fusion, rather, we split atoms, nuclear fission, to make smaller ones. The combined nuclear mass of the smaller atoms created is less than the total of the initial atom, thereby, releasing Matter - Mass for Energy conversion. The types of large unstable atoms normally split are ones like Uranium. Getting back to the Stars, our Sun is currently in the prime of its life at 4.5 billion years of age. It’s nearly 350,000 times the mass of the Earth, with a diameter more than 100 times ours. Galileo, from earlier, not only confirmed the Copernican view of the Sun’s position in our Solar system but studied the Sun directly. He observed Sun spot which when plotted over time allowed him deduce the Sun rotates, another heresy on his part, no wonder the church kept him under house arrest, how could the Sun have spots when the church had already declared it as perfection created by God, ergo, no spot or pimples allowed! These Galilean Sun spots are important to our daily lives as the Sun flares originating from them are capable to severely disrupt our modern technologically electronic age.

20. Solar Wind & Flares Magnetic tornadoes twist upwards tens of thousands of kilometers, large enough dark spots to engulf the Earth, ebb and flow, with violent eruptions shooting charged particles into space at speeds of over 3.5 million kilometers per hour, capable of knocking out our electric grid system which powers our daily life. When they’re not so violent, we just get the Solar Wind. Sun spots are areas of cooler surface plasma caused by strong local magnetic fields, are the breeding ground for solar storms. Observationally, they have an 11 year cycle, within which, their numbers wax and wane, solar maximum and minimum, as the magnetic poles of the Sun reverse. When the Sun Flares, it initially releases x-rays which can reach Earth within minutes and are followed by a Coronal Mass Ejection, CME, a wave of billions of tons of electrically charged particles, delivering Earth a surge of radiation and an electrical spike of trillions of watts. In March 1989, in Quebec, Canada, in less than 2 minutes, 6 million people were left without power from such a spike. These flares are triggered as the Sun generates its own magnetic field created by the electric currents caused by the turbulent plasma flows in the Suns convection zone and its own spin which we observe on and above its surface as, twisted plasma gas illuminated magnetic loops with oppositely charged poles, where they contact the Suns surface. These poles are dragged by the turbulent flows of the convection layer beneath. When they cross paths, they short circuit, with a tremendous explosion, a solar flare and / or a, CME, discharges, with speeds of 3.5 million kilometers per hour. The severity with which a flare hits also depends on how its magnetic polarity aligns with Earths, if they’re the same, our Magnetosphere provides maximum protection, it, not, it strikes with maximum ferocity. The Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched in 2010 to allow continuous monitoring of the Sun for space weather forecasting of solar flares and magnetic storms. Its predictive capabilities are for now, limited.

21. The current focus is on attempting to better understand the Suns surface magnetic activity. Astronauts on the International Space Station rely on these forecasts before space walking.

22. Secrets of the Sun – PBS - NOVA- (55 minutes) View Video The Universe – Solar Flares – Magnetic Storms - The History Channel - (45 minutes) View Video The Universe - Dark Future of The Sun – The History Channel - (45 minutes) View Video

24. Aurora The Solar Wind which we witness at our Poles as the Auroras, particularly the Aurora Borealis, The Northern Lights of the North Pole. At the South Pole we have the Aurora Australis.

25. The Heliosphere These same Aurora phenomena occur on other of the planets as the Solar Wind also passes them, ultimately forming a shield which protects us from galactic radiation and cosmic rays. It’s called The Heliosphere.

26. Red Giant Stars The Sun has now used half its Hydrogen fuel, when this runs out the Sun will bloat to become a Red Giant Star in old age, around 200 times its current size, the good news, that should not happen for around another 5 billion years. As it enlarges it gets cooler hence the colour shift from blue / white to red. The core of the Sun is then dies with nothing left there other than converted Helium from the nuclear fusion of Hydrogen. There remains an outer shell of Hydrogen which continues to fuse converting to an old age Red Giant which in turn engulfs its local planets including the Earth. The temperatures generated in old age are high enough to commence the fusion of the Helium in its core to Carbon and Oxygen, all critical for life to exist on Earth. Hence the expression, ‘We are made of Star Dust’ and to it we’ll return unless we can find elsewhere in our galaxy or beyond to colonise.

27. Earth – Swallowed by the Sun In 5,000 years from now the planet temperature might well be 55C, flooding all coastal cities with dramatic coastline changes. With the increased water evaporation there would be constant thunderstorms, the ability of the human body to cope the heat and humidity would see it at its limit. A further 3 billion years along and the planet reaches 100C with all human and animal life above ground simply suffocating to death, the Magnetosphere weakens allowing more Solar Radiation through. At 150C half the oceans water is burnt off with clouds stretching higher into the sky with any rain evaporating before reaching the ground turning the planet to a giant desert, the Carbon Dioxide released from the dead plants and animals create an intense Greenhouse Effect. Cyanobacteria would be amongst the final living organisms on the planet. The Oxygen levels will have now halved to 10% of the atmosphere, barely enough for humans to survive. A further billion years along at the planet is at 375C, human life now finishes, even underground. The oceans become lifeless vast salt plains. The air pressure is now nearly 300 times what it was, trapped water in concrete explodes it the reinforcing rebar in the concrete expands, building structure disintegrate to rubble, albeit, The Pyramids & Stonehenge still stand, no rebar. The Greenhouse Effect now pushes the temperature to +1,300C; atmospheric water now leaves the planet into space due to UV radiation splitting its molecules with the lighter Hydrogen escaping and the Oxygen remaining combines with the Iron in the Earth crust changing its colour to red, now there’s enough Oxygen to support fire again, burning anything remaining that can be. That which doesn’t, simply melts, as do The Pyramids & Stonehenge. Earth, now a scorched rusting world and time for its own death, the Sun’s core of Helium has now come under such pressure, it can now fusion ignite, its nearly 2,000C on planet Earth with the outer shell of the Sun not more than a few million kilometers away, Mercury and Venus already swallowed, with the Sun at already 200 times the size it once was. The Earth’s orbit has slowed, with it burning like the Meteorites, we once observed as Shooting Stars, in its long gone sky before the Earth is then swallowed.

28. End of the World - Death of the Red Giant – National Geographic Channel - (35 minutes) View Video The Universe – Death of the Sun – The History Channel – (45 minutes) View Video

30. White Dwarf Having now fully burnt itself out, the two primary forces in equilibrium, gravity and fusion, when the Sun was a healthy adult are now not, gravity wins and compresses the remnants to a White Dwarf with a density 1 million times that of Earth. White Dwarfs are not Stars, rather star cinders fading to the background of Cosmos and death as a Black Dwarf as it finally extinguishes. There is another type of Star death, Supernovae. Seven Ages of Starlight – BBC - (90 minutes) View Video

32. Brown Dwarf A failed attempt to become a star.

33. Black Dwarf Final destination for our Sun.

34. Rogue planets Not orbiting its own star.

35. Supernovae They’re very rare, only 2 – 3 per century per galaxy, but, through the entire universe this translates to one per second. Although Supernovae death of massive stars are the most violently explosive events in the universe, with temperatures of 1.5 billion degrees Celsius or more than a 100 times hotter than the Suns core, they’re also life creators as only in theses explosions are of sufficient energies at their core to fuse atomic nuclei all the way up to Iron. When the Iron core initially implodes, under the force of gravity, it then super explodes, to create the bulk of the 92 elements listed on The Periodic Table. They explode in a few seconds with energy levels billions of time greater than our Sun will emit through its entire life, desecrating any nearby planetary system as well as blasting lethal dosages of radiation out into the universe. They’re classified into 2 main types; •Type 1A – No Hydrogen release and are uniform in size and luminosity. •Type 2 – Hydrogen release is large and varies greatly in size and luminosity. In Type 1A Supernovae are thought to occur when there are 2 White Dwarf dead stars, in binary star systems, one feeds of the other to build to an unstable critical mass which then catastrophically explodes. Type 2 Supernovae are thought to result from massive stars at least 10 times and up to 100 times the size if the Sun explode at death leaving behind a Neutron Star releasing Neutrinos. Its 400 years since we’ve had one explode in our own galaxy, The Milky Way, we’re well overdue one? The Swift Orbiting probe, which detects Gamma Ray bursts from Supernovae, automatically communicating their coordinates to robotically controlled Earth bound telescopes, which auto focus on the event.

36. This is needed as these burst are short lived, typically, from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. In 2008 a Supernova was recorded with the power of 9,000 typical Supernovae, with a jet clocked at 99.9999% the speed of light, the largest yet. The scientist who had postulated this mechanism, Supernova Nucleosynthesis, to create the larger Elements of The Periodic Table, was Fred Hoyle, who also has the dubious legacy of describing the expanding universe, derogatorily, as a Big Bang; he was the staunchest supporter of the universe in steady state to the day he died. Posthumously here he is.

37. Without the continual birth and death of Stars there would never have been the material elements which sustain our life on this planet today. The Universe - Supernova – The History Channel - (45 minutes) View Video The Universe – Death Stars and their Threat to Earth – The History Channel - (45 minutes) View Video

39. Pulsars Supernovae are not done yet, some of their deaths leave behind a Neutron Star, also known as Pulsars when they spin fast enough, all Pulsars are from Neutron Stars but not all Neutron Stars are Pulsars, they need to spin to become so, because of the repeating trace they leave on radio telescopes when they spin. They’re so dense, a cup full of one would weigh that of a mountain on Earth or a sugar cube would weigh close to a billion tons. The Golden Record with its map on The Voyager probes shows the Earths location relative to a number of Pulsars which it’s expected an intelligent alien civilisation would be able to deduce. When the Iron core of a Super Massive Star collapses, the atomic Protons and Electrons are forced together to form Neutrons. This in turn intensifies the strength of its magnetic field to a billion times greater than that of our Sun. These send radio waves from its poles as it spins anywhere from once per 9 seconds to over 700 times per second or 10 million times faster than we travel on Earths spin.. When they were initially detected, the regularity of their pulse caused speculation an alien civilization may have been trying to make first contact with us. These Pulsars were the first of the Stars to be predicted through the mathematics of physics.

40. Pulsar - Wind Nebula If the Supernova explosion remnants remain around the Pulsar, an illuminated Wind Nebula results from the energized radiation thrown by the Pulsar as is the case in The Crab Nebula. The Pulsar of only 15KM diameter is lighting up and area of several light years.

41. Pulsars - Millisecond Pulsars These are Pulsar with a Star close by, which, upon magnetically drawing in their matter can increase their rotational speed. The radio waves emitted when converted to sound generate beats that some currently attempt to put music too.

42. Pulsars - Binary Pulsars Very rare but formed when a Millisecond Pulsar’s companion Star goes Supernova. Planets have also been found to orbit Pulsars; these could only form from the Supernova remnants as any planet around before the, now, Pulsar went Supernova would have been annihilated.

43. Black Holes The most enigmatic of cosmic discovery predicted through mathematics were to be Black Holes, falling from Einstein’s, Space-Time, General Relativity equations. Einstein himself did not believe in Black Holes, possibly because he knew his equations could not deal with them adequately, although, they could be produced from the math. He even produced a paper in 1939 suggesting they could never be formed, no one had seen anything at the time to suggest he was wrong. The math problem being; how does one compress mass to a zero volume, bending and twisting Space-Time to breaking point, with, infinite Gravity, Time stops and Space makes no sense. Math dislikes zeros or its companion, infinity. This does not happen in the real world as we know it and therefore Einstein’s General Relativity Theory is at best, incomplete. The zero space, infinite gravity is called a singularity, scientific speak for, we don’t know what it is? It has no predictability, out could pop anything, even pink flying elephants! General Relativity does allow scientists imagine what it would be like to travel into one. An analogy between waterfalls and Black Holes is often used to do so. As water approaches the waterfall’s edge it travels faster and faster, in the case of a Black Hole its Space itself doing the travelling, trying to swim upstream from a waterfall, one reaches a point where it’s no longer possible to swim fast enough against the current and is sucked over the ledge, this in the case of a Black Hole, this is the Event Horizon, past it, Space is travelling inward faster than the speed of light, one can’t swim up a waterfall in the same way light can’t escape a Black Hole. You’re not dead yet in the waterfall of the Black Hole, just no choice other than to travel downward until you reach the centre of the Black Hole, the Inner Horizon, where everything falling in meets matter being pushed out by the rotation of the Black Hole, similar to where the falling water in the waterfall meets water rebounding back up. In the case of the Black Hole, Space-Time slows to less than the speed of light, similar repulsive forces are caused by its rotation creating enormous collision temperatures, multiples of the largest star cores, vapourising anything and everything there and then. To calculate beyond the Inner Horizon, remains beyond comprehension and forces one to question the fullness of our understanding of the universe. Black Holes have the strongest gravitational pull in the Cosmos. Anything passing its outer rim, the Event Horizon cannot escape, including light. They also share a feature in common with The Big Bang, being a singularity, causing similar math problems. They’re the result of Supernovaebut in their case the implosion of the Neutron Star’s Iron core keeps imploding to that singularity of more or less infinite density, with, infinite gravity. The energy of the matter of the imploding Neutron Star is transformed to the warped energy of Space-Time A larger family member, a Super Massive Black Hole, is found at the centre of large galaxies, including our Milky Way. The largest known is sized at 21 billion solar masses; theoretically, there is no limit to the size they can grow to.

44. Birth of a Black Hole – (25 minutes) View Video Who's afraid of a Big Black Hole - BBC Horizon – (60 minutes) View Video

45. Super Massive Black Holes Super Massive Black Holes – SMBH consume everything in their vicinity from planets to stars, shredding them to just super heated gas and dust prior to consumption, they also swallow other Black Holes, entire galaxies. When they’ve a lot in their vicinity to consume the gas and dust are violently super heated and turbo charged to the extent they get blasted outward in a jet, carried within the magnetic field lines and warped Space-Time of a rotating SMBH, these are then classified as Quasars. To find our Milky Way one, which is not a Quasar, we needed to map our galaxy, at the time, not easy when you’re within it, it was known that likely the Milky Way was a flat disc which we were within but where we were was unknown. Plotting bright Globular Clusters of stars spread spherically through the galaxy and concentrated in a particular area allowed determination of the direction to its centre at 27,000 light years distance Earth. Now we needed to find it, observable evidence was needed but our centre is busy and crowded, the stars there are a hundred times more densely packed than in the region of the Milky Way we’re in, as well as, vast clouds of gas and dust preventing light from there reach us. Infra red telescopes arrived 10 years after the quest to find the centre began, which could peer through the dust and gas, laser beam atmospheric focus correction software was also needed to tune out image distortion caused by our atmosphere. Another 13 years on and stars were observed as moving extremely quickly close to the centre, the first piece of evidence was now had, mapping their tight wobble free orbits confirmed a SMBH was needed to provide the gravitational forces required by the mapped orbits. A SMBH with a mass 4 million times that of the Sun, was finally established 1992. The wobble free orbit confirmed just one mass was at the centre, the SMBH; a wobble would have confirmed the centre was not more than a cluster of stars we could not see, no SMBH. Super Massive Black Holes also appear to regulate the size of the galaxies they centre, at first thought 200 times, currently updated to a 1,000 times their mass, the equivalent to something as small as a coin controlling the orbit of something as relatively massive as the Earth, ergo, it pretty much allowed the conditions for our planet within its Sun orbit and Solar System to form in the way they without which we would not be here today. Beyond the SMBH at the centre of galaxies there are millions upon millions of smaller stellar ones within each, making it clear they’re a dominant force in the universe. They’re everywhere and that means too many places where Einstein’s equations breakdown, beyond just the Quantum Mechanics of the atomic world. Its theories will also need to deal with the very small centre’s of Black Holes where we know by Quantum Law, simply observing, changes what you see, you can’t predict where something will be, only probabilistically where it’s likely to be and anything that’s possible happens all the time, with objects able to exist in many different places at the same time, yet strange as it is, theorists believe it describes the true nature of reality, but it can’t describe

46. gravity which is normally irrelevant in its world other than when it comes to a Black Hole, which is of the very small, enter, Quantum Gravity and Quantum failure. The largest Black Holes in the Universe – (25 minutes) View Video Super Massive Black Hole at the Center our Galaxy– (30 minutes) View Video

48. Our Milky Way’s Super Massive Black Hole is now starting to snack At the time of this writing, mid 2014, the Super Massive Black Hole - SMBH at the centre of our Milky Way is starting to eat dinner on a gas cloud 3 times the mass of Earth, which by chance, was picked from poor resolution distorted images of the region, moving at huge speed, over 7 million kilometers per hour, caught in its gravitational hold, astronomers across the world are watching, our first time in history to observe and record such an epoch event, that which is unfolding is not something that can be simulated in a lab, we need to see it happen in reality. The latest update and image I have can be followed here as the gas cloud approaches and is also engaged by the local stars; Milky Way’s Super Massive Black Hole is having dinner – (3 minutes) View Video Our Milky Way’s SMBH isdark as it’s not being fed enough and likely this gas cloud will not provide more than the occasional snack as is turning out to be the case, otherwise, it would be making the evening news.

49. Swallowed by a Black Hole – BBC Horizon - (60 minutes) View Video As a curios twist to this tale, it was also once considered, now surpassed, that the death of a Black Hole could be the creator of a new other universe. We’ve not yet in history witnessed the death of a Black Hole and the best estimate suggests we need to wait around a Googol worth of years before we do? Naked Science – Monster Black Holes – National Geographic Channel – (45 minutes) View Video

50. Quasars These Quasi Stellar Radio Sources or Quasars were initially detected by the radio telescopes of the 1930’s and got their classification as no one then was sure what they were. They outshine anything in the Universe, 10 to 1,000 times brighter than all the Stars in their galaxy put together. It’s believed at their centre lies a Super Massive Black Hole – SMBH. The SMBH at its centre veraciously consumes the material around itself which before being drawn in is violently colliding with adjacent matter super heating it to millions of degrees. They occur at the centers of all galaxies because there needs to be sufficient matter, locally, to fuel them. Quasars can ignite when two galaxies collide, pushing matter to their centers where the existent dormant SMBH then gets the necessary fuel to fire up. The Quasar jets are believed to be generated by charged particles travelling up through the Quasars magnetic field somewhat akin to Solar Winds travelling through our Magnetic Poles to create the Aurorae. The nearest Quasar is 2 billion light years away, the furthest, 13 billion light years, they’re observed with greater frequency further out suggesting a denser earlier Universe at that time could have produced the abundant matter fuel needed to fire them. Quasars can put out as much energy as a hundred galaxies or a trillion Suns.