科學60秒:尋找黑洞
來源:滬江聽寫酷
2012-01-22 10:00
At the core of our Milky Way galaxy lies a black hole. Like all black holes, its gravitational pull is so strong that it swallows anything that ventures too close — even light. It weighs in at four million times the mass of the sun.
But that's nothing compared to what astronomers have discovered at the heart of two galaxies about 300 million light-years away. Those galaxies go by the names NGC 3842 and NGC 4889. And they host the most massive black holes ever observed. Each is about 10 billion times the mass of the sun. That's equivalent to 2,500 of the Milky Way's black holes. The discoveries were announced in the journal Nature.
Of course, black holes emit no light, and they can't be seen directly. But the astronomers were able to measure the mass of the black holes with a bit of extragalactic detective work. The researchers tracked how the black holes' gravitational pull influenced the motions of nearby stars. It's a bit like the FBI talking to a suspect's neighbors to get information. Word from the neighbors in this case — don't loan the black holes anything. You'll never get it back.
在我們的銀河系中心有個黑洞。像其它的黑洞一樣,它的重力吸引力強大到足以吞噬任何靠近它的物體,甚至是光。它重達太陽質量的四百萬倍。
但是和天文學家們發(fā)現(xiàn)的距離我們30億光年的另外兩個星系比較而言,我們銀河系中的這個黑洞就不算什么了。這兩個星系的名字被命名為NGC 3842 和 NGC 4889。它們形成的巨大黑洞曾被觀察到過。每一個黑洞的質量都大約是太陽的10億倍。相當于2500個銀河系黑洞。這個發(fā)現(xiàn)已經(jīng)發(fā)表在《自然》雜志上。
當然,沒有光線能從黑洞射出來,并且它們也不能被直接觀察到。然而天文學家們能用銀河系外的探測工具推算出黑洞的質量。研究人員們追蹤了黑洞對其周邊恒星運動所受到的重力引力影響情況。這有點兒像FBI和嫌疑犯鄰居談話調查取證。不過,從黑洞的鄰居那里問話----可得不到關于黑洞的任何情況。因為,你將永遠得不到回答。
—John Matson
-------------------------------by hyjtb
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