Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 26, 1994 TAG: 9405260092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A supermassive black hole is a gravitational monster that gobbles up everything around it and is so powerful that no light or matter can escape.
The astronomers reported finding what they said was conclusive evidence for the existence of an extraordinarily powerful black hole in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87, which is 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.
This attractive force of collapsed matter weighs as much as 3 billion Suns, but is concentrated in a space no larger than the solar system.
The discovery appeared to lay to rest any remaining skepticism about black holes, predicted by Einstein as part of his general theory of relativity. Over the last three decades, they were the ultimate goal of astrophysics, objects searched for with zeal but seemingly forever out of reach.
While scientists theorized and searched, the concept became so intriguing that it crossed into popular culture. The very term black hole has entered everyday language as an all-purpose metaphor.
In their excitement, astronomers were calling the Hubble observations the decisive clue needed to solve the mystery of the tremendous energies and gravitational forces at the cores of many galaxies.
They called the M87 black hole the most significant discovery made so far by the Hubble telescope, which had its vision enhanced with new optics installed by space-shuttle astronauts in December.
At a news conference at the NASA offices in Washington, Holland Ford, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said, ``This is conclusive evidence of a supermassive black hole.''
Observations and calculations of a whirlpool of hot gases toward the center of M87 were the basis for the black hole discovery. The gases formed a surprisingly well-ordered disk, like a pancake, that stretched across a distance of 500 light-years.
Some black holes could have originated early in the universe when young stars were so numerous in the galactic cores that they kept colliding.
These collisions led to compact accumulations of mass, and the greater the mass, the more ravenous its gravitational appetite to consume more stellar matter at every opportunity.
by CNB