Thursday, November 29, 2012

Less about more

Scientists are having to reevaluate their thoughts about what they can't even see;
Until now, the galaxy with the largest known fraction of its mass in its central black hole (11 per cent) was the small galaxy NGC4486B19. Here we report observations of the stellar kinematics of NGC1277, which is a compact, lenticular galaxy with a mass of 1.2×1011 solar masses. From the data, we determine that the mass of the central black hole is 1.7×1010 solar masses, or 59 per cent of its bulge mass.
Which is Nature's way of saying, back to the drawing board (if we could see a black hole, which we can't, because they're too dense for any light to escape), because we're off by a factor of about 5.

Developing.  Meanwhile, back to the 'economics isn't a real science' debate.

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