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Posted By: Amaranth Rose II Most Distant Black Hole Discovered - 06/07/07 07:29 PM
"The most distant black hole ever found is nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth, astronomers announced today.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope spotted the bright burst of light the black hole created as it sucked up nearby gas, heating it and causing it to glow very brightly in what's known as a quasar."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070607/sc_space/mostdistantblackholediscovered;_ylt=AsL12sjJKBQP7ZMb3fInJtRxieAA

Posted By: redewenur Re: Most Distant Black Hole Discovered - 06/07/07 08:28 PM
By now that quasar has probably evolved into a galaxy of more than a 100 billion stars. It may be teeming with life, some of which peers into a night sky and notices a distant quasar that is destined to become our Milky Way.
Posted By: Mike Kremer Re: Most Distant Black Hole Discovered - 06/08/07 06:54 PM
Originally Posted By: redewenur
By now that quasar has probably evolved into a galaxy of more than a 100 billion stars, it may be teeming with life, some of which peers into a night sky and notices a distant quasar that is destined to become our Milky Way.


Now thats a very intellectual and succinct sentence, Rede.
Given 13 billion years evolvement, I believe you are right wink
.
Posted By: redewenur Re: Most Distant Black Hole Discovered - 06/08/07 11:57 PM
Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer
Originally Posted By: redewenur
By now that quasar has probably evolved into a galaxy of more than a 100 billion stars, it may be teeming with life, some of which peers into a night sky and notices a distant quasar that is destined to become our Milky Way.

Now thats a very intellectual and succinct sentence, Rede.
Given 13 billion years evolvement, I believe you are right wink

Thank you Mike, but it's hardly intellectual. When astronomers look into the remote distance, they see our remote past.

Theory says that black holes became quasars which became active galaxies (galaxies containing super-massive black holes). Our galaxy is an 'active galaxy', so maybe I should think that it, also, was a quasar...

...which was a primordial black hole, which was a vast cloud of hydrogen, helium and lithium, which was quarks and leptons, which were photons, which were from a unified force, which was from a singularity, which was from...???

It's beautiful, don't you think?
Posted By: Mike Kremer Re: Most Distant Black Hole Discovered - 06/09/07 09:00 PM

Yes, beautiful indeed.

But what I really liked was your implication that--

As our Astronomers look across 13 billion years of time.
'They', (their Astronomers) were also looking across 13 billion years of time,....back at us.

You have hit upon an interesting possibility, whether you realised it or not.

Regards...Mike Kremer
Posted By: redewenur Re: Most Distant Black Hole Discovered - 06/09/07 09:26 PM
Yes Mike, I agree, it's very interesting, and I see 'they' as not only possible, but overwhelmingly probable. As a kid, I would go out on a chilly night and gaze up at the stars, sometimes thinking such thoughts...us looking at them looking at us looking at them...and I remember being bothered by the fact that we were separated by a gulf of time. Now, I'm not so sure that's important. There's a kind of spiritual connection in the mystery and the beauty of it all.
Posted By: redewenur Re: Most Distant Black Hole Discovered - 06/10/07 08:07 PM
The thread has drifted, but I don't suppose Amaranth will mind too much. Having recently seen a video that included a conversation with Ann Dryan, I searched and found this:

http://ffrf.org/fttoday/1998/jan_feb98/druyan.html

“People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say that's completely opposite of the truth. The fact is that the real thing is far more dazzling, far more goose-bump-raising, than any myth or childish story that we can make up” – Ann Druyan
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