Thursday, December 15, 2011

Black Hole Mealtime

There is folklore wisdom in astrophysics that the center of every galaxy has a black hole sitting there. Sort of a monster in darkness. The natural corollary of this wisdom will be that there is a black hole at the center of a galaxy called the Milky Way. This is your very own galaxy. And if a black hole is what is sitting at the head quarter of the galaxy then you can legitimately say that you belong to the family of a black hole. Now there is a nature paper that tells us that there is a dust cloud that is heading towards the center. The scientific calculations called a simulation tells us that part of the cloud will be eaten up and part thrown and scattered away. According to the BBC report:
Though it is known that black holes draw in nearby material, it will be the first chance to see one consume such a cloud.
As it is torn apart, the turbulent area around the black hole will become unusually bright, giving astronomers a chance to learn more about it.
From the astronomical point of view this is a great opportunity. But this brings us to another set of ideas. It will be nice to see this game in real time but will it not be easier to collect together the info about those events in which similar matter is in different state of falling into the respective black holes? The point is that there is another physical conclusion that says that if matter falls in to a black hole then to the observers, to us, it will take infinite time to jump into it. No one has that much of spare time so the best thing to do will be to collect the matter in different stages of falling from different settings.