Phantom Black Holes of the Milky Way —Could They Pose a Danger to Our Solar System?
” The effect of a primordial black hole hitting the Sun ought to be easily observable, say physicists at New York University and Princeton University, noting what we think might be the obvious. But they go on to suggest that such an event wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it sounds.
The likelihood is that a primordial black hole with mass of an asteroid or comet would pass straight through the Sun, generating a small puff of X-rays in the process. The burst would be less even than the background rate of X-rays, so it would be impossible for astronomers to see. Instead, the collision would generate supersonic turbulence that would set the Sun ringing like a bell — sort of a “solar hiccup,” so we might have seen them already.
As we reported previously, the Milky Way may be full of phantom, planet-devouring black holes. A recent computer simulation revealed that there could be literally hundreds of rogue black holes scattered across the Milky Way galaxy. Each one would weigh several thousand times the mass of the sun, so if these bad guys exist — why haven’t we identified them already?
“Rogue black holes like this would be very difficult to spot,” says Vanderbilt astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann. “Unless it’s swallowing a lot of gas, about the only way to detect the approach of such a black hole would be to observe the way in which its super-strength gravitational field bends the light that passes nearby. This produces an effect called gravitational lensing that would make background stars appear to shift and brighten momentarily.”
The research modeled “intermediate mass” black holes —the first of which was just discovered by an international team using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope (read below). Astronomers have ample evidence that small black holes less than 100 solar masses are produced when giant stars explode. They also have evidence that “super-massive” black holes weighing the equivalent of millions to billions of solar masses sit at the heart of most galaxies, including the Milky Way. “
http:// www.dailygalaxy.com/ my_weblog/2012/02/ weekend-feature-phantom-bla ck-holes-of-milky-way-could-they-pose-a-danger-to-our-solar-system-.html#moreSource: Milky way scientists
(Source: thescienceofreality)
