Re:The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
by Pxtl on Saturday June 14, 2014 @11:38PM
(#7894293)
The animation blew my mind. Especially S0-16. What the heck was that thing's velocity at perihelion? A whole star moving that much, that fast, accelerating like that in only 16 years. An entire star, tossed about in space like a ragdoll.
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Re:The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
by throwaway_yy2Di on Sunday June 15, 2014 @01:06AM
(#7894465)
I looked it up!
"Given a recent estimate of 4.3 million solar masses for the
mass of Sagittarius A* and S2's close approach, this makes
S2 the fastest known ballistic orbit, reaching speeds
exceeding 5000 km/s (11,000,000 mph) or 1.67~% of the speed
of light and acceleration of about 1.5 m/s2 or almost
one-sixth of Earth's surface gravity.[7]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_%28star%29Edit: wait that's not it, that's S0-2, but you're talking about S14/S0-16:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*#Central_black_h...
From those parameters, its perihelion speed would be about 8,200 km/s (2.7% c), using the classical approximation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion#Mathematical_formul...
Re:The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
by throwaway_yy2Di on Sunday June 15, 2014 @01:28AM
(#7894499)
Interesting tangent: when there's a binary star system that gets very close to this black hole, the three can interact in a way that one of the two stars falls in, while the other steals its gravitational potential and is ejected at extreme speed. There's a few "hypervelocity" rogue stars in the Milky Way, which were probably accelerated by the black hole. They're on escape trajectories leaving the galaxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics#Hyperveloci...
Re:The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
by valarauca1 on Sunday June 15, 2014 @11:53AM
(#7895488)
Wow thank you for the second link. That was really interesting read.