Will the sun become a supernova? No, our sun will end up as a red giant followed by a white dwarf.There is an enormous amount of “real estate” (exoplanets) in our own Milky Way galaxy and based on our understanding of the way life developed in our solar system, I would expect similar conditions to have existed on other planets too. My opinion is that life is common, and that we will find evidence of life on other planets in the relatively near future. Astronomers are searching for this answer in a number of ways, but at present, we can only say that life exists on Earth. Is there life on other planets? We really do not know the answer to this question.It would get very dark of course and very cold, but the black hole’s gravity at our distance from it would not be a concern. For example, if our own sun was to (miraculously) transform into a black hole of the same mass, our planet would not discern any change in the gravitational force acting on it and continue in the same orbit. While a black hole does have an immense gravitational field, they are only “dangerous” if you get very close to them. Will Earth be swallowed by a black hole? Absolutely not.The public will have the opportunity to do the same during his farewell YouTube disengagement derby (details below). In addition to answers to popular questions, Delaney is available to answer otherworldly questions from media. He has been the public face of astronomy for York for many years teaching undergraduate and graduate students, but also thousands of elementary students and the community through science outreach events and in the observatory. Carswell Chair for the Public Understanding of Astronomy in the Faculty of Science and has been at York since September 1986. TORONTO, J– As York University physics and astronomy Professor Paul Delaney gets ready to board his spaceship and fly off (retire), he is leaving behind a few answers to some of the public’s most common astronomical questions over the years.ĭelaney is the inaugural Allan I. Question sent via email by Luis Fernando Pérez Sicacha.Professor Paul Delaney answers this and otherworldly questions before boarding his spaceship to places unknown It is important for scientists to detect intermediate black holes, as they are the missing link between stellar and supermassive black holes.Īnna Ferré-Mateu has a PhD in astrophysics and is a researcher at the Canaries Institute of Astrophysics (IAC). The same happened with their black holes, leading to the formation of supermassive black holes. ![]() Over time, these small galaxies interacted and collided with each other, forming larger ones. Primordial galaxies were once much smaller than those that exist today, so given the existing theories on black holes, they likely contained intermediate black holes. Some exist within our galaxy, but they currently pose a great enigma. So far, no intermediate black holes have been measured. The closest supermassive black hole is the one at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, some 50,000 light-years away. Researchers believe that black holes and galaxies grow alongside each other: the larger the galaxy, the larger its black hole. Scientists estimate that our galaxy may be home to millions of black holes.Īs for supermassive black holes, there is usually only one in each galaxy, typically in the center. ![]() Though our solar system has no black holes, the Milky Way is full of them. The closest confirmed black hole is, in fact, almost 5,000 light-years away. But The Unicorn turned out to be an optical illusion. Contrary to popular depictions, black holes are not magnets that attract everything: they only affect objects within what is called their radius of influence, or the apparent radius of the event horizon. The object, named “The Unicorn,” is more than a thousand light-years away, meaning that it would not have any effect on the Earth. Several years ago, what was thought to be the closest stellar black hole ever discovered was detected. The search begins by locating phenomena that can be caused by black holes, such as high-energy jets, then studying whether it could be due to a black hole. Scientists have several techniques to detect the locations of black holes. They can be detected indirectly through their interaction with space and the material around them. Astrophysicist Heino Falcke: “There is a beginning and an end for our world”īlack holes are impossible to see.
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