Eamonn Holmes... YOU ARE A NOB!!!

That picture was shown this morning on Sky News, and Nobhead Holmes asks...

"Is that a real picture, or an artists impression?"

WTF??? It's 5 BILLION FECKIN LIGHT YEARS AWAY U GOON!!!

And what was the response from the brain-dead bimbo next to him?

"I think it's a real picture"

I mean... FFS... How dense do you have to be to present on Sky News? How insightful would they be on issues of the day, more serious news items and the current banking cluster-f*ck if they're making such stupid comments as this?

SACK THE TOSSER, AND HIS BINT, AND EMPLOY SOME SERIOUS JOURNALISTS. I don't pay my Sky subscription for this shit.

And just in case there's any doubt on my feelings towards the irish pseudo-journalist, let me clarify...

CLASS-A, PRIZE WINNING COCK!!!

I can forgive much, but not major innaccuracies by a supposedly educated, technically literate reporter.

A Parsec is NOT the distance to the nearest star. Since the nearest star is our own sun that distance is around 93 million miles or somewhere around 150 million Kilometers. A tenth of that would have these Black Holes orbiting a whole lot closer than Mercury orbits the sun,

A Parsec is a Parallax Second (look it up) and is, I think, about 3.2 lightyears,

Perhaps one of the Reg Hacks could put this into one or more of the somewhat idiosyncratic Reg units of measure. I'd do it myslf but I really can't be bothered, plus I've forgotten them. Your fault for not reminding me often enough.

Lester,

How Spooky would IT be, to read of a Parallel Dimensional Model, which has shared ...."Universal Virtual Force of Extreme Magnified Power akin to State of the Art Devices in other Extreme Fields in Parallel Dimensions ..... Excessive Energy Flows which can be Eased into Systems .... much Clearer Novel Picture of Binary Movement Possibilities .... very Potent InterPlay Components in any New World Order System" ........ http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=13#cmt1610

Which in the Quantum Field [of Super Sub Atomic Neural Spaces] tries to Resolve to a Acceptable and Agreeable Singularity of Understanding, Study and Views of the Infinitely Large with Pixels and Analysis chasing the Infinitely Small ........ Binary Uniting Dots

10 ^ (8.9 - 7.3) = 10 ^ 1.6 = 40

So the larger object is 40 times heavier (800 million Suns), not 50 as stated in the NOAO article.

Now, for your homework, demonstrate that the 100 year orbital period follows.

(0.1 parsec is approximately 20,000 A.U.)

"...a tenth of the distance from Earth to the nearest star."?

FYI the nearest star is 1 AU away, not 1/10th of a parsec. Also, since Proxima Centauri is 1.29 parsecs away, it's also bollocks.

This little bit of "give the stupid something they can understand" language is, I presume, responsible for it being reported elsewhere that these two are seperated by 1/10th of the distance from the Earth to the Sun (Daily Telegraph, I'm looking at you here).

I was wondering how that would work with supermassive Black Holes and an Orbital period of 100 years and had already figured out that there had been an almighty cockup somewhere......

lister playing cosmic pool?

mines the one with the JMC issue lager

WTH are you watching Sky Snooze for anyway...?!

Hi Chris - I make it 98.1 years.

P = 2 x Pi * sqrt ( a^3 / G(M1+M2) ) in seconds.

where a = orbiting distance (20000 * 1.5e11), G is grav constant (6.6674e-11), M1 and M2 are the masses of the bodies (2e30 * 10^8.9 and 2e30 * 10^7.3).

AC cos I'm busy pretending to work

Either great or terrible news for those looking for gravity waves. On the plus side something like this should kick out a ton of them (from my limited understanding, I will be sure to confuse a tutor with this later), on the down side, something like this should kick out a ton of them and we haven't found any yet (unless uni life has kept me further away from the news than I think)

"two monsters orbiting each other"

Negatory...

All we know is that approximately 5 billion years ago they were orbiting each other. It stands to reason that in that time the may have collided, we just can't see it yet.

Sorry for being pedantic about it, but I felt pointing out a different error was worth it!

As mentioned, 'what we commonly call "the Sun"' - perhaps if they meant the Sun, they'd have called it the Sun. I think we know they mean Alpha Centauri or Proxima Centauri. Distance to that? About 1.3parsecs. To the nearest parsec? 1.

Not to mention Lester doesn't provide this handy hint out of his own fair skull, he merely quotes from the scientific journal - your beef is with them.

What happens when two massive black holes collide?

I don't think I want to be around close enough to see what happens... ;-)

Sounds like the start of a pedantic nonsense argument to me.

speed of light / what is meant by now / information not travelling faster than light / entanglement / tunnelling / faster than c inflationary period / frames of reference / locality / etc.

Why even bother trying to be smart? Its not a genuine correction and is subject to plenty of debate and opinions.

Mine's the one with the black holes in the pockets.

"The matter falling into the black hole doesn’t go directly in, but orbits around the black hole forming a flat accretion disc, much like the soap scum on water orbiting around an open drain."

Oh, yay. Intergalactic soap scum. Another page in the Hitchhikers' Guide.

"The event horizon is just the point where light cannot escape the gravitational pull of the black hole"

Yes, kind of like when you start falling down the rabbit hole.

Correct me if I'm wrong ( been a while since I've wanted to do any maths), but doesn't that mean that the orbital velocity would be ~10% the speed of light?

@Michael Chester. I agree, it should lead to some interesting analysis.

The picture actually shows two GALAXIES with BILLIONS of stars and each in the order of 100,000 light years across and is utterly misleading.

They do make it sound as though a parsec is a unit of measurement that measures the distance to the "nearest star" (besides SOL, our sun that is), but I think it was just clumsily phrased. Since Alpha Centauri is approx. 3 light years from Earth, or one parsec (a unit of measurement that I thought was obsolete for stellar distances), this is probably what was meant.

Pretty cool anyway. And it does sadden me that some twit would think this is an actual picture. Especially when said twit likely makes many times my salary. Oh well, I suppose he's better at picking out hair gel and suits than I am. Everyone has their own skill set I suppose.