back to article Missing Milky Way mass blown away by bingeing supermassive black hole

The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy was bursting with nuclear activity when humans' first ancestors roamed the Earth, according to a team of astrophysicists. On the hunt to find the galaxy’s missing mass, the astrophysicists stumbled across evidence that the black hole may have been much more …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

    If that is the case, isn't that "fog" also made of baryonic matter ?

    If not, it would mean that dark matter is undetectable but can act on electromagnetic emissions.

    Between quantum stuff and this, science is seriously starting to err into dark magic territory.

    Side note : a million degrees ? Yikes.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

      I wondered where Boris Johnson had disappeared to recently. A million degree gaseous fog seems quite likely.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

        I wondered where Boris Johnson had disappeared to recently. A million degree gaseous fog seems quite likely.

        Ignoring BoJo the Clown for a moment, I'd like to share with you all the fact that I cracked one off this morning, and it was extremely hot to push out, and formed a gaseous fog that caused retching and distaste in all those who enjoyed its short lived but magnificent pungency.

        Have the rocket-boffins allowed for the ever-changing miasma from human and alien bottoms? I think that "dark matter" may have a more ordinary explanation.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

      It's not dark matter, it's just hydrogen ex-gas.

      Dark matter is and stays undetectable and to all evidence does not interact via photons.

      1. Uffish

        Re: "dark matter"

        I know that you were just simplifying current ideas but you do realize that your statement also perfectly describes 'nothing at all'.

        I shall try the idea of 'Dark Money' on my bank manager.

        1. Chris G

          Re: "dark matter"

          Thinking about it; if dark matter doesn't interact with anything, is unseen and yet to be detectedin any way at all, perhaps we should call it 'Don't Matter'

          1. ravenviz Silver badge
            Boffin

            Re: "don't matter"

            Enquiring minds want to know!

          2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

            Re: "dark matter"

            perhaps we should call it 'Don't Matter'

            But it does matter. The Dark Matter part keeps the galaxy together, while the Dark Energy part (which may or may not be a cosmological constants, confusing accounts and hastily written papers differ) blows the universe apart. What could be more important? Indeed, I fart in the general direction of your baryons.

        2. Jedit Silver badge
          Headmaster

          "I shall try the idea of 'Dark Money' on my bank manager"

          It won't work. Dark money may exist, but economic science has found no way to measure your balance or cause it to interact with baryonic bills.

      2. Paul Shirley

        Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

        Dark matter is and stays undetectable and to all evidence does not interact via photons.

        Dark matter is still just theory (ok dozens of theories) to explain why we haven't found matter we can see. If a relatively cool, dilute plasma only noticeably interacts with photons we haven't looked for, then Dark matter isn't dark, we're just blind.

        Gas as the missing matter may have been prematurely discarded. Be nice if truly exotic stuff exists, more useful to notice we missed something this big though!

        1. TitterYeNot

          Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

          "If a relatively cool, dilute plasma only noticeably interacts with photons we haven't looked for, then Dark matter isn't dark, we're just blind."

          The description 'dark' as used with 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' doesn't refer to any properties such as colour or luminosity. It's used in the same way that historians refer to the period between the Roman evacuation of Britain and the Norman conquest as the 'dark ages' because of the lack of written historical records i.e. we know very little about them.

          1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

            Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

            "If that is the case, isn't that "fog" also made of baryonic matter ?"

            Yes, the "fog" they mapped was oxygen ions (O6- in the chemical notation you learnt at school).

            The problem, amped up for the press release, is that there's less baryonic matter observed in the galaxy than the Planck satellite said we should see. But hot gas is quite hard to identify so it's possible it's been overlooked. The researchers dug out 31 data points, applied a lot of statistics and concluded the extra matter is indeed in the hot gas, and that there is a shockwave at 6kpc from the galactic centre.

            And that, is pretty much the entire paper. You can read it here.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

              (O<sup>6-</sup> in the chemical notation you learnt at school).

              Actually, O <sup>6+</sup> is more like it, which is an oxygen atom with six electrons removed (leaving two). The other one (O<sup>6-</sup>) would have been an oxygen atom with six electrons added (giving fourteen). It does not exist.

              1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

                Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

                "Actually, O6+ is more like it, which is an oxygen atom with six electrons removed (leaving two)."

                You're right. I wrote O6+ first, too. Late night brain fart. It's OVII to astronomers.

    3. Black Betty

      Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

      It was baryonic matter that was missing. We now know that's because it's too hot and diffuse to see with the instruments we'd been using. Yes it's a million degrees, but it's still a good approximation of a vacuum, you'd soon freeze to death in the middle of such a hot plasma.

      Dark matter for now remains stubbornly dark.

  2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Teethed vaginas etc.

    swallowed by the gaping mouth

    Very poetic but completely wrong as there is nothing beyond the "mouth", gaping or not.

    It's just a horizon, or else a one-.trip time machine into the future.

    1. Uffish

      Re: just a horizon.

      I think of it as a bit more than just a horizon. It's the point where you shriek "Belgium" with your last breath in this universe.

    2. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: Teethed vaginas etc.

      "It's just a horizon, or else a one-.trip time machine into the future."

      How do you know? Have you been?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Paris Hilton

        Re: Teethed vaginas etc.

        How do you know? Have you been?

        There is this mathematical infrastructure called "Einstein Gravity".

        It's the point where you shriek "Belgium" with your last breath in this universe.

        But... Belgium does not exist? I was always a plan to make the Huns shit blood and guts for wanting to become a European Superpower?

        1. wolfetone Silver badge

          Re: Teethed vaginas etc.

          "But... Belgium does not exist? I was always a plan to make the Huns shit blood and guts for wanting to become a European Superpower?"

          Belgium does exist. I should know, I've been to Bruges.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Teethed vaginas etc.

            I've been to Bruges.

            Isn't that where "The Prisoner" stayed?

        2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

          Re: Teethed vaginas etc.

          "There is this mathematical infrastructure called "Einstein Gravity"."

          The edge of a black hole can only be accurately described by quantum gravity. At the moment, we have a bunch of conflicting paradoxes predictions. So while you can say the event horizon is marked by no discontinuity in spacetime, I can say "firewall". Anyway, you'd incinerate before you reached the event horizon of Sgr A*.

  3. Aleph0
    Happy

    The Milky Way. Pic: NASA

    I wasn't aware NASA has a telescope stationed outside our galaxy...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Milky Way. Pic: NASA

      Ha, it's M31.

    2. Chairo
      Coat

      Re: The Milky Way. Pic: NASA

      two guys from Andromeda brought it along.

  4. WonkoTheSane
    Boffin

    Missing matter

    Did they try down the back of the couch?

    1. Leeroy

      Re: Missing matter

      That will be the 'dark money' as mentioned above :)

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: Missing matter

        No, Dark Money emerges from the Central Bank, which is like a Central Black Hole of Bullshit and Venality, whenever somebody says "financial crisis". That Dark Money will then have to be backfilled by 16 generations of taxpayers while the glitterati throw hard "wealth transfer" parties and deposit baryonic shit on you closer-to-Zimbabwe doorstep.

  5. Axman

    Elephants

    I'm confused. How do 'they' know that there is some missing ordinary (baryonic) matter?

    We can see/measure 65 billion solar masses worth. But we can't see/measure between 85 billion to 235 billion solar masses worth. How do we know this, when we can't see the approximately 1,800 billion solar masses worth of 'stuff' composed of dark matter. Maybe there is only 65 billion solar masses of ordinary matter plus 2,000 billion solar masses worth of dark magicky matter.

    And how do we know how much stuff is there anyway when we can't even pin down the total for the galaxy to anything more precise than about 1,000 billion solar masses, or *cough* maybe that should be 2,000 billion solar masses.

    ...and this solar mass unit, how many elephants is that precisely? Maybe there's a large degree of uncertainty over just how many elephants make a solar mass, just as there is about how many solar masses make up our galaxy.

    So can I suggest for the sake of less confusion that the galaxy is defined as being composed of 65 brontogigaelephants (where elephants may be either indoelephants or afroelephants) of visible matter, with an extra 85 brontogigaelephants worth of invisible matter plus 850 brontogigamammoths of yet more invisible matter. (NB to all intents and purposes a mammoth is equal to one elephant if you are just using them as weights).

    1. snaptacular

      Re: Elephants

      Elephants? Please, use standard units.

      The sun's mass is approximately 4.734642857142857e+26 KiloJubs

      Thats a lotta jubs. mmmm ... jubs ...

  6. cray74

    Core explosion, check

    Next up: Puppeteers and shenanigans at a ring world as shelter is sought.

    1. earl grey
      Joke

      Re: Core explosion, check

      Evil shenanigans....

  7. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Although dark matter doesn't interact via EM forces AIUI it interacts via gravity, its existence being deduced by the need for some gravitational effects needed to explain the behaviour of observed matter.

    But if it interacts by gravity with observed matter the two should attract each other so why don't these forms of matter co-locate? As observed matter clusters together under the influence of gravity my expectation would be that dark matter would cluster with it instead of being in some form of galactic halo.

    Or to put it another way, why aren't we all 10 times heavier than we are (take all junk food jokes as read)?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      This is exactly what is being observed and why dark matter is a thing in the first place: Too much gravity over large distances as one would expect given local measurements of G: There is too little normal matter to explain the rotation curves of galaxies (they look to skinny for their heavy rotation) and large galaxy cluster also are mired in a deep gravitational wells that is not readily apparent. Plus you need dark matter to generate the observed large-scale foamy clumping of the universe.

      As dark matter does not much interact (if at all), it is different from standard matter. In particular, it probably is unable to form massive, dense, cold clumps. In particular because once hot, it stays hot (no way to dump energy by radiation, although a dark matter halo can cool off by ejecting dark or nondark particles instead)

  8. Asterix the Gaul

    I am absolutely against all religion, this 'dark matter'-'dark energy' malaki is becoming just that, all 'theory', by all account,the 'theory' has been adopted as 'FACT' & I call B$ until scientifically proven.

    To say that the missing galactic 'mass' is of a ratio of 6-1,as stated, is pure speculation & wildly inaccurate.

    My 'guess' is that the actual mass 'Baryonic' matter = 7-7 of the total, anything else is a 'mystery', 'miracle' or psuedo-scientific religion, based on ideological nonsense.

    Like ALL 'religion',it's based on simple ignorance, wishful thinking, 'blind' faith & an absolutely fictitous guesswork.

    When I see the 'evidence', appraised by peer review,I might consider that DE\DM exist, until then,I will retain my healthy scepticism.

    Even so-called time served theoretical physicist are no better than 'religious' believers when it comes to having 'faith' in unsubstantiated speculative nonsense.

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