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Notice Board Press Releases
Where Have All the Quasars Gone?
| An international team of
astronomers has discovered two gigantic black holes
with masses about 10 billion times the mass of our
sun. These black holes have a mass more than 50 per
cent greater than any other previously measured.
"They may be the dormant remains of quasars that
were extremely luminous billions of years ago," says
Professor James Graham, director of the Dunlap
Institute, and founding member of the team behind
the discovery. Read the scientific
paper
in Nature,
the Toronto Star's
Q&A with James Graham, stories from
the Toronto
Star, Vancouver
Sun, and CBC. |
"Black holes
inhabit the centres of nearly all galaxies —the
centre of our very own Milky Way galaxy harbours a
black hole four million times the mass of the sun—
relatively speaking, a baby! But only a few dozens
of these black holes have been 'weighed' carefully,"
says Graham.
"But these
newly-measured black hole masses are a surprise,"
says Graham. "They are significantly more massive
than predicted using the previously known
correlations. Something that we had not anticipated
for the most massive black holes must be at play
here."
Professor James
Graham and Nicholas McConnell of UC Berkeley (lead
author of the Nature
paper).
|
In the Dragonfish's Mouth
|
 |
| Infrared image of Dragonfish association, showing the shell of hot gas (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE Team/Mubdi Rahman). | Illustration of the animal, created
after digitally altering a photo of a dead Black
Dragonfish (Credit: Peter Shearer). |
Can't see the resemblance between the two images above?
Read our press release, or the ensuing story from the Toronto Star, MSNBC, Universe Today, io9 and Astronomy Magazine.
3D Coming to a Galaxy near You
|
Ever
thought of a way to see galaxies in 3D instead of
looking at a flat picture of them?
They're not quite there yet, but our own Anne-Marie Weijmans and the ATLAS3D team did something in that direction.
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