Astronomers Find Black Holes Do Not Absorb Dark Matter

There's the common notion that black holes suck in everything in the nearby vicinity by exerting a strong gravitational influence on the matter, energy, and space surrounding them. But astronomers have found that the dark matter around black holes might be a different story. Somehow dark matter resists 'assimilation' into a black hole.


About 23% of the Universe is made up of mysterious dark matter, invisible material only detected through its gravitational influence on its surroundings. In the early Universe clumps of dark matter are thought to have attracted gas, which then coalesced into stars that eventually assembled the galaxies we see today. In their efforts to understand galaxy formation and evolution, astronomers have spent a good deal of time attempting to simulate the build up of dark matter in these objects.

Dr. Xavier Hernandez and Dr. William Lee from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) calculated the way in which the black holes found at the center of galaxies absorb dark matter. These black holes have anything between millions and billions of times the mass of the Sun and draw in material at a high rate.

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http://www.universetoday.com/2010/03/22/astronomers-find-black-holes-do-not-absorb-dark-matter/

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Two giant black holes surprise scientists with unexpected behavior

Some strange behavior from two huge black holes at the center of two different galaxies has been noticed by astronomers.

One supermassive black hole, at the heart of a galaxy neighboring the Milky Way, has been mysteriously brightening in recent years, and scientists aren't sure why. Another of these matter-gobbling behemoths isn't where astronomers thought it was located.

Two new studies on these black holes, the results of which were presented here today at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, have turned up some surprising results and could help astronomers understand more about the evolution of galaxies and how supermassive black holes work.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0525/Two-giant-black-holes-surprise-scientists-with-unexpected-behavior

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