[Paleopsych] the birth of galaxies--just another wonder-dance

[HowlBloom at aol.com]

The  following story hints that galaxies formed in the darkness of the great 
gravity  wars roughly 400,000 years After the Big Bang (400,000 ABB). These  
proto-galaxies, these huge gravitational clumps, were ovoid, spinning, and 
would  have looked like primitive, potato-shaped galaxies if we’d been able to see 
 them.  But we would not have seen  them.  They’d have been utterly  dark.   
Slowly (actually rapidly in cosmic time)  gravity balled together the fists of 
black holes at these galaxies’ hearts.  …until those black holes heart—the  
ultimate destroyers—began to birth stars.  Thus the great destroyers were also 
the great creators. And the  competition and pre-biotic carnage of the 
gravity crusades led to the empires of  circling stars we now see as galaxies. 
Howard 
Retrieved January 20, 2005, from the World Wide Web  
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050111090727.htm Source:  Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory Date: 2005-01-20 Print this page Email to  friend Good News From Big 
Bad Black Holes  LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Astronomers have discovered how ominous 
black  holes can create life in the form of new stars, proving that jet-induced 
 star formation may have played an important role in the formation of 
galaxies in  the early universe.  
_..\text\black hole spewing stars.jpeg_ 
(aoldb://mail/write/..\text\black%20hole%20spewing%20stars.jpeg)   This  false-color image incorporates infrared 
data (invisible to the human eye).  The blue regions (essentially the whole of 
Minkowski’s Object) show  enhanced star formation. The red background galaxy 
and two red foreground  stars appear in sharp contrast. The red overlay is the 
radio jet. (Image  courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) Related 
News Stories  Galaxies And Black Holes: You Can't Have  One Without The Other 
(February 20, 2001) -- Galaxies and black holes are so  intimately connected 
that it is almost impossible to find one without the other,  according to 
University of Michigan astronomer Douglas Richstone. ... > full  story  Which Came 
First: Black Hole  Or Galaxy? (January 14, 2000) -- U-M astronomer says black 
holes formed early  and influenced galactic ... > full story  Astrophysicists 
Discover Massive Forming  Galaxies (September 19, 2003) -- A Lawrence 
Livermore National Laboratory  astrophysicist, in collaboration with international 
researchers, has found  evidence for the synchronous formation of massive, 
luminous elliptical galaxies  in ... > full story  Black Holes  In Distant Galaxies 
Point To Wild Youth, Chandra Discovers (June 5, 2002) --  Like 'flower power' 
tattoos on aging ex-hippy baby boomers, unexpectedly large  numbers of neutron 
stars and black holes in elliptical galaxies suggest some of  these galaxies 
lived through a ... > full story  > more related stories Related  section: 
Space & Time Click Here  Using the Very Large Array (VLA) at the National Radio 
Astronomy  Observatory in New Mexico, the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and the 
Hubble Space  Telescope, astronomers Wil van Breugel and Steve Croft have shown 
that  "Minkowski’s Object," a peculiar starburst system in the NGC 541 radio 
galaxy,  formed when a radio jet – undetectable in visible light but revealed by 
radio  observations– emitted from a black hole collided with dense gas.  The 
researchers carried out the  observations after computer simulations at 
Lawrence Livermore National  Laboratory by Chris Fragile, Peter Anninos and Stephen 
Murray had shown that  jets may trigger the collapse of interstellar clouds 
and induce star  formation.  The astronomers will  present their findings today 
at the American Astronomical Society 205th national  meeting, in San Diego, 
Calif.  "Some  20 years ago this kind of thinking was thought to be science 
fiction," said van  Breugel, who along with Croft works at the Laboratory’s 
Institute for Geophysics  and Planetary Physics. "It brings poetic justice to black 
holes because we think  of them as sucking things in, but we’ve shown that 
when a jet emits from a black  hole, it can bring new life by collapsing clouds 
and creating new stars."  Radio jets are formed when material  falls into 
massive black holes. Magnetic fields around the black holes  accelerate electrons 
to almost the speed of light. These electrons are then  propelled out in narrow 
jets and radiate at radio frequencies because of their  motion in the 
magnetic fields. The jets may affect the formation of stars when  they collide with 
dense gas.  But  only recently have van Breugel and Croft figured out how this 
happens. The  regions between stars in a galaxy are filled with mainly gas and 
dust, and are  commonly called the interstellar medium. The gas appears 
primarily in two forms  as cold clouds of atomic or molecular hydrogen or as hot 
ionized hydrogen near  young stars.  In the case of the  recent discovery, the 
Livermore researchers observed that when a radio jet ran  into a hot dense 
hydrogen medium in NGC 541, the medium started to cool down and  formed a large 
neutral hydrogen cloud and, in turn, triggered star formation.  Although the 
cloud did not emit visible radiation, it was detected by its radio  frequency 
emission.  "The formation  of massive black holes is critical to the formation of 
new galaxies," Croft  said.  Van Breugel, who has been  studying black holes 
since his days as a postdoctoral fellow more than 20 years  ago, said the 
recent observations are another good reason to study the  relationship between 
black holes and early galaxies. He said the conditions his  team saw in NGC 541 
may be important in understanding the formation of galaxies  in the early 
universe.  "Our  observations show that jets from black holes can trigger extra 
star formation.  In the early universe this process may be important because the 
galaxies are  still young, with lots of hydrogen gas but few stars, and the 
black holes are  more active," he said.  According to  the big bang theory, the 
universe is believed to have originated approximately  13.5 billion years ago 
from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter in all  directions.  Although van 
Breugel  and Croft observed the jets by using the VLA, Keck and Hubbel images, 
they also  said that the Livermore computer simulations by Fragile, Anninos 
and Murray were  crucial to verify that this is happening.  NGC 541 is 
approximately 216 million light years from Earth and is  roughly half the size of the 
Milky Way.  In addition to van Breugel and Croft, other collaborators on the 
project  include W. de Vries, UC Davis; J. H. van Gorkom, Columbia University; 
R.  Morganti and T. Osterloo, ASTRON, Netherlands; M. Dopita, Australian 
National  University; C. Fragile, UC Santa Barbara; and Anninos and Murray, LLNL.  
Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore  National Laboratory is a national security 
laboratory, with a mission to ensure  national security and apply science and 
technology to the important issues of  our time. Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory is managed by the University of  California for the U.S. Department 
of Energy's National Nuclear Security  Administration.  Editor's Note: The  
original news release can be found here.  This story has been adapted from a 
news release issued by Lawrence  Livermore National Laboratory. Can't find it? 
Try searching ScienceDaily or the  entire web with: Google Web sciencedaily.com 
 Search Our Archives Find: in: from: to  sort: relevance date > more options 
New Job Postings Find: City: State: View:  Post:  Jobs / Resumes Click Here  
Click Here We want to hear from you! Take our quick readership survey.  
——————— Copyright © 1995-2004  ScienceDaily LLC | Contact: editor at sciencedaily.com 
——————— 
 
----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution  of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate  Psychology Department, New York University; Core 
Faculty Member, The Graduate  Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder:  International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution  Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango  Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the  Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, 
Academy of Political  Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human  Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; 
executive editor -- New  Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology  Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer  Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see  www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of  Mass Mind from the Big 
Bang to the 21st Century, see  www.howardbloom.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/attachments/20050120/bd950a52/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 12795 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/attachments/20050120/bd950a52/attachment.jpe>