First “Active” is not being redefined by science as asserted above. Active means the process is ongoing. A sailboatd’s sail is active, but there must be wind. The black hole needs to have a stream of matter falling in to power the beam effect.

Second, we are looking at one frame of a moving picture. These galaxies have been colliding for millions of years and the tidal forces are causing many clusters and possibly whole spiral arms to fall into the grational well.

Imagine the well known high speed film of the bullet hitting the apple. One frame may show the bullet at one moment in the stream of moments and that photo would show the apple’s first splash as the bullet strikes.

The composite photo shows several causes, and effects.
* Gravity is disrupting both galaxies.
* Spiral arms are being severly distorted.
* Many clusters will be lost to the depths of space.
* Many more clusters will be swallowed.

Ultimately, both black holes will capture each other and ultimately the pair will consume the remaining stars, nebulas and dust in the general area, except for the outermost clusters with high radial velocities which are destined to escape.

The “sound” of a galaxy would be the frequencies at which it resonates. A flute or a piano string vibrates, that vibration is its sound. Objects tend to have frequencies that reinforce energy movement, and other frequencies at which energy is dampened or absorbed. A gravitationally connected web of rotating particles would tend to produce all frequencies, like an irregular galaxy or a supercluster.

A spiral would have positive reinforcements at a whole number ration as dictated by the number of arms, assuming the arms are roughly the same size. Thus, that galaxy would have a dominant note corresponding to this frequency, on the order of thousands of years per cycle.

Since there are no physical connections between solar masses the effect would be very subtle and it would take millions of years for standing waves to be created by the millions of gravitional vortices.

If the galaxy is spinning in a circle and not pulled by an outside disruptive force the arms should even out and form a barred spiral with the bar’s size relative to the vibrational frequncy of the galaxy.

It it possible that two galaxies of the same size and orientation, in close proximity, might actually cross gravity waves harmoniously and actually affect each other, a cosmic tuning up perhaps.

Well, keep on thinking!

We need more critical thinkers… especially at voting time!

John Rosengarten, Chicago USA

You’re taking me too seriously. I still vote for “Earth-shattering kaboom.”

Our major local newspaper, La Presse, has an article on this:

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/article/20071218/CPSCIENCES/712171511/-1/CPSCIENCES

Now, we have 3 major paper in town. One is mostly on political/business/economy subjects(Le Devoir), the second deals with the famous people, the hockey games and assorted petty crimes (Le Journal de Montreal.

And then there’s La Presse. Which is supposed to be a good paper. Has a science section once a week, etc. I would expect them to threat this properly. But sadly, they close off with this :

“…les deux galaxies en question sont très proches, éloignées de 20 000 années lumière seulement, soit la même distance qui sépare la Terre de la Voie Lactée, note la Nasa.”

Let me translate for you all: “…those two galaxies are quite close, only 20 000 light-years apart, which is the same distance between planet Earth and the Milky Way, according to Nasa.”

Sorry about the crappy translation, but you get the idea. I’d like to see the “raw” Nasa press release to see why somebody could mis-interpret it so badly.

Apparently, we are doomed too…

Centipede:
The inward spiral of two black holes might, at least momentarily, create a “wormhole” in the space between the two, just before they merge but that’s purely theoretical.

GAry 7

[[Okay, please don’t laugh me off the site, but I thought that a black hole created such a massively powerful gravitational pull that not even light could escape, hence, black hole.

I don’t get how something can then be ejected at nearly light speed if light itself cannot escape. Am I obtuse or can someone help me out on this?]]

The jet is not coming from inside the black hole. It’s coming from a ring of material falling into the black hole from just outside it. You’re quite correct that material from inside the event horizon can never get out again, unless it’s an alien starship with a faster-than-light drive.

I vote for “FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMMMMM.”-

Earth-shattering kaboom.

What happens when two black holes collide or one “absorbs” the other?

You’re right that a black hole creates such a strong pull that light can’t escape. But that’s only very, very close to the black hole (about 2 miles for every solar mass.) Farther out, it’s just like a star – matter will orbit around it. Imagine a bunch of slowly moving gas or dust falling in towards the black hole, from all different directions. As it falls closer, it starts to spin, or orbit, faster (like an ice skater pulling in their arms as they spin). At the same time, it starts to flatten in the plane of the orbit and eventually forms a disk. The same thing happens with stars (and the disk goes on to form planets!)

Now as all this matter falls inwards and spins, it’s being compressed. So the density of the matter increases, and it bangs and rubs against itself and starts to heat up. But most of it is still way too far away to get pulled into the black hole for good – its rotation keeps it from falling in too quickly, but the friction does sap some of its energy so it only slowly spirals into the center.

So why the jets? I don’t believe the actual physics is that well understood yet, but imagine what happens if you squeeze a wet bar of soap too tightly – it pops out of your hand. This at least shows that a gentle squeeze over a large area (the whole disk) can lead to a small amount of matter being ejected at high speed, perpendicular to the direction of the force. (Of course, for that analogy to work you have to think of your hand and the soap as all being part of the disk.) Just remember that almost all of the matter is way too far away from the black hole to be gobbled up, and the fact that it’s heated up means there’s a lot of energy to be tapped. That’s why black hole accretion disks tend to be visible at high frequencies – UV and X-rays.

Hope this helps. Any professional scientists feel free to add/correct.

P.S. “hoovering” = http://www.hoover.com/

I don’t get how something can then be ejected at nearly light speed if light itself cannot escape. Am I obtuse or can someone help me out on this?

I suspect he was avoiding the more common nomenclature of “black holes sucking matter” because Black Holes definitely do not suck.