Has anyone seen that new poster that revolutionises the theory of black holes (I'll try and find it) basically scientists now believe that black holes actually throw two rays of light and matter away from the hole which collides with other things in the area of the hole, devastating whole systems, there's one in this forming galaxy of which name I forget (I'll try to find this too!)

hm sounds exciting,have you saw the big "black hole" like thing at the center of the galaxy,it looks very light pink like when we observe the galaxy and we see that bright light at the center,i think i saw somewhere that it consumes 1000 solar masses per year

No, I never saw a clear picture since it's usually shrouded by gas and excess debris but imagine the potential if black holes can be escaped or at least, if one could be fired out.

i found a pic of a proto planetary disk,that creates a star with planets,looks cool

Water molecules exist at a lower energy level than Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules: converting to water releases energy. You do need a small amount of energy to start it off, but the additional energy provided by the reaction provides this for the rest of the raw material. This process is called burning.

It doesn't actually have to emit anything. It is called a "white hole" because it is the opposite of a black hole, in that it has a very strong repulsive, antigravity force. It won't emit anything if there is nothing to emit, and such an object would be very exotic indeed. They are theoretically possible, but we currently know of no substances, exotic as they would be, that could have the required properties, nor a process likely to produce such an object. Conventionally we should think that they would be about as unstable as objects can get, since its very force should probably blow it apart.

I don't know what you are talking about, but it has been known that "feeding" black holes emit radiation and jets of plasma due to, for example, the synchrotron process. In fact, this accounts for active and radio galaxies, in the center of which are supermassive black holes formed in the centres of thew colossal gas clouds that were the early pre-star galaxies, and are possibly responsible for star formation.

It is now known that most (if not all) galaxies contain such a black hole, on the order of thousands to billions of solar masses. Ours certainly does.

just out of curiosity are the stars orbiting something as well, if so what are they orbiting (my best guess would be the black hole in the centre of our galaxy but I am uncertain)

Everything in our galaxy is turning around the galactic centre. If I remember that Monty Python song rightly, it's 30,000 light-years away, and we make one full orbit every 200,000,000 years.

Had physics today, and I remember that the sun has made 20.9 rotations of the centre of the galaxy in the Earth's lifetime, but about 0.002 times in the time humanity has been around (about 50,000 years).

@BM - Andromeda does and so does I think a fledgling galaxy named '0402+(don't know this bit)' or something...the thing is if a fledgling galaxy can create a black hole, I wonder whether what we know about black hole formation and if it's correct...

I've always understood that one of the first entities to appear in a galaxy is the supermassive black hole. Right where all that mass collapses on itself as gravity pulls the galactic cloud together from all the nonsense before.

i fucking hate Supermassive Black Hole. shit song. no way was that first.

If you prefer, undifferentiated-Hydrogen-gas-cloud-with-important-yet-imperceptible-density-variations-and-a-little-Helium-with-a-touch-of-Lithium was first.

Please stay on topic peeps. You can surely discuss your banter in odd chat? Or make a Dr. Seuss thread?

Oddchat doesn't work for me =(

Ok, astronomy...here's an interesting article I picked up http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0107145634.htm

BTW OP; What do you define as an alien?

just life somewere other than earth

So even if said life form isn't capable of thought it still qualifies?

Well then somewhere in our universe - most likely not in our solar system - there is a good chance there's an organism of some sought without a brain or equivalent organ.

You do realize that because all life on earth has evolved from an single organism we are related to anything with a cellular structure. So we humans, some few billion years ago, shared an ancestor with fungi. Now see how different fungi is from us humans, imagine what a non-related organism would look like.

We're more like fungi than plants. But we're eukaryotes: prokaryotes such as bacteria and archaea are more different still. We also share kin with viruses, I suspect, but that kinship probably goes back to before our ancestors were technically living units.

THe notion of us being fungi is quite amusing in my head =D

Reproduction via spores would rock!!! Wait...no it wouldn't!

I feel compelled to mention Orks.

Same here actually...first thing that came to my mind. Is that really sad?

First thing that came to my mind was the assertion that spread through university that I reproduced asexually through spores.

How many girls did you get pregnant BM?

None. But many developed serious pulmonary disorders as a result of breathing near me.

Dang. Well, honesty is healthy.

May I ask...do you think bacterial life is the most common life in the Universe BM or do you expect other, perhaps simpler lifeforms have evolved that perhaps exist in a silicon form for example rather than carbon.

Bacterial life is already pretty simple, indeed, many organelles in eukaryote cells are bacteria-like structures and are probably descended from them. If life elsewhere in the universe arises like ours, bacterial life is most likely. Bacteria where the only form of life on Earth for nearly 3 billion years, while multicellular life has existed less than 600 million. Life arose very quickly on Earth, suggesting it is likely, or at least easily achievable under the right circumstances. Multicellular life, conversely, seems much less likely (though that may be more due to the time it takes for bacteria to prepare the atmosphere for more complex life).

But I could not honestly claim that alien life, simple as it may be, will be bacteria. I only have a sample size of 1 to work with.

But I do doubt the candidacy of Silicon as a basis for the molecular structures of any form of life. It is proposed as an alternative because, sitting directly beneath Carbon in the periodic table, it can form four covalent bonds just like Carbon, required to form the sort of complex structures Carbon can. However, as you may have noticed, Carbon produces a great many kinds of substances: Hydrocarbons, Carbohydrates (sugars), proteins, nucleic acids, lipids (fats and oils), tiny monomers and hugely long polymers. By itself, Carbon makes rocks. Conversely, silicon, in all its forms, makes rocks. And that's pretty much it. Glass also. Some of them, crafted in impossibly complex, tiny and delicate ways, are incredibly useful to us, but they are still rocks.

Hmm, I've always been intrigued by the possibility that life may take the form of amorphous water based creatures, perhaps with protein coats? I just think that if there was enough ammonia and a build up of amino acids, it seems even more likely than carbonic lifeforms.

Firstly: most life already is an amorphous body of water in a protein coat. Secondly: amino acids are carbon-based molecules.

Damn it your right. You know you could agree with me, that would make me look clever! XD

I'm hoping for huminoid aliens but I'ld settel for anything else.

whatever it is I'm hoping we find it on gliese581d

Ya, but I think we should try to not be assholes to each other on Earth before we worry about finding aliens.

the best we can do is not be assholes ourselves, most people (at least I think most people) are already doing that, so why not look for aliens

Is that an alien or an asshole?

Chances are that any intelligent alien species we find will be assholes to each other too, unless perhaps they are some sort of eusocial colony species.

We might even find that the intelligence is emergent not from cooperating neurons but cooperating individuals.

Highly improbably; practically impossible.

thats why I would settle for anything else

How do we know the history of bacteria on Earth? Do monocellular blobs of jelly fossilize?!

We can all agree that cells were the first life on earth simply because there is no simpler living creature Nate.