The World WAY out there (BBCNews)

Every so often I catch myself reading materials that are far far beyond my realm of imagination.  I am struck by the sheer enormity - ad infinitum - of the universe.  Others get it.  And even in a humorous way.  In this piece one of the telescopes referenced is called the Very Large Telescope (in Chile) and HERE (A Space Opera) - A New Generation of Space Giants.  When members of the professional community, where distance is measured in light years, are calling the telescope as such, to me, this is a rather profound (or is it redundant) statement.  Speaking in these terms always reminds me of the beginning of the first "Men in Black" movie.  Where the scene is continuously withdrawn, all the way to the point where massive sized alien beings are playing marbles with the galaxies.  The whole principle of ad infinitum galaxies is so incredibly unimaginable to me.  I was at a gathering recently and a very good friend commented his view:  that the entire universe is merely a series of interconnected blobs of energy - change is the only constant idea included - and we are people are individual projections of the energy, let out and put into different time frames and locations as somehow deemed appropriate - not even sure what the context of that would be.  But an interesting thought.  Beings are taken from us, family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, people are passing on and birthing all the time.  And seemingly with little meaning or understanding on consistent principles.  As my 10yr old daughter said to me five years ago when we were discussing a current personal matter - "Dad, sometimes we're not meant to understand it all."  So I am left with the thought taken directly from this piece in reference a 'small" black hole that released a gas bubble - just HOW MUCH energy is being 'put out there' and our civilized advancement is what it is on what would represent a minuscule likely unmeasurable subset of THAT :

"If the black hole were shrunk to the size of a soccer ball, each jet would extend from the Earth to beyond the orbit of Pluto."

Black hole blows huge gas bubble

Page last updated at 11:54 GMT, Thursday, 8 July 2010 12:54 UK

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Black holes can release jets of fast-moving particles as they gorge on matter

A small black hole has been observed blowing a vast bubble of hot gas 1,000 light-years across.

The gas is expanding because it is being heated by powerful particle "jets" being released by the black hole.

The observations were made by the Very Large Telescope in Chile and Nasa's Chandra space observatory.

Astronomers have unveiled the findings in the latest edition of Nature journal.

"We have been astonished by how much energy is injected into the gas by the black hole," says lead author Manfred Pakull, from the University of Strasbourg, France.

Black holes are known to release a prodigious amount of energy when they swallow matter.

It was thought that most of this energy was released in the form of radiation, predominantly X-rays.

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If the black hole were shrunk to the size of a soccer ball, each jet would extend from the Earth to beyond the orbit of Pluto

Roberto SoriaMSSL

However, the new findings show that some black holes can spew out at least as much energy, perhaps more, as "jets" of fast-moving particles.

Astronomers say the two streams of particles they observed are the most powerful pair of jets ever seen from a stellar-mass black hole.

"The length of the jets in NGC 7793 is amazing, compared with the size of the black hole from which they are launched," said co-author Robert Soria, from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London (UCL).

"If the black hole were shrunk to the size of a soccer ball, each jet would extend from the Earth to beyond the orbit of Pluto."

The black hole, located in the spiral galaxy NGC 7793, some 12 million light-years away, is thought to be only a few times the mass of our Sun.

That makes it a minnow compared with the giant black holes which usually reside at the centres of galaxies.

It belongs to a category of celestial object known as micro-quasars.