Himmelsschmiede: so adorably tiny

[Cray]

Deep Well Industrial Zone Himmelsschmeide impressed me with its drama and scope: a 46 solar mass star turned into a monstrous industrial forge.

Today, I learned about S5 0014+18, a blazar of epic scale. "it is one of the most luminous quasars known, with a total luminosity of over 10^41 Watts, equal to an absolute bolometric magnitude of -31.5. If the quasar were at a distance of 280 light-years from Earth, it would give out as much energy per square meter as the Sun does at Earth, despite being 18 million times more distant. The quasar's luminosity is therefore about 3 × 10^14 (300 trillion) times the Sun, or over 25,000 times as luminous as all the 100 to 400 billion stars of the Milky Way Galaxy combined...The central black hole of the quasar devours an extremely huge amount of matter, equivalent to 4,000 solar masses of material every year.

"To their surprise, they found out that the central black hole of S5 0014+81 is actually 10,000 times more massive than the black hole at the center of our galaxy, or equivalent to 40 billion solar masses. This makes it one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, more than six times the value of the black hole of Messier 87, which was thought to be the largest black hole for almost 60 years, and was coined to be an "ultramassive" black hole. The Schwarzschild radius of this black hole is 118.35 billion kilometers, giving a diameter of 236.7 billion kilometers, 1,600 astronomical units...and has a mass equivalent to four Large Magellanic Clouds. What is even more remarkable is that such a large black hole existed so early in the universe, at only 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang. This suggests that supermassive black holes formed very quickly."

Potential OA applications:
1) 4000 solar masses per year, vs. Himmelsschmiede's 5000 Earth masses makes for a BIG deep well industrial zone
2) Ancient xenosophonts, the Dawn People, who had a galactic-scale civilization in 12 billion BT

[stevebowers]

The black hole at the centre of our galaxy is unusually small. I wonder if this is a significant factor in the evolution of our galaxy.

[Drashner1]

Very cool! And it does make Himmelsschmiede seem rather petite doesn't it?

Reading this thread and your thoughts about an ancient supercivilization led to a thought:

If a civ arose in the early universe, could it scatter wormholes across the much smaller space of that time and then just let them 'ride' the expansion of the universe such that by our point in history a massive intergalactic Nexus has been created? If they were sufficiently clever about it, they might even be able to arrange for the different wormhole mouths to end up inside galaxies so there are interesting things to visit.

Just a thought,

Todd

[stevebowers]

This is an idea I had with respect to the Alpha Civilisation. Wormholes, and several other kinds of space-time flaw, might have been commonplace in the Hot Dense era, and a civilisation born in that era could shape the subsequent universe so that every galaxy has at least one wormhole. Or at least every major galaxy within their local sphere, which may have been very large.

On the other hand, a civilisation born in that era might have become despondent, due to the changing conditions in the universe, and abandoned such a project unfinished. We don't seem much evidence that our visible universe is, or has been, inhabited by ancient advanced aliens, but maybe we could find such evidence if we looked hard enough.

[Cray]

On the other hand, a civilisation born in that era might have become despondent,

If it's a large, diverse civilization like the terragens then such universal mood swings seem unlikely. You might have individual groups get depressed that their long-term project isn't going well while the group planning to be around for the Heat Death is having a grand old time in their slow-time virches and their MPA-equivalents are having a blast building exotic mega-habitats.

We don't seem much evidence that our visible universe is, or has been, inhabited by ancient advanced aliens, but maybe we could find such evidence if we looked hard enough.

Perhaps they learned resource conservation and didn't want to burn up the universe's resources. Terragens' civilization is filled with stories of controlling resource depletion, from Earth, to gray goo outbreaks and Blights, to pink goo problems. Mostly, it has achieved some self-control.

[ProxCenBound]

Very cool! And it does make Himmelsschmiede seem rather petite doesn't it?

Reading this thread and your thoughts about an ancient supercivilization led to a thought:

If a civ arose in the early universe, could it scatter wormholes across the much smaller space of that time and then just let them 'ride' the expansion of the universe such that by our point in history a massive intergalactic Nexus has been created? If they were sufficiently clever about it, they might even be able to arrange for the different wormhole mouths to end up inside galaxies so there are interesting things to visit.

Just a thought,

Todd

I suspect that some religion takes it on faith that such an intergalactic nexus exists and considers it a sacred mission to find one of its stargates, to find and unite with the Alpha Civilization.

[sandcastles]

I looked up this term and read the article on the Heron Institute of Applied Technology.  It looks like a word was left out:

"In 4778 he finished the Himmelsschmiede (sky forge) DWIZ after just 42 of construction work."  

That isn't minutes, is it? 

[stevebowers]

Fixed (I've assumed the missing word is 'years', although I may be wrong).