Wednesday 21 August 2019

Supermassive Black Holes

Supermassive Black Holes

A You-Tube video from Newsy

Level B1+

This latest post is a long time coming! No reason except other distractions kept me away from blogger!

While I have your attention, if anyone notices any links missing in previous posts, then send me a message via the message box at the end of the post that has the problem - thank you!

Supermassive black holes.....you may know the song by Muse with the same title - sorry, I'm not posting about that today but instead, listen to a very short, pretty easy, clip about supermassive black holes. 

The questions are below:



1.What size can supermassive black holes reach?

2. What is the rate at which a normal black hole grows?

3. Why is it impossible for supermassive black holes to have grown at the same rate as normal black holes?

4. How are normal black holes made?

5. What may have helped supermassive black holes form and how?

6. What is being built for us to find the oldest light in the universe?

The mystery of Supermassive Black Holes

Scroll down for the answers.


That's all for today, but if you want to listen to a TOEFL talking exercise on Black Holes which is much more challenging, here is a link:

TOEFL Black Holes Talk

This talk is difficult due to the vocabulary used. Here is a list of some of the words you should know before listening:
nuclear fusion reactor
core
mass
upper-hand
implodes
stellar material
supernova
dense
singularity and event horizon
perimeter
radius
squared
lens
prism



Answers to The mystery of Supermassive Black Holes

1.  Supermassive black holes can reach masses of more than ten billion times that of our sun.
2. Normal black holes grow at a certain rate, usually taking a million years or more to reach a substantial size.

3. Black holes were already around about a billion years after the Big Bang which is not enough time for them to reach their enormous sizes at anything like the normal rate.
4. Normally, gas clouds collapse into stars which collapse into black holes.
5. Powerful forces like supersonic streams of gas and dark matter kept the clouds from collapsing, so they grew larger until their gravity became powerful enough to overcome those obstacles, jumpstarting an enormous blackhole seed that’s bigger than any new black hole today.
6. Ground and space-based telescopes are being built to enable us to see the oldest light in the universe.


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