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Can someone expain this sentence?

In the Wikipedia article on supermassive black holes, when the article lists ways they can be created, it says, "Yet another method involves a dense stellar cluster which undergoes core-collapse as the negative heat capacity of the system drives the velocity dispersion in the core to relativistic speeds." Best answer goes to the best explanation.

Public Comments

  1. it collapses on itself
  2. well it means.......................
  3. what goes up must come down
  4. another way it can be created is when a cluster of stars go through a core collaps and the heat of all the system moves the speed and direction in to the cores similar speeds. (im not sure thats as best as i can translate "science talk")
  5. a black hole is a mass amount of gravity! when a large star's core / center collapses, it creates a dense ball of gravity. the gravity is so fierce, not even light that has been sucked in can escape. apparently, when something gets sucked in to a black hole, time slows down because its an infinite amount of mass in such a little space. kind of like approaching the speed of light, as you get closer (which is impossible) time slows down i hope i helped :)
  6. it means that there is another method that causes it to collaps on its self as the heat forces it to dispers the core into other areas at fast speeds at least im 99.999999% sure i just question the ending
  7. No wonder you are confused! Some authors are more intent on using million dollar words then they are in clarity of expression. Stellar means, related to stars, it is beyond me how a cluster of stars can have a collapsing core. I would hazard a guess that, 'the negative heat capacity of the system, is a long winded way of saying, cooler areas. 'Velocity dispersion,' may mean random motion. Relativistic speeds obvious means, speeds approaching the speed of light. My advice is to shrug your shoulders and ignore the whole thing.
  8. All bodies supported against gravitational collapse by gas pressure (random motions of the particles) have negative heat capacities. One such body is a star cluster with the individual stars being treated as the gas particles. (another might be a star itself, with the gas molecules treated as the gas particles) What this means is that if you add energy to a star or a star cluster, the speeds of the particles (stars in the cluster or molecules in the star) actually *slow down,* because most of the added energy will go into making the object bigger. In other words, adding heat to a star *lowers* the temperature. Adding heat to a cluster *lowers* the random speeds of stars in the cluster. Similarly, extracting energy from the body *raises* the temperature because most of the energy comes from contracting the body. This is what they are saying about stars in star clusters. And once the particles in the body (stars in the cluster) become relativistic, they can no longer support the body against its own gravity.
  9. The most comprehensible way to describe this is...... Basically, think of it as a runaway effect..... One star in the dense cluster collapses, triggering a massive runaway of other stars in the cluster. Kind of like what happens in a nuclear explosion if you want to relate to it in that terms. One star reaches critical mass, collapses in on itself and triggers a chain reaction which results in other stars in the cluster following in line with the initial reaction. It's basically a chain-reaction effect that's been triggered and doesn't stop until the supermassive black hole has been formed. Hope that helps! Lisa G..the brainiac....LOL
  10. It means astronomers found a vacuum that will not only pick up that elusive fuzzball from your carpet, but will suck up your house as well
  11. Oh..oh..hoh...quite a bit hard to explain!....
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