So I switch of the comp, go and turn on the tv, switch to good ol' bbc2, and there we have it.

Super Massive black holes.

Apparently... this was only an unproved theory up till a few years ago. But then they found one in a neighbouring galaxy. Very very close to us. (in space closeness. Of course you do realize this means "only" about two hundred light years) Anyway so the scientists go "oh shit!" because apparently super massive black holes were only supposed to exist in "active" galaxies, really bright galaxies which they think is really bright because of the super massive black hole in the center of them feeding on the gas particles and making them swirl around it so fast that they burn intensely.
But they found one in an inactive galaxy.
Eventually they found more, and when the Hubble telescope was upgraded, in every galaxy they looked... there was a super massive black hole.

(what a name. You'd think they'd come up with a more scientific name or something)

Soon they had about 30 galaxies with a black hole in the center of each... that's when one of them had the bright idea (it took them long enough I say) to look into our own galaxy. She found a super massive black hole in our galaxy... sitting only two lightweeks away from us.

Of course this super massive black hole was inactive... but after about 5 years of looking at it she realized it'd started feeding again! (oh shit!) (hey I'm trying to make this interesting)

But it'd only started feeding a little... some stray gas had wandered into it's reach and it gathered that and sucked it into it's great mass.

This is when I start to explain the theory on how galaxies are created (according to the beeb, anyway).
Well there's all this gas floating around, just hanging around you know. When all of a sudden some of it in the middle collapses into a black hole. WHAM! Then furiously it's gravity starts pulling in more gas particles, and with it's intense speed it sets them alight, (all the friction, you know) which causes extreme temperatures. With these extreme temperatures... BANG! A star is created out of gas! BANG! There goes another one! And BANG! Yet another one!
So you have stars being created alllll over the place, and stuff being sucked into this super massive black hole. Allllll these things happening, but then the heat of the gas spiralling into the super massive black hole gets so extreme... that the heat itself moves everything else beyond the gravitational pull of the black hole! So the super massive black hole keeps on sucking it up, (greedy thing) oblivious to the fact that there's not much feed left. And it feeds and it feeds... and it eats up all that's left of the gas and the stars it had in the first place, and then realizes that even with it's intense gravitational pull it can't get anymore. (quite like a guy who thinks he's a babe magnet but then pushes them all away with his arrogance and realizes that there's no more girls. Hm interesting metaphor) so it grows dark. Silent. Ominous. Hovering in the center of our universe.... waiting.... waiting for a stray wisp of gas to get too close.

There. I'm done. except for one more thing.
I actually have a question. On Horizon they mentioned something called the space-time web, and how the gravity of the planets and stars make little dents in the web... then they went on to say how super massive black holes are so heavy they almost rip the web.

First of all... what is this web? Explain someone? Second... how can a super massive black hole rip a space time web?

If you layed out a grid in 3 dimensions so that it's actually a bunch of cubes. If you can't imagine that, imagine a factory with 100 crates sitting on the ground arranged in a 10x10 block. Now stack another 100 onto of that... now imagine only the line segments connecting all of the verticies of each box and remove all the redundant segments. That is what I think the space-time web is.

Gravity would bend those imaginary bunch of cubes. A super massive black hole will bend them so severely that there is almost an intersection of line segments in the space-time web.

Of course there is really no such thing as a space-time web, it's just a way to visualize contours due to gravitational effects.

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...TheKiller

Good topic.

I say that... When a black hole is spinning, it grabs the time lines and pulls. Causing it, at times, to seem to touch itself on the otherside. This could be that Space Web youve mentioned.

Question?

If the Milky way is our Horizon, then woould that make it straight across fromm us or directly below us?

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Is still here
Drakside