Black Holes

I took a tape measure to a black hole, so I know this is true:

Washington - Black holes are the most fuel-efficient engines in the universe, the US space agency NASA said Monday.

NASA scientists said the new findings using the agency's Chandra X-Ray Observatory gave insight on how nine black holes generated their huge energy in space.

If a car were as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it would travel more than 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometres) on one gallon (3.8 litres) of petrol, said said co-author Christopher Reynolds of the University of Maryland.

Black holes - former stars so massive that even light can't escape them - also are 20 times more efficient than nuclear reactors, the study found.

The scientists said they calculated the size of the galaxies' inner regions to estimate how much 'fuel' - gas in space that is drawn into the black holes - is available.

Then, the observatory's images were used to estimate how much power was developed by the resulting jets of high-energy particles to create huge bubbles, or cavities, in the galaxies' hot gas.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur