MadSci Network: Astronomy |
It is true that most large galaxies seem to contain black-holes in their centres. However, it is important to realise that these black holes, whilst sometimes very massive (eg. a billion times the mass of the Sun), are typically only about 1% the mass of the galaxy. So all the stars orbiting around in the galaxy hardly notice their central black holes at all: it is just a little bit of extra mass. These black holes do grow, but only very slowly as they accrete gas and stars that wander close to them, but the parent galaxy as a whole is much much larger, and doesn't change size in any significant way due to the influence of the hole. When we look at the expansion of the universe, on the other hand, we aren't measuring distances by comparison to the size of galaxies - instead it is the fact that nearly all other galaxies have velocities (measured by their redshift) indicating they are receding from us that leads to the idea of expansion. All that said, it is true that in the far far future of the universe (when it is billions of times older than the present) we expect that matter in galaxies will have been largely sucked into the central black holes, making for a very dark universe! What happens to the material accreted into the holes, and whether there is any way "through" the singularity to other universes, is an open question.
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Astronomy.