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Theres so much shit out there that we have no idea about. Black holes are really interesting to me. Where does the shit go that's sucked in?
Calling them a "hole" is a bit of a misnomer. They're basically just a giant, massive hunk of mass - kind of like an enormous planet or star. The reason that we call them a hole is that they suck in everything around them - even light - so they're a "hole" in what we can actually observe.
So to answer your question, the experience of getting sucked into one wouldn't be that different from getting sucked into a star aside from the fact that you would be ripped apart into tiny little atoms and then added to the giant mass rather than burned up.
(But all that being said, we've never actually observed anything like that, so that's just in theory.) [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaFace:
Calling them a "hole" is a bit of a misnomer. They're basically just a giant, massive hunk of mass - kind of like an enormous planet or star. The reason that we call them a hole is that they suck in everything around them - even light - so they're a "hole" in what we can actually observe.
So to answer your question, the experience of getting sucked into one wouldn't be that different from getting sucked into a star aside from the fact that you would be ripped apart into tiny little atoms and then added to the giant mass rather than burned up.
(But all that being said, we've never actually observed anything like that, so that's just in theory.)
Yeah, in theory.
I like the temporal fun time of the Kerr theory though. Time travel is neat! [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaFace:
Calling them a "hole" is a bit of a misnomer. They're basically just a giant, massive hunk of mass - kind of like an enormous planet or star. The reason that we call them a hole is that they suck in everything around them - even light - so they're a "hole" in what we can actually observe.
So to answer your question, the experience of getting sucked into one wouldn't be that different from getting sucked into a star aside from the fact that you would be ripped apart into tiny little atoms and then added to the giant mass rather than burned up.
(But all that being said, we've never actually observed anything like that, so that's just in theory.)
Spaghettified and all, for sure.
They're so dense and to be honest, we really don't KNOW what the hell is goin on in there. It's fascinating. [Reply]
Another interesting fact about black holes... we can't seem to find any medium-sized ones. We've located many small ones, and many supermassive ones. But no intermediate sized black holes. Which seems really strange...
In the vast garden of the universe, the heaviest black holes grew from seeds. Nourished by the gas and dust they consumed, or by merging with other dense objects, these seeds grew in size and heft to form the centers of galaxies, such as our own Milky Way. But unlike in the realm of plants, the seeds of giant black holes must have been black holes, too. And no one has ever found these seeds — yet.
One idea is that supermassive black holes — the equivalent of hundreds of thousands to billions of Suns in mass — grew from a population of smaller black holes that has never been seen. This elusive group, the “intermediate-mass black holes,” would weigh in somewhere between 100 and 100,000 Suns. Among the hundreds of black holes found so far, there have been plenty of relatively small ones, but none for sure in the intermediate mass-range “desert.”
Scientists are working with powerful space telescopes from NASA, as well as other observatories, to track down far-flung objects that fit the description of these exotic entities. They have found dozens of possible candidates, and are working toward confirming them as black holes. But even if they do, that opens up a whole new mystery: How did intermediate-mass black holes form?
“What is fascinating, and why people have spent so much time trying to find these intermediate-mass black holes, is because it sheds light on processes that happened in the early universe— what were the masses of relic black holes, or new formation mechanisms for black holes that we haven’t thought of yet,” said Fiona Harrison, professor of physics at Caltech in Pasadena, California, and principal investigator for NASA’s NuSTAR mission.
The smallest black holes are called “stellar mass,” with between 1 and 100 times the mass of the Sun. They form when stars explode in violent processes called supernovae.
Supermassive black holes, on the other hand, are the central anchors of large galaxies – for example, our Sun and all other stars in the Milky Way orbit a black hole called Sagittarius A* that weighs about 4.1 million solar masses. An even heavier black hole — at a whopping 6.5 billion solar masses — serves as the centerpiece for the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). M87’s supermassive black hole appears in the famous image from the Event Horizon Telescope, showing a black hole and its “shadow” for the very first time.
[...]
The density of matter needed to create a black hole is mind-boggling. To make a black hole 50 times the mass of the Sun, you would have to pack the equivalent of 50 Suns into a ball less than 200 miles (300 kilometers) across. But in the case of M87’s centerpiece, it is as though 6.5 billion Suns were compressed into a ball wider than the orbit of Pluto. In both cases, the density is so high that the original material must collapse into a singularity— a rip in the fabric of space-time.
Key to the mystery of black holes’ origins is the physical limit on how fast they can grow. Even the giant monsters at the centers of galaxies have limitations on their feeding frenzies, because a certain amount of material is pushed back by the high-energy radiation coming from hot particles accelerated near the event horizon. Just by eating surrounding material, a low-mass black hole might only be able to double its mass in 30 million years, for example.
“If you start from a mass of 50 solar masses, you simply cannot grow it to 1 billion solar masses over 1 billion years,” said Igor Chilingarian, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Moscow State University. But, “as we know, there are supermassive black holes that exist less than 1 billion years after the formation of the universe.”
[...]
Intermediate-mass black hole hunters eagerly await the launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which will peer back to the dawn of the first galaxies. Webb will help astronomers figure out which came first — the galaxy or its central black hole — and how that black hole might have been put together. In combination with X-ray observations, Webb’s infrared data will be important for identifying some of the most ancient black hole candidates.
Another new tool launched in July by the Russian space agency Roscosmos is called Spectrum X-Gamma, a spacecraft that will scan the sky in X-rays, and carries an instrument with mirrors developed and built with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama. Gravitational-wave information flowing from the LIGO-Virgo collaboration will also aid in the search, as will the European Space Agency’s planned Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. [Reply]
Lol is it just me or do you get a feeling that AI is evolving into the next dominant species that will eventually take over making our intellect look like that of a chimps in comparison. [Reply]
Nasa is close to finding life on Mars but the world is not ready for the “revolutionary” implications of the discovery, the space agency’s chief scientist has said.
Dr Jim Green has warned that two rovers from Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) could find evidence of life within months of arriving on Mars in March 2021.
The ExoMars Rover, which has been dubbed “Rosalind” in memory of British chemist Rosalind Franklin, will search for extra-terrestrial life by drilling 6.5 feet down into Mars’ core to take samples.
Those samples will then be crushed up and examined for organic matter in a mobile laboratory.
Dr Green compared the potential discovery to when the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus stated that the Earth revolves around the Sun in the 16th century.
“It will start a whole new line of thinking. I don’t think we’re prepared for the results,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “I’ve been worried about that because I think we’re close to finding it and making some announcements.”
Nasa’s rover Mars 2020 will drill into rock formations on the planet before sending test-tubes of rock samples back to Earth – the first time material from Mars will have been brought onto this planet.
Dr Green added that the discovery of life on Mars will give scientists a new set of questions to explore.
“What happens next is a whole new set of scientific questions. Is that life like us? How are we related?” he said. “Can life move from planet-to-planet or do we have a spark and just the right environment and that spark generates life – like us or do not like us – based on the chemical environment that it is in?”
Recent research has shown that planets which were previously thought to be uninhabitable may have once had suitable conditions for life.
Earlier this year, scientists discovered that there may be a vast and active system of water running underneath the surface of Mars.
A study released this month also claimed that Venus may have been habitable for 2 to 3 billion years before its atmosphere became incredibly dense and hot about 700 million years ago.
Recent research suggests that civilisations could exist on other planets, according to Dr Green.
“There is no reason to think that there isn’t civilisations elsewhere, because we are finding exoplanets [planets outside the solar system] all over the place,” he said.
His comments came less than 24 hours before technology entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled a SpaceX spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo to Mars or other planets in the solar system before returning to Earth.
Mr Musk said the company’s Starship was essential for the viability of space travel by introducing a spacecraft that can be reused.
The ship is expected to take off for the first time in about two months and reach 65,000 feet before it lands back on Earth. [Reply]