Soldato
This is unreal, maybe its got larger over time as it sucks everything up, it's coming for us!!
First ever image of a black hole!
- Thread starter easyrider
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Suspended
No, that's the data required to create the software for the job.
Man of Honour
On a related note, this will put size and time into comparison!
Do you know how "big" our solar system is in the local group of our own galaxy alone?
It will be much bigger as of now, the image captured is its stated a few hundred million years in the past as the light just got to us.
Do you know how "big" our solar system is in the local group of our own galaxy alone?
It will be much bigger as of now, the image captured is its stated a few hundred million years in the past as the light just got to us.
Soldato
So they do actually get bigger?, I wasn't really sure when I posted my previous comment. Scary to think.
Man of Honour
Black holes suck everything in, including mergers with other black holes which is thought to make them bigger. The timescales involved are huge, the numbers point to this outcome, but obviously observations have not happened for tens of millions of years to gather physical evidence yet 
Our Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years time. Hopefully humans won't still be in the local neighbourhood by the time that happens
The video posted above does highlight a few points on this though, and Brian Cox talked about this in previous shows too. Black holes will eventually be the only things left in the universe, but even they will die eventually.
Our Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years time. Hopefully humans won't still be in the local neighbourhood by the time that happens
The video posted above does highlight a few points on this though, and Brian Cox talked about this in previous shows too. Black holes will eventually be the only things left in the universe, but even they will die eventually.
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Suspended
A little more perspective on this historic moment:
5 petabytes of data.
Against about what would probably fit on a compact disk as ASCII text files.
My question is: How can a hole be spherical?
Interesting,would they be "Special" HDDs manufactured on their own lines, or are they standard ones that have been subjected to some sort of extra QC (Binning?) process?
I dare say they will all be raided to death too, just to ensure that nothing short of an Alien attack will lose any data.
Soldato
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It's still hard to imagine what it would look like if you could physically look at it
Even the very concept of a black hole is quite confusing to imagine of infinite density at the singularity
presumably like liquid a sphere is the most efficient way to pack in matter in 3D
Permabanned
I watched the documentary last night, interesting stuff.
On another Space related topic SpaceX attempts it's first ever landing of the Falcon Triple Rocket.
We can watch it live later today if it interests you.
https://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html
On another Space related topic SpaceX attempts it's first ever landing of the Falcon Triple Rocket.
We can watch it live later today if it interests you.
https://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html
Permabanned
Wow that's kinda cool as it makes me proud to be on the same team as people are always calling me dense too.
As much as I love science, I do always find it flawed by the fact it belongs to our own limited understanding and interpretation. For example, how do we know, categorically, that it's mass is that more of the sun, do we even know, for fact, the mass of the sun? Probably not.
What is our understanding of a black hole. Collapsed solar system, collapsed star, when did it exist, does it still exist, whats in it, what if I pass through it, what is on the other side. None of these answers fully comprehensible in our lifetime.
Hopefully USS Enterprise will be along soon and we can find out.
What is our understanding of a black hole. Collapsed solar system, collapsed star, when did it exist, does it still exist, whats in it, what if I pass through it, what is on the other side. None of these answers fully comprehensible in our lifetime.
Hopefully USS Enterprise will be along soon and we can find out.
The YouTube video linked states how they work out the mass of space objects.
Man of Honour
Secondary school Science!
A quick Google even brings up plenty of sources. Instead of doubting Science facts, just look it up!
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/fo...ow-do-you-measure-the-mass-of-a-star-beginner
Soldato
Here's a TED lecture by Katie Bouman. It's a couple of years old but explains how they went about it.
Man of Honour
It depends, but they often do. Black holes shrink by evaporation and grow by infalling matter. Whether they grow or shrink overall depends on which is larger, but large black holes evaporate very slowly and there's a lot of matter and a lot of movement in the universe so it's very often the case that enough matter gets close enough to a black hole for the infall to exceed the evaporation. Maybe always for larger black holes, over a large enough time scale. There might be periods of gradual shrinking until some more matter comes within range, but overall growth over a longer timescale. The timescale is very long. It shouldn't be scary to consider what might happen in a few billion years, let alone a few trillion years.
Strictly speaking, you're right about allowing for the possibility of error but you're very wrong about calling that a flaw. It's one of the major strengths of science, not a flaw!
While it's true that we should allow for the possibility of some unknown error in measurement or understanding regardless of how many people get the same results and how many different ways it's observed and how many times the observations are repeated and so on, there does come a time when the evidence is enough for it to be reasonable to pencil it in as known unless contradicting evidence might emerge at some point in the future.
The mass of the sun, for example, is fairly simple. We can measure the strength of its gravity at measurable distances from it.
One of them certainly is. If you get anywhere near a black hole, you get ripped apart into subatomic particles long before you reach the centre, so there is no such thing as "if I pass through it". There may not be such a thing as passing through it or the other side of it. People tend to assume that a black hole leads somewhere, but it ain't necessarily so.
In one sense, our understanding of a black hole is clear and simple - a volume of space in which the gravitational field is strong enough for the escape velocity to exceed the speed of light(*). What causes that gravitational field is rather less clear and well understood.
* As an aside, that phrase niggles at me. The speed limit isn't really about light - light can travel slower than it, other things can travel at that speed.
Associate
The colours are reminiscent of the cover of Soumdgarden's Superunknown album, containing the song...Black Hole Sun.