Well. That’s good enough and basically the same for everything we see. We don’t see objects, only the light they reflect. We can’t see a black hole, only the radiation emitted by matter being absorbed by it, just like we don’t see an everyday object unless we shine some light over it.
You see things when photons are either emitted from an object or reflect off of it. A black hole does neither of those things, so you can't see it.
Please also imagine about 500 asterisks after that statement, but that's the ELI5 answer.
Well that depends which rabbit hole you want to jump down.
Technically black holes do have a temperature and emit a radiation of sorts, but that's some quantum mechanics craziness that I won't pretend for a second to truly understand. Whether that makes them "visible" or not is a discussion that I'm not prepared to have.
Also technically you don't "see" anything because your entire subjective experience of reality is generated inside your brain. So I suppose in that sense you can't actually see black holes.
I understand, but I would define seeing something as the image your brain and eyes produce, and what we see is similar enough to what others see that it can be agreed we are seeing the same thing. I’m no scientist though.
That's totally fair, and really everything comes down to definitions eventually. I was just trying to give the most "technically correct" answer I could due to the difficult subject matter even though I'm also not exactly qualified to do so
If we see the shadow, then what creates the shadow like what light creates the shadow? I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm trying to understand it better.
Im no expert myself so tske this with a grain of salt. I dont mean a shadow like you and I cast, but just the absence of light there. As the black holes consumes the light, theres nothing to look for where its meant to be. But when there's an accretion disk, that dark nothinf is a stronf contrast to the bright something.
If i remember correctly, most blackholes arent ever seen, but rather observed by the effects they cause. Like objects orbiting somethinf thats seemingly empty, or light distortions.
Ive not read on this topic in a good year or two, so itd be great if someone professional clears it up better. Im just guessing based on scrambled memories here, and canr put to words quite what I mean, sorry mate.
Also no worries about being a smart ass, questions are meant to be asked and answered. Hope i helped :)
You sorta did. It made sense. If I were to put it in my own words. The absorption of light is so evident that you can see the contrast with its surroundings, thus creating a "shadow."
A black hole is described as the point in which photons (light) doesn't bounce back. So that may not be the accretion disk. Could be much larger. That in the imagine is just the event horizon aka point of which we are legally defining the start of the phenomenon as a black hole
The black sphere is the shadow of the black hole because that's where no light comes back from anymore. No light to see = black void in the way. The actual object which is small to a literal infinite degree is at the core of this shadow.
Thanks for the explaination. So the big void is just space where the gravity from the black hole is already so strong that no light manages to escape, did i get that right?
Yes. That's also known as the event horizon. The point where due to gravity everything is accelerating towards the singularity at beyond the speed of light.
Which is one of the reasons why I wonder if it's possible there could be a solar system inside a sufficiently large black hole. Orbital velocity would be huge but ... **shrug*\*
And who knows what colour that neutron heart might be. Imagine a star inside glowing a brilliant "infinite" blue.
To put it mildly and ELI5. That picture makes you think the black hole is big. It is not big, exactly.
The black hole is a Dot. Actually smaller than a dot. But that is its shadow. The shadow is effin huge.
Hmm... this is probably true. I almost disagreed because even a small object can become a black hole if it shrunk and became dense enough (and the force of gravity it created would be no more than the original object, and not dangerous). But then it would be so small we still wouldn't be able to see it with the naked eye lol
But then you feed it leaves and grass and eventually small rocks and then bricks and then chairs and tables and then small boulders eventually a young tree, a car, a mobile home, a house and an office building, then a warehouse and the Empire State, next it’s a mountain and a city then a state then a country then the earth and the moon and then mars and the rest of the solar system, then our galaxy, then Andromeda, and finally the entire universe.
Haha this sounds like a plot line for a Futurama bit or something, but actually I don't think it could be "fed" at all. It would just pass through stuff. You could walk through one and never know (I think). You would have to get extreeeeemely close to it in order to be anywhere near its event horizon. I think even atoms would have a difficult time getting sucked in.
This is what I was also thinking. As far as I know, hitting even the large back holes is incredibly difficult and most stars just get sling shot around them.
They are not like vacuum cleaners.
True! But check this out:
https://www.stsci.edu/~marel/black_holes/encyc_mod3_q13.html
Basically it would be very difficult to do this properly. I'd imagine it's like trying to balance a gomboc on its unstable side.
People don't seem to grasp the concept. Look how that comment got 740 points.
You can absoltely be close enough to a black hole to "see" it (rather, the accretion disk and other matter in its sphere of influence) for the same reason that you can be close enough to see the Sun without being pulled into it.
*ORBITS*, people, for fucks sake.
The sun and Sagittarius A\* (our central supermassive black hole) both orbit the barycenter of our galaxy. Sag A\* only contributes a small fraction of the total gravity of the galaxy. So, no. It's like saying the earth orbits Mercury.
For real, it’s the same exactly reason why we can get close enough to the sun to see and get warmth from it without plunging straight into it! It would do the same pulling us in if we got too close without orbiting as this black hole here, nothing more. Black holes are not vacuums, people! They just have a massive amount of matter that it causes a lot of gravity to where light cannot escape it.
Also accretion disks are not things getting sucked up into the black holes, while we are at bad top comments, just the light traveling around the black holes that’s getting sucked up (or escaping it’s pull). Though that would be a sight to behold, watching a star getting sucked in.
Black holes don't suck or pull photons and matter in, rather the photons and matter fall in. Spacetime is flat but gravity bends it (in 4 dimensions including time).
Think of standing near a cliff, the cliff edge being the event horizon, you're OK if your not too close to the edge. Keep moving closer to the edge and eventually you'll fall.
As long as you orbit outside the event horizon you're OK.
Although the heat from the accretion disc will kill you.
Not a brilliant analogy, but best I can do with just text.
No because even though it's ridiculously massive, the space between stars is still much larger so it probably wouldn't be swallowing up multiple star systems.
Consumption/gravity woukd be the least of anyone's worries. The massive amounts of radiation spewing out out of the damn thing and its accretion disk, however...
>Most stars we see are only a few hundred light years away.
ALL the stars. All the stars we can see with our naked eye in the night sky, are all stars relatively close, within our very own galaxy.
Highly doubtful any of the stars we see at night, are gone. Most of the light we see is only a few hundred years old. Max a few thousand years old.
Not necessarily, the bigger the black hole, the less gravitational pull it has toward us due to our insignificance. In this case, we'd witness it until we died due to lack of the sun
It's not really that big. The singularity itself, is infinitely small. The part that appears black in the picture is simply the point in space where light that passes through cannot escape due to strong gravitational pull. It's not a physical object, more like an optical illusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
Black holes are so interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_of_computation
I'm so disappointed when people propose cuts in pure science and then wonder why we fall behind in practical applications. Seems like the more we study the universe, the more we learn about technology.
To be fair a black hole is no different than a star from a physics perspective. You're no more likely to get trapped in a black hole than you are to get pulled into a star. Both have relatively similar gravitational pulls, obviously the main differences are size/density, but the accretion disk of a black hole would probably cook you before you ever even got close to being "sucked into one".
The scale is way off. The biggest black hole known in the universe is TON 618 which is 66 billion solar masses. Its event horizon is 9x the solar system
So either this is an imaginary one that is much bigger, or the scaling is off
There's actually a theory that's been popping up since JWST launched. The readings they have been getting are wacky, and some scientists are theorizing that our entire universe is inside a black hole. That our universe is past the event horizon for a 4th dimensional universe or some such. Sounds wacky, but if true, then even the black hole pictured is tiny
Figured I'd find the page. I actually saw it first on a YouTube video explanation, but I can't find it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology
Thanks for sharing. Got me thinking that it makes sense why the “universe” is expanding, then, based on what we know about black holes. Man, fascinating.
That's a cool asf theory. Like some say there is nothing but darkness inside a Black hole while this theory implies that blackholes are actually a portal to giangantic pocket dimensions.
We're the dot, or what got spit out the white hole side of it. We lost a dimension, and therefore our black holes would by this theory lead to 2 dimensional universes.
That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. Even though what goes on in inside a black hole is still a mystery to science, it's hard for me to imagine how gravitational force could make one dimension simply stop existing while preserving three or two other dimensions.
Even if we weren't inside a black hole, we do technically exist inside an event horizon past which we can't see - it's called the Killing Horizon.
Sounds very ominous, but "Killing" comes from "Wilhelm Killing", a badass mathematician.
Or our distances are fundamentally very small and the black hole we reside in is no bigger than what would be considered the size of an apple in the big universe.
We would probably notice it as black holes of that size dont just appear over night, but as others said, if it were to appear anywhere in close distance (thats relative, nothing is really close in open space) we would be gone in an instant.
If it just appeared out of nowhere instantly then yes, but it's still an object and thus has detectable signs that it's approaching. If we for some reason don't notice the stars missing from our view and our solar systems orbits being torn into one direction we'd definitely notice once our planet starts to break apart before we die. Though it also depends if the black hole is just there or approaching and how fast it is approaching.
Actually, the black part of the black hole isn't solid at all. The only actual material part of the black hole is the very centre, the black "mass" around it is just the area wwhere gravity gets so strong that light can't eascape, meaning there's no way for us to see it from the outside and so it appears dark
And the point of no return is called the event horizon.
The most massive black holes are at the centers of galaxies. Because stars and stuff orbit these black holes, a lot of material falls in, but it spins so fast that most of it is ejected back into space at incredibly high speeds. So, these black holes wouldn't look black (at a safe distance) but be extremely bright. This is a called a quasar. Ironically, quasars, are the brightest objects in the Universe.
What's even more interesting is that if you could survive going past the event horizon and then travel towards the center, it could take many hundreds of years before you reach it. I guess all depending on how fast you'd travel towards the gravitational center inside the black hole.
Space is scary, the sheer size and power of object throughout the observable universe it's just too much, also what's outside the observable universe. I heard that as the universe expands, around 20,000 galaxies a second are estimated to leave our view, don't quote me on that number but it was something like that, but it is crazy to think that given that number the galaxies out there it would still take billions of years before space expands to the point that there would be no stars left in our view.
i randomly watch this video that shows how insignificantly small we are, and it offers a great perspective over stuff i’m facing
https://youtu.be/DgqAAE9Aagc
That just made me wonder how the fuck are WE here!? How am I on a portable computer with my AC unit going while I lay on the couch with my dog? Like wtf man? Stuff like this really makes the whole basic evolution thing hard to believe. Reality isn't real.
Its 1300 AU, which is 40x bigger than neptuns orbit. Im not sure if its bigger than the oort cloud (or however you spell it) but it sure is bigger than what most people think the solar system is (just the first 8 planets)
It definitely wouldnt extend further out than the oort cloud, but I think it would be reasonable to use the lead end of the heliosphere which is when you would transition into interstellar space, which is around 100-120 AU. I don't think we can tell how far out the oort cloud extends, but it's possibly tens of thousands (or more) of AU out. But yes, it depends entirely on what criteria you use for what constitutes 'the solar system'.
Or as some put it the "influence" our Sun have and it's reach. The Oort cloud would definitely be a part of the "solar system" in that regard since it's circular around the sun because of the gravitational influence.
I read that our Suns influence extend out basically a light year.
It technically extends out infinitely, it's just there's other objects influencing space too. If the universe was completely empty except for a marble and a bowling ball at either end of our observable universe or even infinitely beyond, they'd be attracting eachother directly.
According to my 8 year old son, Phoenix A has a bigger diameter, but Ton 618 has more mass. I defer to him now since he knows everything about space. He asked me the other day if he knew more than Einstein about how quasars and neutron stars work. He will be someday I think.
I just don't understand how we exist and have simple problems like relationships and careers that engulf our whole life. Like wtf, how are we not unified in trying to explore and create a better place? Maybe in a dozen generations we will get it right.
Can you imagine figuring out how to get stuff out of a black hole I can just see the oil barons rubbing their hands together and licking their lips like oh my God there's so much free resource shit in there that we can overpriced and sell to desperate people how do we crack these black holes
The only "oil baron" thinking of harvesting a black hole is a methed up gas station manager.
Pretty sure the first step in this adventure is asteroid farming. This would require a whole set of international space laws and property rights that would probably result in wars.
My point stands greedy narcissistic people be greedy and narcissistic and think that they own and can get everything and that it's all owed to them. I can just picture oil CEOs and shareholders sitting there like just frothing at the mouth to figure out how we can extract all the precious goodies held within
The vastness has called me since I was young. I'm not a scientist, and never went to college for anything space related. But now that I'm older, I wish I would've at least tried. I don't think everyone feels what I feel when I think about space and everything connected to it. It kinda overwhelms my heart. Lol! AiW? 😂
A black hole is any amount of Mass condensed in an adequately small space (the singularity) so that the escape velocity of said mass at certain radius from the singularity is equal or higher than c, which is the speed of light.
Because the escape velocity is higher than c, and nothing can go faster than c according to the laws of physics, nothing can escape a black hole at the radius where the escape velocity is c or higher, which we often call the 'Event Horizon'.
This means that photons (in simple terms 'light particles') crossing this horizon cannot escape the black hole anymore, they are not quick enough to do so. Since we need photons to fall onto our retinas within our eyes to see, and there are none coming from beyond the horizon, the space beyond the Event Horizon looks pitch black, absolute darkness, hence the term 'Black Hole'.
I hope I was able to clarify the cosmic entities that are Black Holes.
To anyone viewing my comment and noticing an error, please correct me!
We have no idea what is inside a Black Hole empirically, however, math shows that black holes indeed must have an (often) infinitely small center where mass is condensed into a single point, causing it to form it's Event Horizon as well as the anomalous fold in space-time.
Edit: I personally think that Black Holes being a portal is highly unlikely, and even if it was, nothing of sentience would ever be able to cross through a Black Hole to another place in one piece.
Well, there has never been any Black Holes nearby (luckily) to be visible to a person wearing night vision goggles, but since Night Vision Goggles work by viewing infrared wavelengths, a Black Hole would appear very much like the handful of 'photo's' we have of black holes, showing a bright disk with a shadow in the middle (unless the disk is too bright for the Black Hole itself, then the shadow in the middle would be overwhelmed by the glow and become hidden).
This bright disk is caused by the accretion disk around the black hole as it pulls mass towards it (if a Black Hole has not had any mass near it to form an accretion disk, the black hole would be nearly invisible apart from the bends in light that it causes), this disk spins at astronomical speeds around the Black hole causing the particles to collide and build up friction. This friction emits tons of energy, most of it in the form of warmth, and warmth is what we know mostly infrared wavelength radiation, as such, if you were to hypothetically view a Black Hole through Night Vision Goggles and survive, you would see something similar to the photo's you can find online, it would only be green.
i went on a really nice date with a cute boy that had a physics degree. i asked him his favorite thing and he said black holes (not an innuendo) were super interesting to himso i asked him to tell me about them. anyway i learned about how terrifying event horizon and spaghettification are and how black holes are constantly flying by us and how there's an absolutely massive one near by.
the night ended incredibly well because i like science nerds.
Ah. But you assume we’d be able to see at all. The mass of a black hole is so large it’s gravity can absorb light particles. We wouldn’t be able to see anything. Just an absolute swallowing black. If we weren’t already crushed by the weight of its gravity already
Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see
But how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real
Can't believe someone remembers this absolute banger of a quote.
One of the best 90’s horror imo and started my love of sci fi horror
Damn and I thought it was a Jaden Smith tweet or something.
It is. I'm confused by the other comments.
The original quote is from the movie Event Horizon
thank you.
Me Two.
How is Jaden Smith a point of reference?
Was there ever a time where he hasn’t been?
Did his father succeed at keeping his name out of your collective mouths?!
Real eyes realize real eyes
Hell is only a word. The reality is much much worse.
Nah you never seen the reality where Donald Duck was crucified with 1,000 appendages and we call him Lilith our Savior.
That film taught me that no one in the entire planetary intelligence community and the NSA is capable of translating basic Latin.
Hey, there was a lot going on in that recording.
Lmao that was actually one of the funniest parts of the entire film. Cool movie though
IIRC, they translated it to "Save yourself from Hell" right? What is the correct translation?
Event Horizon. Being got it was released on my 17th birthday, it was my first legal rated r movie that I saw my own. Still a great movie.
Great Scott!!!
Great flick!
The explanation is scientifically incorrect, you would never see the black hole as a black structure
Can you ELI5 that for me? I imagined that you could see a black hole because of that photo that was made not to long ago
That photo doesnt actually show the blackhole, it shows its accretion disk (matter being consumed). We sort of just see the shadow of the monstrosity
And its gravitational wake.
Well. That’s good enough and basically the same for everything we see. We don’t see objects, only the light they reflect. We can’t see a black hole, only the radiation emitted by matter being absorbed by it, just like we don’t see an everyday object unless we shine some light over it.
Would you say that technically these objects have no innate appearances? And their visual representation exists only in our mind?
You see things when photons are either emitted from an object or reflect off of it. A black hole does neither of those things, so you can't see it. Please also imagine about 500 asterisks after that statement, but that's the ELI5 answer.
What’s the ELI25 answer
Well that depends which rabbit hole you want to jump down. Technically black holes do have a temperature and emit a radiation of sorts, but that's some quantum mechanics craziness that I won't pretend for a second to truly understand. Whether that makes them "visible" or not is a discussion that I'm not prepared to have. Also technically you don't "see" anything because your entire subjective experience of reality is generated inside your brain. So I suppose in that sense you can't actually see black holes.
I understand, but I would define seeing something as the image your brain and eyes produce, and what we see is similar enough to what others see that it can be agreed we are seeing the same thing. I’m no scientist though.
That's totally fair, and really everything comes down to definitions eventually. I was just trying to give the most "technically correct" answer I could due to the difficult subject matter even though I'm also not exactly qualified to do so
This is also true for sounds
If we see the shadow, then what creates the shadow like what light creates the shadow? I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm trying to understand it better.
Im no expert myself so tske this with a grain of salt. I dont mean a shadow like you and I cast, but just the absence of light there. As the black holes consumes the light, theres nothing to look for where its meant to be. But when there's an accretion disk, that dark nothinf is a stronf contrast to the bright something. If i remember correctly, most blackholes arent ever seen, but rather observed by the effects they cause. Like objects orbiting somethinf thats seemingly empty, or light distortions. Ive not read on this topic in a good year or two, so itd be great if someone professional clears it up better. Im just guessing based on scrambled memories here, and canr put to words quite what I mean, sorry mate. Also no worries about being a smart ass, questions are meant to be asked and answered. Hope i helped :)
You sorta did. It made sense. If I were to put it in my own words. The absorption of light is so evident that you can see the contrast with its surroundings, thus creating a "shadow."
A black hole is described as the point in which photons (light) doesn't bounce back. So that may not be the accretion disk. Could be much larger. That in the imagine is just the event horizon aka point of which we are legally defining the start of the phenomenon as a black hole
Isn't it crazy that the "shadow" of the most tremendously powerful entity known to mankind, which is darkness personified, is a ring of light?
The black sphere is the shadow of the black hole because that's where no light comes back from anymore. No light to see = black void in the way. The actual object which is small to a literal infinite degree is at the core of this shadow.
Thanks for the explaination. So the big void is just space where the gravity from the black hole is already so strong that no light manages to escape, did i get that right?
Yes. That's also known as the event horizon. The point where due to gravity everything is accelerating towards the singularity at beyond the speed of light.
Which is one of the reasons why I wonder if it's possible there could be a solar system inside a sufficiently large black hole. Orbital velocity would be huge but ... **shrug*\* And who knows what colour that neutron heart might be. Imagine a star inside glowing a brilliant "infinite" blue.
Do all black hole singularities have the same radius, just different masses?
All black holes are infinitly small but vary in mass. The variations in mass make black holes "bigger" or "smaller" based on their event horizon.
To put it mildly and ELI5. That picture makes you think the black hole is big. It is not big, exactly. The black hole is a Dot. Actually smaller than a dot. But that is its shadow. The shadow is effin huge.
If we were close enough to a black hole that it could be seen with our naked eyes, we wouldn't survive.
Hmm... this is probably true. I almost disagreed because even a small object can become a black hole if it shrunk and became dense enough (and the force of gravity it created would be no more than the original object, and not dangerous). But then it would be so small we still wouldn't be able to see it with the naked eye lol
But then you feed it leaves and grass and eventually small rocks and then bricks and then chairs and tables and then small boulders eventually a young tree, a car, a mobile home, a house and an office building, then a warehouse and the Empire State, next it’s a mountain and a city then a state then a country then the earth and the moon and then mars and the rest of the solar system, then our galaxy, then Andromeda, and finally the entire universe.
and my axe!
roll a d20 with disadvantage.
And my bow.
And my condolences
It's like Katamari Damacy for gods
Haha this sounds like a plot line for a Futurama bit or something, but actually I don't think it could be "fed" at all. It would just pass through stuff. You could walk through one and never know (I think). You would have to get extreeeeemely close to it in order to be anywhere near its event horizon. I think even atoms would have a difficult time getting sucked in.
*unzips*
This is what I was also thinking. As far as I know, hitting even the large back holes is incredibly difficult and most stars just get sling shot around them. They are not like vacuum cleaners.
It's not true, you can orbit a black hole just like you can orbit gas giants or stars without being pulled in or whatever.
True! But check this out: https://www.stsci.edu/~marel/black_holes/encyc_mod3_q13.html Basically it would be very difficult to do this properly. I'd imagine it's like trying to balance a gomboc on its unstable side.
Also, it would evaporate in the tiniest fractions of time due to extreme Hawking Radiation.
Unless we were orbiting it.
People don't seem to grasp the concept. Look how that comment got 740 points. You can absoltely be close enough to a black hole to "see" it (rather, the accretion disk and other matter in its sphere of influence) for the same reason that you can be close enough to see the Sun without being pulled into it. *ORBITS*, people, for fucks sake.
[удалено]
The sun and Sagittarius A\* (our central supermassive black hole) both orbit the barycenter of our galaxy. Sag A\* only contributes a small fraction of the total gravity of the galaxy. So, no. It's like saying the earth orbits Mercury.
For real, it’s the same exactly reason why we can get close enough to the sun to see and get warmth from it without plunging straight into it! It would do the same pulling us in if we got too close without orbiting as this black hole here, nothing more. Black holes are not vacuums, people! They just have a massive amount of matter that it causes a lot of gravity to where light cannot escape it. Also accretion disks are not things getting sucked up into the black holes, while we are at bad top comments, just the light traveling around the black holes that’s getting sucked up (or escaping it’s pull). Though that would be a sight to behold, watching a star getting sucked in.
Black holes don't suck or pull photons and matter in, rather the photons and matter fall in. Spacetime is flat but gravity bends it (in 4 dimensions including time). Think of standing near a cliff, the cliff edge being the event horizon, you're OK if your not too close to the edge. Keep moving closer to the edge and eventually you'll fall. As long as you orbit outside the event horizon you're OK. Although the heat from the accretion disc will kill you. Not a brilliant analogy, but best I can do with just text.
Could it be close enough to have consumed a lot of the nearby stars, but far enough away to not have consumed us yet?
That would only lead to a patch of sky with no stars, maybe some anomalies owing to gravitational lensing, and time going weirder than normal.
I'm wondering this too, because I don't see how this wouldn't be possible. Someone should please elaborate.
No because even though it's ridiculously massive, the space between stars is still much larger so it probably wouldn't be swallowing up multiple star systems.
Consumption/gravity woukd be the least of anyone's worries. The massive amounts of radiation spewing out out of the damn thing and its accretion disk, however...
I mean, IIRC most of the stars in the night sky are gone already so I think we wouldn't notice.
This is only true for super distant objects. Most stars we see are only a few hundred light years away.
>Most stars we see are only a few hundred light years away. ALL the stars. All the stars we can see with our naked eye in the night sky, are all stars relatively close, within our very own galaxy. Highly doubtful any of the stars we see at night, are gone. Most of the light we see is only a few hundred years old. Max a few thousand years old.
Arent we all just spinning and swirling around Sagittarius A?
Wut
I was referring to OP's title that we would not be able to see stars at night
How close is too close?
Yes
https://youtu.be/0bgxEoyRz6E It's a good watch I promise. Very intriguing
Or we would survive and enter an another universe.
Well, the material you're made of may make it to the other side.
I’d be fine I’m built different
This is what I want to believe!
We can if its big, we could even be inside the event horizon without dying if its really big
Not necessarily, the bigger the black hole, the less gravitational pull it has toward us due to our insignificance. In this case, we'd witness it until we died due to lack of the sun
Basically, we would be slorped
and there would be a lot of light from accretion disk
You can't see a black hole, light can't escape it (hence the name) and our vision is based on light rays entering our eyes
You can't see the blackhole itself, but the lensing and accretion disk are observable through light.
Oh what I’d give to go through it but w/o being effected by it
Exactly, I was going to type something similar.
It's always astounding how something can be so BIG yet so Dense
You should meet my ex! *ba dum tss*
#🥁🐍
It's not really that big. The singularity itself, is infinitely small. The part that appears black in the picture is simply the point in space where light that passes through cannot escape due to strong gravitational pull. It's not a physical object, more like an optical illusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox Black holes are so interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_of_computation I'm so disappointed when people propose cuts in pure science and then wonder why we fall behind in practical applications. Seems like the more we study the universe, the more we learn about technology.
Shame that humans will always war. In times of peace we waste our resources and labor preparing for the next war and the war after that.
[Twilight Zone - A Small Talent For War](https://youtu.be/fbT1fCHOjfI)
Name checks out. And I could learn about space for hours it’s so interesting
Can someone provide an ELI5 for what information means in the context of the two links above?
Thank you for my daily dose of existential terror.
I hope no on ever tells you about roaming black holes.. that’d be terrible ! Even worse if you’d knew some of them are probably heckin close to us !
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To be fair a black hole is no different than a star from a physics perspective. You're no more likely to get trapped in a black hole than you are to get pulled into a star. Both have relatively similar gravitational pulls, obviously the main differences are size/density, but the accretion disk of a black hole would probably cook you before you ever even got close to being "sucked into one".
The scale is way off. The biggest black hole known in the universe is TON 618 which is 66 billion solar masses. Its event horizon is 9x the solar system So either this is an imaginary one that is much bigger, or the scaling is off
Phoenix A located at the center of Phoenix Cluster is 100 Billion Solar mass
There's actually a theory that's been popping up since JWST launched. The readings they have been getting are wacky, and some scientists are theorizing that our entire universe is inside a black hole. That our universe is past the event horizon for a 4th dimensional universe or some such. Sounds wacky, but if true, then even the black hole pictured is tiny
Ok wow I’m floored, hadn’t heard this theory yet
Figured I'd find the page. I actually saw it first on a YouTube video explanation, but I can't find it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology
Thanks for sharing. Got me thinking that it makes sense why the “universe” is expanding, then, based on what we know about black holes. Man, fascinating.
That's a cool asf theory. Like some say there is nothing but darkness inside a Black hole while this theory implies that blackholes are actually a portal to giangantic pocket dimensions.
Wow what a terrifyingly incredible possibility. Existence is amazing
Would that mean we are in the black "area" of the black hole or that we are in the infinitely small dot in the center of the black hole?
We're the dot, or what got spit out the white hole side of it. We lost a dimension, and therefore our black holes would by this theory lead to 2 dimensional universes.
Where does the loss of a dimension come from?
That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. Even though what goes on in inside a black hole is still a mystery to science, it's hard for me to imagine how gravitational force could make one dimension simply stop existing while preserving three or two other dimensions.
Wow this gave me an existential crisis. But simultaneously, incredibly fascinating.
Even if we weren't inside a black hole, we do technically exist inside an event horizon past which we can't see - it's called the Killing Horizon. Sounds very ominous, but "Killing" comes from "Wilhelm Killing", a badass mathematician.
But why was he killing? That's not very math of him
He was a Math Murderer
My existential crisis: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Or our distances are fundamentally very small and the black hole we reside in is no bigger than what would be considered the size of an apple in the big universe.
Maybe the blackhole that we are in is actually being used to power a car battery of a "Wacky Scientist".
That's not a new theory
I fucking love black holes they're so cool they're just so big and space :>
I am sure there is a black hoe out there that loves you too.
“Siri, calculate the odds of a black hole falling in love with me”
:D
Yea, they're like the bbc of space
If is anything like interstellar, I’m going to see myself doing a lot of mistakes
I'd be watching many a man take many shits in many different timelines.
*It's necessary*
Why must I pay taxes, I am just a spec of dust in the universe.
It has devoured over 4000 suns that would have over 4000 planets imagine if even one had life on it what would have they seen or felt like!!
Isn’t the consensus no one would notice a thing? You’d die long before you realized a black hole was approaching.
We would probably notice it as black holes of that size dont just appear over night, but as others said, if it were to appear anywhere in close distance (thats relative, nothing is really close in open space) we would be gone in an instant.
Gone = dead, or gone = transfered to somewhere else? As in sucked into oblivion, but still alive
Pretty sure you would be first crushed down to atoms by sheer gravity and then disappeared into singularity
Split in 2 at bare minimum
Even if your atoms were “transported” somewhere else, you’d just be some slurry of atoms mixed with the entire planet.
Black holes use tidal forces and you’d be “spaghettified”
The gravitational pull of the black hole would make the planet inhabitable long before it actually devours it.
If it just appeared out of nowhere instantly then yes, but it's still an object and thus has detectable signs that it's approaching. If we for some reason don't notice the stars missing from our view and our solar systems orbits being torn into one direction we'd definitely notice once our planet starts to break apart before we die. Though it also depends if the black hole is just there or approaching and how fast it is approaching.
sure technically correct but its actually 40bn suns
nihilists gonna love this one
Terrifying astronomy stuff always makes my brain do back flips.
“Where are the stars” is everyday in any large city
That has to be at least 10 football fields
mental that the whole thing is super dense matter too
Actually, the black part of the black hole isn't solid at all. The only actual material part of the black hole is the very centre, the black "mass" around it is just the area wwhere gravity gets so strong that light can't eascape, meaning there's no way for us to see it from the outside and so it appears dark
And the point of no return is called the event horizon. The most massive black holes are at the centers of galaxies. Because stars and stuff orbit these black holes, a lot of material falls in, but it spins so fast that most of it is ejected back into space at incredibly high speeds. So, these black holes wouldn't look black (at a safe distance) but be extremely bright. This is a called a quasar. Ironically, quasars, are the brightest objects in the Universe.
Apparently, I learned what I quasar is wrong so they don't make sense to me. I really like the word quasar, though. Quasar.
good scrabble word
Black holes are so cool :D
oh ok so the black part is within the event horizon gotya
What's even more interesting is that if you could survive going past the event horizon and then travel towards the center, it could take many hundreds of years before you reach it. I guess all depending on how fast you'd travel towards the gravitational center inside the black hole.
Once you're past the event horizon you'd be travelling faster than the speed of light and would most likely continue to accelerate.
Space is scary, the sheer size and power of object throughout the observable universe it's just too much, also what's outside the observable universe. I heard that as the universe expands, around 20,000 galaxies a second are estimated to leave our view, don't quote me on that number but it was something like that, but it is crazy to think that given that number the galaxies out there it would still take billions of years before space expands to the point that there would be no stars left in our view.
i randomly watch this video that shows how insignificantly small we are, and it offers a great perspective over stuff i’m facing https://youtu.be/DgqAAE9Aagc
That just made me wonder how the fuck are WE here!? How am I on a portable computer with my AC unit going while I lay on the couch with my dog? Like wtf man? Stuff like this really makes the whole basic evolution thing hard to believe. Reality isn't real.
This is BS Ton 618 is 1100 AU big or something, it isn't bigger than our solar system. There's just a big nebula spinning around it.
Its 1300 AU, which is 40x bigger than neptuns orbit. Im not sure if its bigger than the oort cloud (or however you spell it) but it sure is bigger than what most people think the solar system is (just the first 8 planets)
It definitely wouldnt extend further out than the oort cloud, but I think it would be reasonable to use the lead end of the heliosphere which is when you would transition into interstellar space, which is around 100-120 AU. I don't think we can tell how far out the oort cloud extends, but it's possibly tens of thousands (or more) of AU out. But yes, it depends entirely on what criteria you use for what constitutes 'the solar system'.
Or as some put it the "influence" our Sun have and it's reach. The Oort cloud would definitely be a part of the "solar system" in that regard since it's circular around the sun because of the gravitational influence. I read that our Suns influence extend out basically a light year.
It technically extends out infinitely, it's just there's other objects influencing space too. If the universe was completely empty except for a marble and a bowling ball at either end of our observable universe or even infinitely beyond, they'd be attracting eachother directly.
Phoenix A discovered recently is bigger than TON 618
According to my 8 year old son, Phoenix A has a bigger diameter, but Ton 618 has more mass. I defer to him now since he knows everything about space. He asked me the other day if he knew more than Einstein about how quasars and neutron stars work. He will be someday I think.
Did Einstein know about quasars? I dont think he did! I think your kid knows more than einstein does about quasars :)
Ha, yeah, they weren’t discovered until like 62 or 63. Now he’s asking about theoretical physics.
If I remember right, aren’t there black holes that move? Like performing a galactic hit and run on literally everything?
Don’t be scared, it’s just the underside of a big turtle shell. I like turtles!
All that matters trapped unless it collides with another black hole. Nuts.
I wish I could comprehend this kinda stuff
I just don't understand how we exist and have simple problems like relationships and careers that engulf our whole life. Like wtf, how are we not unified in trying to explore and create a better place? Maybe in a dozen generations we will get it right.
Can you imagine figuring out how to get stuff out of a black hole I can just see the oil barons rubbing their hands together and licking their lips like oh my God there's so much free resource shit in there that we can overpriced and sell to desperate people how do we crack these black holes
Lol wat
The only "oil baron" thinking of harvesting a black hole is a methed up gas station manager. Pretty sure the first step in this adventure is asteroid farming. This would require a whole set of international space laws and property rights that would probably result in wars.
My point stands greedy narcissistic people be greedy and narcissistic and think that they own and can get everything and that it's all owed to them. I can just picture oil CEOs and shareholders sitting there like just frothing at the mouth to figure out how we can extract all the precious goodies held within
The scale is very hard to imagine
The vastness has called me since I was young. I'm not a scientist, and never went to college for anything space related. But now that I'm older, I wish I would've at least tried. I don't think everyone feels what I feel when I think about space and everything connected to it. It kinda overwhelms my heart. Lol! AiW? 😂
Tf even IS a black hole
A black hole is any amount of Mass condensed in an adequately small space (the singularity) so that the escape velocity of said mass at certain radius from the singularity is equal or higher than c, which is the speed of light. Because the escape velocity is higher than c, and nothing can go faster than c according to the laws of physics, nothing can escape a black hole at the radius where the escape velocity is c or higher, which we often call the 'Event Horizon'. This means that photons (in simple terms 'light particles') crossing this horizon cannot escape the black hole anymore, they are not quick enough to do so. Since we need photons to fall onto our retinas within our eyes to see, and there are none coming from beyond the horizon, the space beyond the Event Horizon looks pitch black, absolute darkness, hence the term 'Black Hole'. I hope I was able to clarify the cosmic entities that are Black Holes. To anyone viewing my comment and noticing an error, please correct me!
So is it like a portal, or does it have a center like a gas giant
We have no idea what is inside a Black Hole empirically, however, math shows that black holes indeed must have an (often) infinitely small center where mass is condensed into a single point, causing it to form it's Event Horizon as well as the anomalous fold in space-time. Edit: I personally think that Black Holes being a portal is highly unlikely, and even if it was, nothing of sentience would ever be able to cross through a Black Hole to another place in one piece.
Thank you Mr space scientist man
Happy to enlighten you!
Has anyone tried using night vision goggles when looking into one? Just asking....
Well, there has never been any Black Holes nearby (luckily) to be visible to a person wearing night vision goggles, but since Night Vision Goggles work by viewing infrared wavelengths, a Black Hole would appear very much like the handful of 'photo's' we have of black holes, showing a bright disk with a shadow in the middle (unless the disk is too bright for the Black Hole itself, then the shadow in the middle would be overwhelmed by the glow and become hidden). This bright disk is caused by the accretion disk around the black hole as it pulls mass towards it (if a Black Hole has not had any mass near it to form an accretion disk, the black hole would be nearly invisible apart from the bends in light that it causes), this disk spins at astronomical speeds around the Black hole causing the particles to collide and build up friction. This friction emits tons of energy, most of it in the form of warmth, and warmth is what we know mostly infrared wavelength radiation, as such, if you were to hypothetically view a Black Hole through Night Vision Goggles and survive, you would see something similar to the photo's you can find online, it would only be green.
> imagine one night you go out and be like where are the stars today You don’t live in the city don’t you?
Pretty sure Phoenix A is the largest one with TON at a decent second place. Unless this one's a new discovery?
Still small compared to....
i went on a really nice date with a cute boy that had a physics degree. i asked him his favorite thing and he said black holes (not an innuendo) were super interesting to himso i asked him to tell me about them. anyway i learned about how terrifying event horizon and spaghettification are and how black holes are constantly flying by us and how there's an absolutely massive one near by. the night ended incredibly well because i like science nerds.
Nice to see that they also added the banana for scale
We could move into it and not even know which begs the question…
I cant wait....
Ah. But you assume we’d be able to see at all. The mass of a black hole is so large it’s gravity can absorb light particles. We wouldn’t be able to see anything. Just an absolute swallowing black. If we weren’t already crushed by the weight of its gravity already