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Images of black holes

Started by Kurzyk, April 09, 2011, 06:08:27 PM

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Lithos

#25
Quote from: Brandon on April 10, 2011, 01:23:33 AM
Very interesting.

Although is it just me or do a few of them look like they were made by some kind of drafting/animating software? They just seem to...clean, for lack of a better word

There is ton of editing work that goes on astronomical image processing so always the image you see is going to be somewhat artificial. For one, to get the most sensitivity, big instruments use (if imaging in visual spectrum) monochrome cameras. They shot images through filters that let only light of desired color wavelengths or gas emission lines through. You also have to take many long exposures and stack and match them together, then combine channels to get color images and do noise reduction, deconvultation and ton of other things. Results when imager and the person editing are really good are beauty to behold though. The images in example gallery are known images from real data apart from some artistic renderings that are clearly labeled as such but no, they are never what you would see with naked eye through powerful telescope. Human eye is far too insensitive for that. Even with three to ten meter class telescope if you wanted to waste instruments time by looking at it with naked eye galaxies and nebulae and everything else would be mostly grey smudges with only hint of green and red color at times, nothing like you can "see" with ultra sensitive CCD. One thing is for sure, none of them actually show black holes but rather their effects on surrounding matter.
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Sabby

I read something pretty interesting before, but can't remember the source :( Apparently, black holes can disappear.

As in, not change or dissipate or scatter. Just... poof. Gone. All that matter condenses into a ball and the ball just blinks out in complete defiance of physics. The way it was explained to me is reality is a rubber mat and matter are marballs, with the heavier marballs depressing the rubber more. A marball can get so unfathomably heavy it just plunks right through the mat and leaves reality.


Vekseid

No.

It's called Hawking Radiation. The mass-energy gets returned to the Universe according to the hypothesis.

Sabby

Wouldn't that much energy being moved be like a supernova? o.o

Vekseid

No, it's just blackbody radiation like any star, except for anything of significant mass (more than a thousandth or so of the Moon) it's pretty much just regular black.

Some sci-fi ideas involve using black holes to generate power in this fashion - they spit out over half of what they eat as light as is (which is better than antimatter - most matter-antimatter reaction energy is ghosted as neutrinos) - a small black hole undergoing hawking radiation is a nearly perfect (and actually surprisingly safe) matter->energy converter.

Sabby

Oh, I'm beginning to see... I did a quick Google hoping to find where I'd read this. We haven't had this Hawking Radiation concept long have we? o.o That would explain why we'd have thought it just poofs.

Lithos

Also black holes in themselves are nothing special in their effect of surrounding matter in some ways. Suppose our sun got replaced with similar mass black hole in an instant. You would not see instant accretion discs it would not start sucking everything from surrounding any more greedily than our sun does, in fact you would notice nothing except the obvious fact that sun disappeared and the resulting cold and lack of energy would do us all in. Planets would happily continue on same orbits they are now, comets would move along just as they did before so would asteroids. It would be exactly as if sun was there, just no solar wind and obviously no sunlight nor suns energy output.
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Sabby

#32
Yeah, I'd read that one as well. Doesn't stop them being scawweh D=

http://youtu.be/eEUuvb7gVFo?t=1h2m17s

For those who would like some video of Black Holes :3

Braioch

Nifty ;D

But upon reading 'da EaRt iz 6000 yaers old' I had to give up on the comments section >,<
I'm also on Discord (like, all the time), so feel free to ask about that if you want

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Oniya

I've been following some YouTube videos on String Theory over the past few weeks, and I believe it was Stanford University's 'Topics in String Theory' by Leonard Susskind that goes into the evaporation of black holes in some detail* (as well as event horizons and measuring the temperature at the event horizon).  Even if you don't get the complicated physics of it, he is phenomenally easy to listen to (looks and sounds a little bit like George Carlin, only with a family-friendly vocabulary), and I believe the class itself was one of those 'Continuing Education' things that people can attend without grading, so he's not talking to physicists, or even physics majors, necessarily.  (There's a guy in the back who's got a voice like my father's, age-wise.)
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Lithos

For getting good idea of basics of physics I very much recommend Feynmans character of physical law lecture series. It might be old but it is still as current as ever and goes through things concisely starting from newtonian physics and then going further making it all very easy to understand.

http://youtu.be/j3mhkYbznBk

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Oniya

Quote from: Lithos on December 18, 2012, 10:01:46 AM
For getting good idea of basics of physics I very much recommend Feynmans character of physical law lecture series. It might be old but it is still as current as ever and goes through things concisely starting from newtonian physics and then going further making it all very easy to understand.

http://youtu.be/j3mhkYbznBk

*bookmarks*  I've liked everything I've read about Feynmann.  I think he's on my list of 'if you could talk with anyone, living or dead...' candidates.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Hades

Ooh, space thread *cue nerd-gasm here*

I've always been facinated with space.  Back when the Discovery Channel or History Channel would actually have educational programs instead of whatever category the drivel they air these days count as, any time I saw a space-related show I knew my next hour or so was booked up.   I used to get the Science Channel, but we switched from DirecTV to cable and they don't carry it.  Damnable Philistines.

I have to speak up for one name I haven't seen on this thread yet.   Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Director of the Hayden Plantarium of the American Museum of Natural History, and smiter of Pluto's planetary status.   He's passionate about space and humanity's place in, he's articulate and funny at the same time, and can easily be found on YouTube and elsewhere.

gaggedLouise

#38
This has to be one of the most intriguing natural science articles I've seen in a daily paper in a long time:

The Earth was hit by a Black Holes generated Gamma ray burst in the days of Charlemagne

"According to a new study, black hole cosmic radiation blasted into the Earth back in the 8th century.

Japanese astrophysicist Fusa Miyake discovered last year clues for the strange event located in the rings of ancient cedar trees that dated back to either 774 or 775 AD.

Researchers teamed together to determine what had caused the surge in carbon-14 in the rings and found no evidence of a supernova, as they had expected. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle references the appearance of a “red crucifix” seen in the skies after sunset, but that took place in 776 AD, which was too late for when the tree rings show the event took place.

Scientists were also able to rule out a CME burst from the Sun, during which solar flares shoot out cosmic rays, sometimes towards Earth. They wrote in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, instead, black holes may be the culprit behind the carbon-14 isotope surge in the rings. These isotopes are created when intense radiation hits the atoms in the upper atmosphere, which suggests a blast of energy had once hit Earth.

German-based scientists Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhauser say two black holes collided and then merged (---) (These two researchers) said the event could only have taken place at least 3,000 light years away from here, otherwise the planet would have been fried."

So pleased we were not closer.  :-) (and by the way, that last line also hints how rare an event it would be. AFAIK, Earth has not been completely grilled any time in the last few hundred million years...)

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RubySlippers

I always wondered how long it would take for a micro black hole say the mass the Earth around the size of a dime to eat the Sun and what the affects would be such as energy bursts which can happen.

Vekseid

Would really depend on where you put it.

If you dropped it in the side, there's a distinct possibility it would self-eject after tearing apart a good chunk of the Sun's mass, for example.

MultiCharacterRoleplay

Quote from: Oniya on April 09, 2011, 06:33:17 PM
Very interesting - some of the comments made my brain ache, though.  O_o
Yah I just read some of them as well and I was like no just no T.T

MultiCharacterRoleplay

MY question is though. How do they know that they're black holes?

Vekseid

Technically, we don't. It's mostly a function of "We know of nothing else that fits this much mass in so small a volume." And many predicted effects are also seen, such as electron annihilations (which release very predictable and precise energy signatures) getting significantly redshifted, etc.

Caden

Aww, when I read the title of the thread I though I was going to see some pictures of the lower half of Shjade's avatar. :(

I don't remember the specifics, but I remember hearing a presentation by Hawking about the black holes dumping matter into other universes and that, theoretically, you might eventually reach a universe with no black holes that would continue to be filled and, eventually, contain the matter of all universes.

Something like that.
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Oniya

Except that the idea that there is 'another side' to a black hole has long been regarded as pure fiction.  Look up some of Dr. Leonard Susskind's lectures on YouTube - he goes into the physics of black holes both in his series on General Relativity, and also in his Topics in String Theory.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

RubySlippers

I figure they must be important since every galaxy seems to have on in the center, makes you wonder what is in the center of the Universe is there a super duper massive black hole?  ???

Vekseid

Our universe has no center as such, though it does resemble a time-reversed black hole in some respects.

Oniya

If you consider isotropy and homogeneity, and the way in which the universe is expanding, with all things not bound by gravity accelerating away from each other, you could say that all points are equally 'central'.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Sabby

Isn't the universe in a cone shape though?