Wanna feel both insignificant and astounded?

[BackAgain]

Black hole myth busted: they don't suck anything in

Many of us look at black holes as cosmic vacuum cleaners: sucking in everything in their vicinity. But it turns out they don't suck at all.

bigthink.com

That piece was interesting. I get only a fraction of it. (Did I mention that I’m not a scientist?)

However, it is a good reference work and might even be true.

 

[toobfreak]

If black holes don’t suck, they can’t be the Democrat nominee for President or Vice President.

These artists need to get one thing right: black holes are not sharp black holes with a clearly defined edge. Their edge is fuzzy and gray transitioning from pure white to pure black with a gray blur in between because as you approach the event horizon, there is a transition zone where first a few percent of the rays of light fall in, then increasing more and more (because they are random paths) until finally, all of them do not escape.

 

[toobfreak]

That piece was interesting. I get only a fraction of it.

What don't you get. Ask questions.

 

[martybegan]

The anti-science trumpanzees are coming, better watch all the NOVA you can before its too late, I mean, we don't want the public benefitting from public money do we...

NPR and PBS Stations Brace for Funding Battle Under Trump

Republicans in Congress have tried to defund public media for decades. With the help of Elon Musk, could they finally make good on their threat?

www.nytimes.com

Can a woman have a penis, yes or no?

 

[BackAgain]

What don't you get. Ask questions.

I do. In fact, my curiosity is what gets me so juiced about some episodes of NOVA.

But, reading scientific information isn’t always the same as comprehending that material. As I noted; I love science but I am not one of those geniuses.

Doesn’t make it any less satisfying to review the material.

 

[BackAgain]

Can a woman have a penis, yes or no?

lol. Hemlock Homeless would be a Democrap if he were an American. So he can’t define “woman.”

Related note:

I saw an ad for some t-shirts which proclaimed that there are many genders, not just two. When ordering, the buyers are asked to pick “male” or “female.”

 

[toobfreak]

I do. In fact, my curiosity is what gets me so juiced about some episodes of NOVA.
But, reading scientific information isn’t always the same as comprehending that material.

Well ask. I'm pretty good at taking difficult concepts and explaining them in non-technical, non-mathematical terms that people can relate to.
I looked at your suck article and I hate those things as right away, I see a lot wrong with it poorly expressed and misleading.
Just as with those Nova programs, I like watching them but am frequently frustrated that they get things wrong or express things in poor ways.

At some level, producers today seem to think people are stupid--- years ago, science programming was much better then they started dumbing it down. Problem is, the more you do that, the less accurate you are. What they should do instead is explain stuff in a better way that is both accurate AND relatable.

Nova relies too heavily on pretty computer animations and too little on simple charts and diagrams. Drives me crazy.

Things you don't understand is probably a lot more due to these crappy "science" writers.

 

[Foxfyre]

I’m addicted to shows like “NOVA” (one of the few important outcomes of PBS).

Season 50, Episode 37 is labeled “Black Hole Universe” is one of those. I’m not a man of science. I wish I were but … to be even close to being on par with the kind of scientists in this episode, I’d have to be many times smarter.

I love science. I just don’t do it very well.

But the main presenter is an astrophysics, from Yale (I think). To even be able to summarize the history of the development of this branch of science implies an even greater IQ.

Kudoa to PBS.

Like you I didn't have a lot of formal education in science but it fascinates me. I was thrilled with the Project Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, shuttle space programs and hated when they ended. I was furious when they defunded the Hubble Project and though financially strapped myself at the time, contributed to the private effort to keep it going. (It is again government funded.) I read/watch everything I can about the Mars exploration and don't think Elon Musk is wrong at all to consider the possibility of colonizing that planet.

I want to know what's out there. I look at those amazing hauntingly beautiful photos the Hubble etc. produces and want to know more about them. I am excited when I read/see concepts of how warp speeds can be achieved allowing for serious space exploration.

If I was young and still deciding on a career, I would have tried to become a crew member on the Starship Enterprise in a heartbeat. That would truly be a dream job. And in my heart, I believe the time will come when there will be such vessels from Earth that are exploring new worlds. I suspect the very real possibility that beings from other worlds are exploring ours.

So yes, programs like NOVA are wonderful to me.

 

[BackAgain]

Well ask. I'm pretty good at taking difficult concepts and explaining them in non-technical, non-mathematical terms that people can relate to.
I looked at your suck article and I hate those things as right away, I see a lot wrong with it poorly expressed and misleading.
Just with those Nova programs, I like watching them but am frequently frustrated that they get things wrong or express things in poor ways.

At some level, producers today seem to think people are stupid--- years ago, science programming was much better then they started dumbing it down. Problem is, the more you do that the less accurate you are. What they should do instead is explain stuff in a better way that is both accurate AND relatable.

Nova relies too heavily on pretty computer animations and too little on simple charts and diagrams. Drives me crazy.

Things you don't understand is probably a lot more due to these crappy "science" writers.

I don’t post a “suck” article.

However, I may very well take you up on our generous offer. (One of the things I like about NOVA is the ability to synthesize all that information into digestible format. I believe it is a hallmark of great comprehension of subject matter to be able to explain it to neophytes such as me.)

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Can a woman have a penis, yes or no?

I don't know, why don't you look between your legs, see if you have one?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

On the subject itself it is interesting, deeply interesting because general relativity produces a "singularity" for matter that has passed "through" the event horizon and that violates laws so we know there's something else going on besides just general relativity. The GR theory becomes contradictory leading to violations of laws that it itself assumes are always true.

Also black holes were envisaged centuries before Einstein, if my memory serves.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

UPDATE, yes my memory was correct but I seem to recall it being a different person, but anyway:

 

[toobfreak]

I don’t post a “suck” article.

Well, the premise of the article is that BH don't suck when actually they do. Stuff falls in, which semantically isn't really any different from suck. Gravity is a field, not a force, so the problem is really that too close to a BH and the space curves inward so steeply that the escape velocity becomes greater than C (the speed of light). So nothing escapes. It falls in or gets sucked in, depending on how you want to look at it.

Actually, nothing ever falls in, from the outside, it takes an infinite amount of time to fall in. Something getting too close just moves slower and slower until it appears to stop.

The articles says BH are the densest objects known to exist. That too is wrong. Nothing can be more dense.

The problem with some of these charts is they're trying to express 4 dimensional concepts on 2 dimensional paper.

Ordinary matter is mostly empty: a nucleus followed by electron shells far away.
Degenerate matter is collapsed down to form Neutron stars where the electron is expelled and all that is left is neutron pressed against neutron where the neutronic matter is only held up by bosonic strong force of the quarks making up the neutrons.

But what happens with a BH is that at some point, enough force is applied (supermassive star) where it runs out of fuel to hold itself up (usually the point where it begins to try to burn iron for fuel), and can no longer generate the outward pressure needed to support itself and it simply collapses in on itself. The star explodes, all elements heavier than iron are created while the explosion forces the core of the star farther inward where even the strong force is overcome and the nutronic matter collapses and falls in on itself forming a singularity.

No one know for sure but it is hypothesized that the singularity is infinitely small because it essentially falls out of normal space and the only sign of its existence is the gravity left in its wake. Since it is infinitely small, you can get infinitely close to it so the gravity approaches infinity. The event horizon is merely that arbitrary boundary where once you get that close, nothing in this universe (matter nor energy) can escape. You become part of the BH and it can only grow in mass as it accumulates more and more so it "sucks" stuff in--- an appellation technically not quite true but understandable in its use.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Ahh it was Laplace I was thinking of:

2009JAHH...12...90M Page 90

 

[ReinyDays]

I had a friend at an atomic power lab that might have been related to the Shuttle in some way who gave me a thick printout of the entire report on the failure. I don't remember all of the details but basically, they made the decision to ignore the warnings and launch anyway out of concern for the public image of the space program not being robust and indefatigable.

Guess that failed.

The program had already failed ... the Challenger disaster only made that fact undeniable ... NASA's dirty little secret is that the only experiments being conducted by humans in space is how to conduct experiments with humans in space ...

Nothing done out there helps us here under gravity and air pressure ...

The Air Force figured out it was cheaper to send up satellites with rockets than with the space shuttle ... AMTRAK rolls right past the shuttle launch pads on Vandenberg, all unused ...

 

[ReinyDays]

I've always thought of black holes as a shell, created by something underneath ... it's not a thing of matter or energy, it's just the place where photons fall into a gravity well ...

I'm assuming it's a super massive neutron star underneath, the black hole is just what our eyes perceive ... we can only "see" so far down these gravity wells ... and guess at what lies below ...

 

[toobfreak]

Nothing done out there helps us here under gravity and air pressure ...The Air Force figured out it was cheaper to send up satellites with rockets than with the space shuttle ...

Not really true. Many things were discovered in space and conducted there in zero gravity we were not aware of or cannot do here on Earth. While some of them can be simulated in a falling jet, others take time. Some have lead to many important discoveries, but really, the ISS is more ideal for that, the real purpose of the Space Shuttle was just as a means of getting to/from and building the ISS itself. So NASA figured to build the shuttle first then the ISS, but it turned out that the Shuttle proved unreliable.

As to purely launching payloads in space, sure, cheaper to launch directly with a rocket than to launch a rocket carrying the shuttle carrying the payload.

NASA has its good and bad and obviously one of the biggest criticisms of NASA is SpaceX. Elon has succeeded in doing more, more quickly and more cheaply privately than NASA/Boeing has succeeded doing with public funds.

 

[ReinyDays]

Not really true. Many things were discovered in space and conducted there in zero gravity we were not aware of or cannot do here on Earth. While some of them can be simulated in a falling jet, others take time. Some have lead to many important discoveries, but really, the ISS is more ideal for that, the real purpose of the Space Shuttle was just as a means of getting to/from and building the ISS itself. So NASA figured to build the shuttle first then the ISS, but it turned out that the Shuttle proved unreliable.

As to purely launching payloads in space, sure, cheaper to launch directly with a rocket than to launch a rocket carrying the shuttle carrying the payload.

NASA has its good and bad and obviously one of the biggest criticisms of NASA is SpaceX. Elon has succeeded in doing more, more quickly and more cheaply privately than NASA/Boeing has succeeded doing with public funds.

I thought SpaceX was rockets ... which are perfect for satellites ... I think NASA's mistake is human space flight, too expensive ... the money is better spent on robotics ... not as much bloodshed when they do foul up ...

 

[toobfreak]

I've always thought of black holes as a shell, created by something underneath ... it's not a thing of matter or energy, it's just the place where photons fall into a gravity well ...

No shell, no nothing. Volume wise, there is no actual black hole. Whatever the size of the event horizon is merely a point where beyond that we simply don't see as no radiation escapes. Inside the event horizon (the "skin" of the black hole") is basically empty save for whatever infalling stuff. And while the BH collects energy and matter, the BH itself may indeed be another STATE of matter. It is certainly a violation of the physical laws of the universe as we understand now, the reason why Einstein could not accept them. While a neutron star with the mass of the sun might fit within NYC, a black hole with several times the mass of the sun could fit on the head of a pin.

You can only get so close to the Earth. Any closer and you begin to go inside it. From there on in, gravity becomes weaker because now its mass is all around you. But a BH is different--- not only is it many times the mass of the Sun, but even the smallest black hole has probably the mass of 5,000,000 Earths, all within an area smaller than a speck of dust. Since spacetime is a function of gravity and velocity, you have a warp of spacetime where velocity approaches light speed and the time constant totally changes. Falling into a BH, you would see the Earth age millions of years of time go by in your final seconds falling in. So really, a BH is not so much an object, but a warp in spacetime where the normal laws of newtonian physics simply stop operating.

I'm assuming it's a super massive neutron star underneath

Nope, not even that. The most massive neutron star (where a spoonful of it would weigh millions of tons) would be instantly crushed and absorbed. Nothing can withstand the force of a black hole as it is literally a portal out of the universe to somewhere else, maybe another dimension or universe.

 

[toobfreak]

I thought SpaceX was rockets ... which are perfect for satellites ...

They also have a manned module called the Dragon.

I think NASA's mistake is human space flight, too expensive ... the money is better spent on robotics ... not as much bloodshed when they do foul up ...

Well sure. NASA came into being from an organization called NACA originally charged with beating the Russians in the space race. In the 1960s, that was all manned stuff.
But now, manned stuff is way too expensive and dangerous, it is all robotic--- except for the planned eventual building of a lunar colony as a preamble to trying to send people to Mars.