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Hubble Delivers Indications Of Black Holes
tomorama writes: "Working with the Hubble Space telescope, Ohio State University astronomers studied the most central 1000 light years -- or 6 quadrillion miles -- of 24 spiral galaxies. Associate Professor Richard Pogge and graduate student Paul Martini discovered a distinct swirling pattern in 20 of the 24 galaxies, indicating that huge masses of dust were being sucked into gigantic black holes." The link is worth visiting for the enhanced photo of a black hole at feeding time alone.
Don't know why people whine about moderation when there are better things to whine about. Like long, pathetic troll threads. So far there have been two lame trolls (as opposed to the "First post" lobotomites). Both were blatantly obvious. The first was the religious nut vs. black hole troll. Then we follow it with the dull "science is bad" troll. (BTW, anyone come up with a list of troll-types?) Then everyone chortles gleefully at the predictable responses. But you forget... the whole damn thread can be one enormous troll. Before you dismiss me out of hand, remember I had a lot of free time yesterday... Let's call this one a meta-troll. BTW, anyone still reading this thread? Need to work on my timing.
Early astronomers and mathematicians calculated the length of the year to 11 decimal places 500 years before Galileo. At the time the church had complete control over society, they decided that the common man was better off thinking the Earth was flat for religions sake. In Capernicus time the needs of ships to have a simpler navigation system rather then plotting all the planetary Epicycles became increasingly important so the church allowed a paradigm shift to a metaphorical heaven.
The same thing holds true for relativity. There were astronomers who undoubtedly noticed from astronomical observations that starlight bent around the planets. It wasn't until the 1900's that a generally accepted mathematical proof was published by Einstein to explain this phenomena.
The creation of the atomic bomb during wartime had long term effects in terms of keeping some science secret and hidden from view. It wasn't until the 70's when non military satellite signals needed to be adjusted for relativistic doppler effects that relativity had any real non wartime related practical uses.
Yes, that's correct. A star's mass must exceed chandrasekhar's limit to form a black hole. The value of the Chanrdsekhar limit is approximately 3 solar masses. Stars larger than this mass will collapse to form black holes. Stars just slight less than the chandrasekhar limit should form neutron stars. Lower mass stars should become any one of a variety of dwarf stars.
Ok, so lets assume that, ver trillions of years, the hole loses enough mass by evaporation to loses the ability to generate an event horizon. It is no longer a black hole... so the singularity is exposed..a 'naked singulairty' is the term (I think) what would the singularity be, anyway?
You need to red the Bible for yourself instead of listening to your poor misguided preacher. The anti-evo wackos use a strained interpretation of Bible and misrepresentation of Evolution in order to make there statments sound resonable. I reality the Center for Creation Studies is just anouther tool of satan to get Christians to sound like anti-science fools. Satan has had a lot of practice doing this. The Creationist forces use coersion, intimidation, manipulation, and misrepresentations( lies). These are the tools of witchcraft. An analisys of there statments relative to the Bible, taken togeather, deny the Power of GOD, and the saving Grace of Jesus.
Anan Shep, you should learn alittle history befor you post. Western science is a direct result of Christianity. The religious, legalistic, hierarchal, power hungry, forces that call themselves Christian, do *not* speak for real teachings of Jesus. It is true that the power hungrey often use religion to promot ignorance. The ignorant are after all easier to control. That is what is happening now with the present crop of anti-science legalists. On a side note, Christanity is not about religion, but about a relationship with Jesus. The Bible is very clear on this.
BRING ON THE KEROSENE!!!
comes up with these outlandish stories. What's next NASA, will Hubble "find" planets with intelligent life? I am tired of seeing state sponsored aethism try to destabilize religion.
Excuse me Mr. Clever, but you've missed the fucking point. Those kinds of research were of everyday phenomena, and as such useful to the human race. What application is going to come from research into black holes? None, that's what. That's why I called it pointless research - because it is pointless.
Before posting next time, please try to clamp down on your irrational urges to post idiotic reponses to something you "read" in the loosest sense of the word.
nice troll.
These scientists arent trying to tell me how to live my life, and i doubt theyll be passing me a collection plate anytime soon.
It's been a while since I last trolled (about six weeks or so), and I thought it might take me a little longer to get back in the saddle than this, but I'm evidently doing alright. :) There are plenty of other trolls here who are much better than I am -- 70%, 80md, dmg, streetlawyer, etc. -- but, yeah, there are plenty of spammers too....
Too bad that black holes aren't naturally very controversial, though.
Discontinued?!? Did it ever exist? I remember going to their site a few months ago, and seeing a "WMP for UNIX coming soon" message.
A slight correction to that makes a huge philosophical differece. Hawking Radioation, which the author said you can escape as, actually works by destroying the stuff inside. So you would simply be graced by the knowledge that you were being swapped for stuff on the outside, that ou were being anniolated so some stuff still outside the event horizon wouldn't be violating any conservation laws. Its not even as romantic as being slowly ejected accross the univerce as radiation, but since nobody will be reading this fr down this late anyways, it hardly matters, but its worth saying.
All this talk about trolls is admittedly invigorating, but we must not forget that without our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we would not be having this conversation. It is an act of sheer, divine Creation by which we are here and able to speak and interact with this wonderful world that God has created for us. Perhaps if you all spent a little bit less time trolling and a little bit more time extolling the virues of Christ Jesus and the promise of everlasting life with the Father, Slashdot would be a much better place.
Yours in Christ,
Frank Vernon
Sheesh, Show me the power of the 'Lord of Hosts' and I'll admit I'm wrong.
Shut the fuck up.
.. shut the fuck up.
Seriously
Do you people have any idea how deranged you come off sounding? Slashdot posts a story about science and you come from out of left field and complain about how people call you nutty when you insist that the entire universe was farted out by a Hebrew wind demon named Yahweh in the year 4,004 BC? Christianity is insanity. There is no other explanation. Your post only serves to reinforce this.
If you people want to revert to the Dark Ages, fine. If you want to teach your children that astronomers, biologists, etc. are all horrible evil people that Jesus Christ will butcher with a machette, then fine. Whatever wets your willy. But people are going to continue to study science and advance the knowledge of mankind, and if that pisses you off, too fucking bad.
Okay, I feel a lot better now.
I present to you the Holy Word of Brothers Grimm. It must be true because someone wrote it! The TinderBox will bring you enlightenment and your greatest wishes but do not misuse the Tinderbox. I present to you Horus, introduced by the Egyptians and written in stone to outlive the technique of inscribing on paper; a stronger substance for a stronger god. I present to you science, where Gods can be debunked by peers and to disprove a belief does not condemn you to damnation but may actually win you a Nobel prize.
MaxGrab, Sorry but you are very wrong. You confuse the hierachy with the people. Every field of science you listed was advanced, and in some cases created by Christians. The whole bases for Western Science is the concept of an Organized and Understandable Universe created by a Rational GOD. This is in spite of a church hierarchy that *is* more interested in its own power then the spreading of the Word of GOD. Attacking Christianity because of Plato is silly and not very original. Aristrotlian logic was a major influenece on all aspects of Western Civilization, most schools of thought including Christian theology have grown beyond it. So instead of parroting some lame ideas that you picked up at college, I suggest you study some history. As it is you sound like an immature quasi-intillectual.
Is this enough to prove the existence of Black Holes?
VERY intresting indeed... looks like the hubble space telescope is doing well :P
anyone for X-ray images of what the hubble "saw" via the Chandra X-Ray telescope lauched in spring 1999
oh yeah, first post
--
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darkstar - "what you see is sound, what you hear is the deafness of society"
Take your religion elsewhere, please. Somehow it's quite alright for you to have blind faith in your What the hell? Science is the study of how things work, and the methodology of science involves proof of concept. There is no "blind faith" as you put it. No one is hyped up over black holes, but this is a breakthrough in the scientific world. More images that can be concieved as proof that black holes do exist in the universe. "Faith" implies belief in something without proof. There is no faith in science, there is proof. Religion is based upon the concept of faith. There is no proof of a god or any supreme being. Religion was created to explain what was unexplainable by their scientific means at that particular time... now that more and more proof is emerging, religion is slowly dying out because there is not as much need to satisfy the extreme curiosity of existance by stories and fairy tales. Right now I do not need to read a fairy tale in a book to satisfy my scientific curiousity. Apparently you do by referring to your "holy word of God in the Bible." Your book is a collection of interpreted morals, history story's and propaganda. Please don't bring up your religion because of your inability to keep up with the civilization and that there is no longer a need for fairy tales to explain the unexplainable. Most of it has been explained.
So when are we going to use black holes to our advantage to travel through time & shit, I mean, according to astro physics (at least I think, I am really ignorant on the subject) gravity wells such as black holes can be used for something involving time travel or space travel or maybe just getting rid of excess landfill waste....
I'm a creationist. But you're saying that black holes are contradicting with the Bible? If you have some serious arguments, let's hear 'um before your comment gets flamed & moderated, unless you're just trolling again.
I don't get why every single slashdotter seems to get so excited over this sort of thing. "Black holes, golly, wow! How neat!" Well, before everyone gets too worked up over this story, let me just ask one question:
How do you justify your faith in black holes while railing against my faith that the Earth was created by God in seven days?
Somebody else sees a few pixels on a CCD and claims that there are massive black holes at the center of galaxies, and it's just accepted by the slashdot community. But if I read the holy word of God in the Bible and claim that it directly contradicts your theory of evolution or your pixels on your CCDs or what have you, I'm suddenly the target of a few dozen extremely impolite replies. Somehow it's quite alright for you to have blind faith in your scientists, but not at all fine for me to have faith in my God. Well, I say to you: you must mend your hypocritical ways. If the scientists are worthy of your trust, God must be even more so. And if you take a moment to think things over for yourself, or to read the Bible and find truth, you'll find that when they are in contradiction, it's God who you should believe. So think a little more about this new scientific "revelation" before so blindly accepting it. You'll be wiser for it.
I feel that America wastes far too much of its national budget on useless "scientific" research like this. The Hubble telescope, and many other similat projects such as the COBE satellite, take money away from the truly important things which our tax dollars should pay for, such as public utilities, the military and education. These things are far more important than making a few scientists happy about "gravitational lensing" or other such exotica.
What we need is to stop wasting money on things which have no impact on the lives of ordinary Americans and return to the days when the well-being of America was more important than some mythical objects halfway across the Universe which we may never prove exist. Why should we pay for people to sit around in comfy chairs making claims about things which they have no direct experiance of? Science is a great tool, but this kind of research is simply of no use to us and is a drain on our resources. We should concentrate more on things which have practical value, like HDTV, otherwise we will (again) be overtaken by the rest of the world.
I'm sorry if I implied that. I'm just sick of the fact that when science and the Bible are in direct contradiction, everyone on here is foaming at the mouth to shout the reasons why science is right and religion is wrong. That's all.
you're bitter because you dropped out of grad school, right?
I used to see these morons on alt.rock-and-roll ten years ago, spelling "Rush" in all caps and flaming every other band on Earth. They were all @psu.edu back then. This was before AOL, when the earth was young and psu was the central distribution point for cretinism on USENET. Oh, how time flies
C'mon kid, tell us about "the genius of Ayn Rand"! Tell us how Neil Peart is an Important Literary Figure because he did an ABD in philosophy! What innocent days those were . . .
The funny thing is, Rush made some damned cool records back when they were young and fierce. Signals was their last gasp, but by that time they'd done enough to be remembered.
My my my, that's an awful lot of vitriol for such a short post! And of course you miss the fact that you fell for a troll. And you fell HARD. And then you of course forget to mention that the majority of Christians do NOT believe the things that you wrote, so you are no better than the troll himself. So there.
I'll believe in god when I see him.
But first I'll kick his lame ass for pulling all this shit on everybody.
wooohooo... I'm scared.
Huh? I guess all those measurements of G I did on torsion balances as an undergrad were a waste of time, if I should have been cracking open the little balls to find black holes.
I'll believe in god when I see him.... take your blind faith elsewhere and read Stephen Hawking's: A brief history of time
These images are always so low res and small. I wish I could find some cool pictures of galaxies, novas, black holes which were desktop worthy. Anyone have any recomendations?
Because these scientists have an evidentiary chain longer than "I told you so... NAH! NAH!". Get it through your head: just because it's writting in some old book doesn't bestow that statement any great truth. In fact, I'd argue that the older the idea, the more stale and less relevant to modern society. Sure, these physicists might be wrong, but at least they'll admit it once enough evidence comes along to disprove their claim... hell, the Pope won't even apologize for agregious crimes against humanity, but he's got "the book" backing him up! Ohhhhh, yeah!
PUKE
Most of you are only thinking of all the movies and TV shows you have seen about black holes and such. Sphere, Star Trek, Wing Commander, Stargate, etc. They're all fantasy. The fact is that black holes CRUSH whatever enters them by exerting the force of the gravity well of a deceased planet on it. A direct quote from the article itself: "ASTRONOMERS BELIEVE that black holes are created when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses under its own weight into something so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational pull." These things have the power to bend LIGHT, which is just packets of energy that have very little matter weight. Black holes are like the buttholes of the universe, digesting all this food and spitting it out the other side (probably) in highly condensed form. What I wonder is if a black hole can die out. Earth is still alive because it has the energy inside it to survive etc. Once it exhausts its life energy it will collapse into a star and everntually (and I mean after billions of years) turn into a black hole.) So will everything in the universe eventually turn into black holes? Maybe thats like the end of the cycle of the universe and when the black holes suck themselves together and make one HUGE black hole, there is a shitstorm of an explosion (re: the Big Bang) and everything is scattered throughout the universe again. I'm not a scientist, just some 17 y.o. kid bored on a Saturday afternoon reading Slashdot articles. Kind of puts everything in perspective, eh? :)
"Inappropriate use of images includes but is not limited to: religious materials, e.g., tracts, handouts, etc., gang related materials, ethnic background materials, and political information."
Despite what you might think, Hubble data is propietary data belong to some sham front organization. It's NASA SOP to violate copyright law which says that works of the US Federal Government are in the Public Domain. Duh. The Public pays for it - the Public gets to use it. But no. Many US agency farm off all their important work to some private organization or company which we pay AND allow to claim copyright.
In the case of Hubble, the main motivation for this scam is so they can legally give the "principle investigators" EXCLUSIVE USE of the data for a year or so as a "prize" for having won the competition for being involved. As a side-benefit, they can forbid religious and other unsavoury charactors from using the data at all.
In another case which should be familiar, many of the Linux kernel's NIC drivers were developed by someone doing work for NASA on NASA computers at NASA facilities (and distributed from those same computers) which "should" result in them being in the Public Domain for use by Linux, *BSD, BeOS, etc., but no - they are proprietary like the rest of the kernel so that when someone tried to use them in a non-GPLed OS they were threatened with a law suit.
I'm never quite sure whether my wrath should be directed only at the government agencies that create these loopholes in the system or those who, like Bill Gates and Donald Becker, take advantage of them. My instinct is to blame them all for not doing "the right thing" despite the loopholes.
this kind of research is simply of no use to us
You said:
Don't speak for others who have not invited you to speak for them, asshole.
I say:
Maybe I want him to speak for me? This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. You're upset because he says "us" which you automatically assumes includes you. Then you come back around to say "don't speak for others who have not invited you to speak for them". Yet this is you speaking for other people, telling him not to speak for them.
Well this is hardly fair is it? Next time, why don't you say something like:
Hi, I'm dumb and I don't want you to express your opinions! Thanks, I'll go back to molesting children now,
Because it's honest and fair, much more so than what you said before.
(From the album: A Farwell to Kings)
Book One ---- The Voyage
Prologue
In the constellation of Cygnus
There lurks a mysterious, invisible force
The Black Hole
Of Cygnus X-1
Six Stars of the Northern Cross
In mourning for their sister's loss
In a final flash of glory
Nevermore to grace the night....
1
Invisible
To telescopic eye
Infinity
The star that would not die
All who dare
To cross her course
Are swallowed by
A fearsome force
Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more?
Atomized ---- at the core
Or through the Astral Door ----
To soar....
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Thank you.
I am sick and tired of reading "scientists have discovered..." or "scientists now know that...". Individual people (sometimes working together, somtimes alone) make discoveries, not "scientists"!
RICHARD POGGE and PAUL MARTINI.
Many years ago, I read in a scientific journal that there was/were some people talking about "White Holes" - the opposite of black holes.
IIRC, there was some talk about the relationship between cosmic string and "White Holes". Personally I find it interesting.
I wonder if there is any development on the "White Hole" front? Has anyone prove the existence of "White Holes"?
Expiring mind is waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the answer - if there ever any.
:)
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A smallish black hole (a few solar masses or less)
will have the behavior you claim- ripping things
apart frm the tremendous gravitational gradient
(tide) over the size of a nearby object.
However a very massive hole- on the order of billions solar masses would appear moe benign.
The tidal force would be barely noticeable.
When you crossed the horizon, your any radio (EM)
messages to the outside universe would stop making it out.
People have written sci-fi stories about these
closed universes.
My life online is a whole lot more interesting than my real life (and takes up more of my time)
Space Cadet
Remember, advertising is a way to make money, by posting(or following a link to) an msnbc URL, you are making Microsoft some money. Maybe you don't care, I just wanted to point it out.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Re: The spiraling dust
The dust would orbit the black hole in an accretion disk (I know I've mispelled accretion-sorry)
You're right that the dust ought to fall into the black hole from a spherical cloud of dust, all things being equal.
But Black Holes rotate, and rotating they grab space-time and drag it with them. Short version- in the presence of a rotating black hole, the tidal forces caused by the rotation force the particles into a disk symmetry rather than a shell symmetry. (Much like the rings of Saturn are rings because of the planet's shape.)
In illa quae ultra sunt
also, they won't serve the page unless you accept cookies. grr.
Maybe you're boycotting. Most others really don't care.
Dan
Actually, it's a normal part of academic (and scientific) discourse to remove personal referents and so on. While you may quote (Hawking 42), you don't say "I found this . . . " you say "it has been found that". And often there are multiple people looking for the same thing, working as a team, so they write it together.
That is your first (bad) lesson on academic and scientific discourse. Thank you.
Dan
Stop it hurts :)
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Hi, I'm dumb and I don't want you to express your opinions! Thanks, I'll go back to molesting children now,
... How about him saying is simply of no use for me (him)? How about you speaking for yourself?
You're sharp...
Yet this is you speaking for other people, telling him not to speak for them.
No. I'm speaking for myself.
Though truly you're right I should have said Do not speak for me asshole.
Thank you.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
We should concentrate more on things which have prac
Remember the Marshall Tucker? That car had all the safety gadgets you could imagine. Course nobody thought any of those things were practical. Not until 20 yrs later. So put a sock in it.
this kind of research is simply of no use to us
Don't speak for others who have not invited you to speak for them, asshole.
public utilities, the military and education
There's no way for the education system to improve, if science in itself is not considered important. Everything you use in your daily existence is the result of a technology that was once considered useless. For example, your military expense should not include war planes because they were once considered useless. I forget the quote (sometime in the early 30s).
I'm sorry but ignorant assholes like you are the reason society is stuck in a confused frustrated state. You rant all about the future and education but when it comes time to invent or discover or simply follow a dream (you don't think following dreams is a useful endeavor it seems), you whine about public utilities as if your toilet were more important than progress.
Go fuck yourself.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Ok hate is a strong word. More like I'm inconvenienced to the point of insanity. But this one is great. Oh and for those fools whining about modding up/down those you do/don't agree with, show us where to draw the line oh great masters of all that is and isn't.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
It doesn't look like Nasa has a press release out for this one yet. Well, at least I can't find one on the page you quote. (Thanks none-the-less, now I have an afternoon's catching up to do
Providing convenient links to external sources of information is one thing that some news-sites are good at, and some are really bad at. There is one way down at the bottom of the MSNBC story that goes to a press releas from the researchers themselves (at Ohio State) that has slightly better images, but I had to hunt for the links and know what I was looking for.
I give MSNBC a 4 out of 10. A couple points for having links at all, a couple points for having more than one link, but no points for visibility or integration with the story, and I'm deducting a point because they never ever have click-throughs to decent sized images.
On the "Hubble delivers black holes" article, Set you browser to ask to accept cookies and try to follow the slashdot link. All you will get is two cookies trying to load from MicroSluts nbc website. If you accept the cookies of course you get thru. "Forcing you to accept cookies?" Where are my rights to refuse? Is this the future of cookies? Yes I want my cake and eat it too! I think this has gone way too far and actually no one has mentioned it. There were at least 114 replys to the article at the time I read it. Are we all sheep?
IMNAAstrophysicist, but I'll try to help. First, accretion disks are a fact of life, you're going to have to accept it sooner or later. 1. Orbits are eliptical 2. Any sufficient collection of random orbits will have at least one cluster of similar orbits. 3. Given time and gravitational contraction, initial biases are amplified by ejection, capture , and attraction to other objects in orbit. Second, the paragraph you mention is talking about "active" black holes as being those which are attracting enough matter for their activities to be visible from earth. Specificly, Black holes around which most stuff is safely orbiting form simple disks which won't stand out to clearly from here. Black holes which are actually swallowing large amounts of stuff will most likely exhibit the spiral patterns in their disks which the whole article is basically about. In the context or the article and paragraph, active and inactive make perfect sense.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Thus, in an open universe, the matter falling into black holes will eventually pop right back out. So, you don't really have to worry about this too much.
The _real_ problem is that you will eventually have a completely uniform universe, (maximum entropy) which means that there isn't a way to harness that energy.
On another note, it is interesting to note that we may already be in a black hole. If you look at the average mass density and size of the observable universe (which is about 10 or 15 billion light years in radius) and plug them into an appropriate formula (say here) then the universe has the gross properties of a black hole (the right size and mass). (It's important to note that size or mass completely describes a non-charged, non-spinning black hole).
So, falling into a black hole might suck (pardon the pun :] ) but living in one might be ok.
I'm a Christian, and I believe in God. I'm also very interested in scientific things. I "believe in" Black holes, and I think worm holes may well be possible, although that still needs to have a bit more research put into it. I also, although again same comments as with worm holes, think time travel may well be possible. I dont seem to see any huge major contradictions in any of those things. I don't belive in evolution, but then, that's a pretty mixed bag as far as people who believe it and don't believe it. But as far as the other stuff goes, I don't find any problems with being a Christian and believing in God, and at the same time accepting stuff like Black Holes and the possibilty of Worm Holes and other such things. So, to address both sides of the arguement to the "religious" side: Why does everyone always assume most of science can't be true because of religious beliefs? to the "science" side: Not all religious people are, excuse the term, morons, who think that most of science can't be true because of other beliefs. There do exist people who, while believing in something, such as God, can also accept life as a reality and deal with things in it as such. So don't just get a negative view of a group because of a few people.
At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC
:)
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You're right. That link used to be part of a rather large series of pics. But from there I know that you can find quite an extensive and fun number of very spiffy pics.
hehe... time to weed through my bookmarks...
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
... which of course I can't view on my Linux box because WMP for Unix has been discontinued. (Another reason why Microsoft wanted to invest with NBC? :-)
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
There is no such thing as gravity. Everything sucks.
The link to the book on amazon is here
Aren't we supposed to be boycotting Amazon.com in favor of Barnes & Noble?
Will I retire or break 10K?
One step closer to a universal garbage chute. :)
Seriously folks, have you ever thought of the practical implications of blackholes or derived "physical anomalies"?
Bins that don't need to be emptied or radioactive waste dumps that don't release radiation to the area surrounding them.
Or a "reversable" black hole.
Put "infinite stuff" in, reverse and return on demand, sort of a flip-flop black/white hole.
Is it theoretically possible to focus a wormholes start and stop points to the same physical point in space/time?
Is it be theoretically possible (permitting we could get to a black hole) that an anti-gravity enclosure field could protect the contents from being compressed by a black hole, or does a white hole uncompress the output (presuming there is output) in a like manner and restore the object passing through to it's original state, therefore eliminating the safety measure? :)
{Now on to bending the topic}Sort of like a cosmic tar-gzip/untar-gunzip.
Can any christians/jews/muslems/whathaveyou speculate on what a supreme being might want with black holes?
{Now on to rant}Are we a simple bacterium on the skin of said supreme being looking at pores in his/hers epidermis?
This would explain (in a somewhat twisted fashion) the theory of spacial surface tension.
Why does finding black holes mean that scientists are trying to debunk religion?
You all seem to forget that we cannot "prove" anything about this universe once it leaves the realm of "hands-on".
We can speculate, postulate and hypothesise until we're blue in the face, and while we can get some great results (computers, cars, television and radio to name but a few), we also cannot disprove anything.
I cannot prove that god exists, but because I cannot find evidence to disprove him/her/it I therefore must at least acknowledge that there is room in this universe for him/her/it. :) Makes you think doesn't it.
Theoretically I cannot disprove anything.
If I were to say that atoms spin in oblong orbits and have names like Bob or Paul, I cannot say I am right just because it's written down, nor can you say I'm wrong because there is no disproving evidence of such.
Are we living on a planet in the orbit of a nucleus of an atom in a caffeine molecule in someone's giant coffe cup, and if we look harder at atoms, will we find infinitely small galaxies inside those atoms?
Does infinity exist and if so, is it a sort of pale blue?
It has been said that god created man, but speculated that man created god and suppose both are right.
We know not enough to say who is wrong and who is right.
We only know ourselves and our place in our own microcosm's, and while occasionally your microcosm may intersect along mine at some point in time (and for that matter what is time?) we cannot say what the consequences may be, we can only deal with the good and the bad and live our lives as best we can.
Thank you and good night/morning.
Zero Kelvin - mailto:zero@neuron.cjb.net
Web site - http://neuron.cjb.net
(I know, I know, the update is coming.)
Slightly offtopic
/dev/null threat.
The more I hear about supermassive black holes being found in the centres of galaxies, the more I am reminded of Larry Niven's "Known Space" series. Rather than the threat posed by radation from supernovae in the galaxy core postulated by Niven, it seems rather to be astronomical
The real question is: do they burp when they're done?
First off, I don't understand the sprialing dust theory.. They almost make it sound like black holes are a point on a 2D plane which makes no sense, this dust would have to be collapsing towards the centre, but I doubt it would spiral down as you'd have a sphere of such dust rather than a cone or disk of it like they tend to describe.
Also, what is this crap about a black hole being "inactive" unless initially fed.. I'm sure MSNBC screwed up the wording here, but it sounds like they're describing a chemical reaction between two reacting chemicals; without one there is no reaction. This is crap, black holes are massive gravitational fields and would accellerate matter towards the centre all the time. I can see where after some time the process would stabilize; the matter near the hole would be inside and the matter far enough away would be attracted to nearer bodies. I'm not so sure where the "Before black holes become active, you have to feed them" quote would come from, it sounds misquoted or at worst pulled out of context. Who says the media cares if they get the story *right* anyway. I hope the scientists contact MSNBC about that, but not like they'll care.
I expect too much...
Remember, don't feed the trolls.
There's a fluffy book review on the front page of the Toronto Star today.
The link to the book on amazon is here
The article might not be very well written, but it raises some interesting ideas and guesses as to whether we're alone or not. Not completly on-topic, but what the hell...
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
But then again Microsoft would probably buy out NASA and patent the photos as proprietary source code
Let's hope not, before you know it will only be possible to travel trough time in a spaceship running MS Windows 3122 TSE ( TimeShip edition )
aed
You couldn't have possibly said something less correct than if you had just lied. 'Western science is a direct result of Christianity.' Do not make me laugh. Western science has advanced *at every turn* against the will and whim of the Christian religion.
Every single advancement in science, be it in the area of physics, astronomy, or biology, has been violently attacked by Christians. Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, all did their work against the will of the church. Later it was Darwin, then Einstein. All of these major contributors to science were assaulted for their views by bearers of the Bible.
The roots of Christian philosophy in fact derive partly from Platonism, a school of thought in which mystical "ideal realms" and "perfect shapes" were more important than real realms and real shapes. Part of the reason they call irrational numbers irrational was due to the prejudice by Platonists that all numbers be whole and perfect and evenly divisible. While Platonism was gaining its groundswell in Greek thought, other and more valid approches to science, including those of Sun-centered astronomer Democritus were suppressed and ridiculed.
Plato, and his buddy Aristotle, it turns out, were completely wrong about almost every subject of science they chose to take a position on. But it was Platonic philosophy and Aristotelian science that formed the basis of much of the corpus of Christian thought. Aristotle's absurd constructs of invisible spheres took up prominence as the approved model of the universe, and Plato's republic (a repulsive, obnoxious and idiotic piece of work) became the model for an ideal society. What rot.
'I suggest you study some history.' I have. Try the following titles:
The Republic, Plato
?Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein. (I don't have the title offhand-- it's E's 'popular' book, about 150pp in length, on the subject but it's the best one I read of the three or four that I did).
The Starry Messenger, Galileo Galilei.
?Dialog on Two Systems, Galileo Galilei. Title may vary depending on the translation.
A Brief History Of Time, Stephen Hawking.
Cosmos, Carl Sagan. (TV show or book, doesn't matter).
Broca's Brain, Carl Sagan.
The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg.
To answer all but your adhominem attacks. Plato's 'ideal realm' was the apparent basis for the ridiculous Aristotelian 'spheres' which caused Galileo so much trouble, and continued to beleaguer scientists throughout the Renaissance. Basically, the heavens were thought to be perfect and any evidence to the contrary was vehemently denied and suppressed. Blemishes on the surface of the Moon were dismissed as an optical illusion. Read Galileo's Dialogs for the complete story.
Plato's republic and the metaphors contained therein crop up everywhere in the succeeding medieval period as a basis for serfdom and slavery. Sagan I believe says in Cosmos that the ideas of the Platonists formed the basis for a 'corrupt social order.' A little research would bear that out. That and the stupid cave metaphor are the primary reasons I object to Plato.
None of the scientific fields in question were, as far as I am aware, created by Christians. Einstein was a Jew, as you might recall. I think Darwin was an agnostic of some sort. Astronomy was invented centuries before the Bible was written, and as you may note neither the names of the stars nor the planets bear any 'Christian' derivation. Stars are by and large named in Arabic. Thus the Arabs probably contributed the most to the field of astronomy pre-Galileo. The pre-Galileo planets all have Roman names. Mathematics -- again I believe we call the numerals 0 through 9 the 'Arabic' numerals, not the 'Hebrew' numerals.
Plenty of Christians advance the cause of science. I don't belittle their contributions. Newton was a devout Christian. But most of the time they do so at the protests of their church. In addition to the persecution of Galileo, and the List of Bad Books (or whatever) maintained by the Catholic Church, we have a more modern example: Not too long ago Hawking reports (see Brief History of Time) that the Pope lectured a bunch of physicists on how it was OK for them to talk about the Big Bang, but the period preceding it was verboten. Hawking of course confessed that he had been thinking about just that the day before . . .
And the whole basis of Science is to learn about the universe. Whether it was created by anyone is not yours to say. You don't know that and can't prove it. And as I've posted before, God is a non-logical premise that Occam's Razor suggests we omit for reasons of simplicity. In short (or not), I believe the universe makes exactly as much sense without God as with. And since God doesn't make much sense to me, can't be proven, and adds no benefit to my understanding of the universe, and was to all appearances introduced to the equations by HUMAN BEINGS who didn't know any better than I do, I omit the whole idea from my equations.
I would invite you to read my lifetime catalog of 4,000 books before you determine the 'quasi' and 'immature' states you believe I occupy. The titles above are the tip of the iceberg, friend. Also try: 'Paradise Lost,' by Milton, ' Dante's 'Inferno,' anything by the Bard, Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings,' Stephen King's 'The Dark Tower' series, and (to get to the stuff I really like) anything by Asimov, anything by Brian Aldiss, anything at all by Terry Bisson, Larry Niven, Stephen R. Donaldson, Vernor Vinge, MJ Engh, some selected Orson Scott Card (i thought Speaker for the Dead was his best ever), and so on, and so on, and so on . . .
In fact, Hawking radiation is created by the matter orbiting/spiraling towards the black hole. Imagine you're on your way to a black hole. When you reach its vicinity, you can go into orbit around it; if your orbit is unstable, you will spiral in towards the black hole. This will take a long time; but as you spiral in, your (angular) velocity will increase. Now, since you are made up of particles, all of whose angular velocities are increasing (read: all of which are accelerating), you will emit electromagnetic radiation. Someone beyond the gravitational pull of the black hole can intercept this radiation and realize that you are about to fall into it. Thus, a black hole *does* "emit" matter/energy.
-sean o. "when the power runs out, we'll just hum"
Have you ever compared the properties of a black hole to, for example, the sun, our dwarf star? What keeps a planet from floating apart? Scientists say that a planet's mass creates a gravity field. It somehow keeps us white people from jumping higher than everyone else in basketball. Just a little harmless joke on the white men can't jump movie. Crappy movie though... I think that every planet has a very weak black hole in the center. It has fooled us for hundreds of years and it took an open-minded man to discover gravity. Do you think that there can be gravity if our planet was flat or was in the shape of a rectangle? I don't necessarily think that there is a possibility of a black hole in the center of our planet, but there may be strange minerals inside. More unique to a black hole by not destroying the planet! Look at magnetite, for example. Make a scale model of a planet that is 12" in diameter. Put a powerfull earth magnet in the middle that measures 3" in diameter. Given that the difference in diameter of the earth magnet inside the perimeter of the foam, perfectly centered, the foam that is not displaced represents dirt or lava. Make some models of people with peices of magnetite on their feet. Now, imagine your model planet floating out in space, zero gravity, and unaffected by any other magnetic fields. Notice anything? All your model people with metal and magnetite on their feet tend to stand up and stay on the planet. I know it sounds childish about how I describe this model... You are probabley thinking of the layout of the series Star Trek, when Captain Peckerd visits the BoRgus ship. Their idea of artificial gravity on that ship may not be as primitive as it seems. I did think the giant cube was lame. Imagine a mineral that is like magnetite, but it attracts all things of matter simillar to a Black hole. NO NO NO! Not as strong! Very refined, weak, minerals, bonded or melted into the hull of a space craft and is used in high ammounts on the walkways. It may actually help keep a space craft in one peice! Now, think of our planet being flat, with some form of gravity. This imaginary mineral will allow a flat slab of land in space to exhibit the traits of a spherical planet with a black hole in its core. You definitely need a computer simulation for this one! Now, think about magnetic fields, UFOs, and about propelling objects using the force of the magnetic fields of planets as "free" energy. Have you ever seen the opposite of a black hole? Maybe, one that does not implode, but explode? Magnetically speaking. How about an imploding, black hole that somehow repells masses outside of its own. A tear in space that has no space? I give up.
without prejudice
All you Christians are WRONG!!!! My book says that the univers was created by the epervesant treefrog of gruff, I have a relationship with my treefrog, and it listens to me when I talk to it.
I believe western religion is a minority, I think there are more Hindu (and offshoots of Hindu) in the world than there are are Muslim (and offshoots such as Christian, ect)
You don't need to see a Black Hole it has been proven through math, I'm shure that when experiments were being done on sutch obsure things as the Electron and focused Magnetic fields, many people could not see a practical application for it... Who knows what we will gain from pushing the boundaries of our scientific knowledge....
I'm done now
Steven Hawking calculated that black holes
have temperature and eventually evaporate after
unimaginable periods of time. (By virtual
particle pair creation on the horizon and one half
escapes, leaking energy.)
The book in the heading, postulates what the
universe would be like where the main source
of energy is the evaporation of black holes.
This would be after the era of thermonuclear light
(current) and after all hadrons (protons, etc.)
had distintigrated. The universe would immensely
larger, older, colder, darker, and slower than it is now
(where immense is defined by multiplying/dividing
all current scales by @10E50.) Yet it might even
be able to sustain organized patterns- life, intelligence- but immensely slow compared to current such.
Scientists are people, natch.
So when a scientist discovers something, it automatically means that people(individually or not) make the discovery. As opposed to engineers(who are also people), chemists, physicists, astronomers, etc. It's just using a detailed term instead of a more general term.
Nothing to get all PC over...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I think the previous post had it right.
When you do scientific research, you *don't* know what returns you're going to get out.
In this case, studies of astrophysical objects is useful because it's studying the extreme cases of our current model of physics. The more we can explore, understand, and expand our current model, the more we can take advantage of strange phenomena that arise out of the model.
Studying black holes, quasars, stars, etc, give us some knowledge about what happens under very extreme gravitational, electromagnetic, and other strange physical effects. What other laboratory do we have to understand quantum/relativistic/gravitational/strange stuff, except our universe? How else do we expect to find out about the nature of quantum reality, and from it the advances that result from said understanding, if we don't try to model it?
IE, your previous post mentioned we should concentrate on HDTV. Our corporations are doing fine without the goverment in terms of practical advances; market forces and competition take care of that aspect. But 100 years from now, how are our corporations going to create the next Big Thing if we don't have the basic research accomplished in how the universe works? How can they exploit quantum pheonomena, without supercolliders, observing black holes, and playing with Bose-Einstein condensates?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Well, if we really didn't like our scientists, we could kill them.
We don't have that luxury with God, I don't think.
But seriously, God is an unproven requirement for advancement in the moral and ethical area.
Science is a provem requirement for advancement in the physical area. Science improves our lives. God/Religion hasn't.
Of course, the reality is that people wield science and people wield religion. The people who are scientists have made life better, on the whole. Have the people who are religious done the same?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I'll agree that much of Western science is a direct result of Christians; Christianity itself is a different issue. Perhaps it's a misuse, but the term Christianity seems to indicate the Church and the power structure that goes along with it, and I don't think the Church has been very helpful, other than unintended side effects.
Being Christian is not being anti-science. Being religious is not about being anti-science. I don't doubt your last point, but for very many, bein religious and being Christian is often seems related to an anti-science and anti-progress model.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
In short - this universe will never become one huge black hole ... very long time. We may see (okay, we won't see, but you know what I mean) a time when the universe consists of nothing but black holes. These will eventually evaporate, and matter may result from this explosion. But that won't last long either. If you take a long enough time frame, everything will decay, and there'll be nothing left but radiation. In the long run, we are all radiation.
To take the long view: assuming the universe will expand forever, we'll all end up not in black holes, but as radiation.
Black holes don't live forever, just a very, very, very,
Personally, I find this rather depressing, and would rather believe that we're all going to crunch, and perhaps form another universe. That'd be nice.
i mean we all get sucked into it right?
we all heard the assumption that at the center of the galaxy is a black hole, well, what if at the center of our culture is another black hole: the Internet.
it just sucks us (and all (that) matter around it) into some never ending online universe
;)
However, new theories suggest that there might be a slight break in this symmetry, in that you can break things like charge conservation, or other things like baryon number conservation. This would explaing why there is a lot more matter out there than anti-matter. If we lived in a universe which was not dominated by either matter or anti-matter then they would keep colliding, spewing forth radiation in from massive explosions, and you wouldn't get to read this somewhat rambling physics comment on a lazy Satruday afternoon from some wacko math guy. :)
Was they sure that was a hole in space? I theorize that they were pointed toward Micro$oft's headquarters. That seems to be where all the money is going......
The open-ended universe is a truly interesting proposition. Trillions of years (actually something like 10^40 years) from now, when the expansion is so great that new stars are no longer form, and those ancients of the universe, the red giants, have finally exhausted their fuel, the heavens will be lit only by the occasional collision of brown dwarfs fusing to become new starts, and the explosion of black holes. The notion of anything having ultimate permanence is inherently flawed. All fuel will be eventually exhausted. In the case of black holes, they are slowly shrinking due to attrition of mass, what makes black holes "fuzzy" and will eventually explode as a consequence. Particles are constantly popping into existence, something know as Plank radiation ("A theory is not accepted when it's critics are converted, but when they eventually die" - Maxwell Plank. Isn't that a cheery view of the physics community?), and annihilating themselves because they only pop into existence in positive and negative pairs. The only issue is that sometimes particles pop into existence close enough to black holes that one half of the pair is succeed into the black hole before it can destroy itself and sending the lonely particle zooming off into space (the fuzziness), using energy by separating the pair. Our friend Einstein said that mass = energy, so in it's attempt to gobble up more, the black hole has shot itself in the foot by loosing mass in the process of stealing the particle. As the black hole's mass decreases, this process speeds up, and the black hole eventually shrinks so small it explodes. Think supper nova, then think bigger. Now doesn't this all seem splendidly nihilistic? Not event the black holes will survive in a open Universe. Nah, it'll just be a cool light show.
-Frances
IM sn = CzarinaFH
Its a common misconception that black holes some how "suck" in matter. In fact black holes have exactly the same amount of gravitational attraction as a different object with the same mass. If we replaced our sun with a black hole of the sun's mass, the earth would continue to orbit.
Since black holes form and grow from matter which was already in the general vicinity, objects which were far away feel the exact same gravitational force, regardless of whether the mass is in star or black hole form.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
I have seen a lot of questions here about white holes and black hole decay. I thin kI should clarify some of the misconceptions.
...In trillions of pieces over trillions of years.
Many people have difficulty with the idea of a black hole sucking up matter for all eternity, and have thus looked for a way out, something which allows that matter to be reclaimed by the universe. This has led to some rather interesting theories regarding things like white holes. These theories have never been supported by any astronomical evidence, nor do they even make much logical or mathematical sense, at least not in a typical Einsteinian view of the universe. Fortunately, someone has found a "way out". This person is Stephen Hawking. He devised a mechanism by which a black hole could leak out matter and energy slowly over time. This so-called "Hawking radiation" is emitted proportionally to the size of the black hole at the event horizon. Thus, a large black hole would emit energy and matter much faster than a small one, but a small one could eventually decay to the point where it no longer had the mass to generate the gravity well required to contain light. Of course, this is a VERY slow process, and most black holes are gaining mass many orders of magnitude faster than they are losing them.
So, yes, if you went into a black hole, you would be able to get out...
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Hmm,
...
the more we look out into space, the more it seems that objects which were once considered extraordinary/rare, are acutally pretty common (quasars, black holes, neutron stars, etc.).
What are the implications of supermassive black holes in an open ended universe? Does that not suggest that eventually (in 10s of billions of years), everything will eventually be sucked into one of these black holes. Will we eventually have a universe populated by a few (or one) supermassive black hole(s) or am I being overly dramatic here? Are there any models on what the eventual state of such a universe would be? Inquiring minds want to know
Drop by NASA's gallery for better shots from space.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
In short - this universe will never become one huge black hole, unlike New York or Toronto, which already are.
You can't handle the truth.
The images produced by Pogge and Martini show material in the inner spiral arms of the galaxies. It's a stretch to refer to this as material "being sucked into gigantic black holes." Note the scale of the images: the resolution is a few hundred light years. The accretion disk around the black hole is less than one light year in radius; it is completely unresolved in thes pictures.
... but it's not really relevant under the circumstances.
e ctures/blackholes/blackholes.html.
The material shown in these images MAY be spiralling gradually in towards the center of the galaxies, but it may also be in relatively stable orbits around the center. Suppose that a small component of the total velocity -- which is several hundred km/sec -- is radially inwards. It would take tens of millions of years for the material to reach the black hole.
Writing that these pictures show gas which is
"being sucked into a gigantic black hole" is about as accurate as writing "and here's a picture of Angeline Jolie growing old and wrinkled at the Academy Awards ceremony." Sure, technically, she is growing oldER and adding a micro-wrinkle or two as she sits in the audience
By a curious coincidence, I just wrote up a lecture on black holes at the centers of galaxies
for the introductor astro course I'm teaching. Check out
http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/classes/phys240/l
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu