Slashdot Mirror
Black Holes and Cosmic Snapshots
deeptrace writes "The New York Times reports that Andrew J. S. Hamilton, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado used video game technology and Einstein's equations for general relativity to calculate what it might look like to fly through a black hole." On a somewhat more tangible note bahstid writes "The Hubble Team has assembled the largest ever image of the Pinwheel Galaxy beyond Ursula Major from 51 Hubble shots and some terrestrial images. The final composition weighs in at 12392x15852 pixels - just over 10 light years per pixel. In an effort to burn out their server properly their European page is making the 450Mb file available for download, along with some slightly more manageable sizes."
I love how science is now using video game technology to attempt to figure out theory... I know while it is not a new concept/practice, I still find it amazing what kind of educated guesses a computer can make over the human mind. Not to mention that huge 450 MB image of the galaxy mentioned in the article is amazing as well. I cannot wait until we can directly photograph extra-solar planets. Our quest to find life and answers in this mindboggling sized universe is increasing all the time. The sheer size of the Telescopes being used is amazing as well. I recently traveled to Hawaii and viewed the Telescopes at the top of Maunea Kea... Just seeing the Size of the Subaru Telescope or the Keck Twins is just... awe striking. I have pictures too! Head over to: http://www.ussamazon.com/live/hawaii/telescopes.JP G yeah upper case JPG, case sensative, blah blah blah.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
450 megabyte download? Too bad I don't have a big enough hard drive to download that onto, but maybe I will if and when I get a second hard drive.
(Here's my attempt at some humour, so hopefully I don't get modded down if someone takes me seriously.) I wonder what that's going to be like on their servers. Posting a story like this on slashdot linking to a place where there's a 450 megabyte file.
450 megabytes.
Thats astronomical!
They do actually have a zoomable version for folks who don't want or need the entire thing. Thats available Here
liqbase
I knew her at school. Lovely girl.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
... shortly after this story went public, a certain server room in Europe resembled the inside of a black hole ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Is bittorrent really that unknown? What the hell? It's a win/win..what are they thinking...
Does it take into account the tidal forces acting on your eyeballs will distort your vision?
My Kingdom for a torrent!! The Slashdotting alone will fry the server withing seconds!!
May the Maths Be with you!
But did spacetelescope.org pay Verizon to deliver the content to Verizon DSL users?
Mod me 'Off-Topic' - I don't care! It's still funny to me.
Ramen
Real math + actual physics + nifty visualization = people actually learning something! *shocking!*
I helped design an astronomy exhibit for a local science museum, and the process you go through in order to make it accessible to the public is mind boggling. Especially when you try to show more than just pretty pictures, but the science behind those pictures.
One question though, does anyone know what variable the simulation was using colors for? Was it temperature (most likely), or something more exotic?
I thought that the effects of flying through a black hole were known since 1979! In fact, if you zoom in on this massive image, you can just barely make out the survivors of the Nostromo! (Okay, that was lame, but I'm shocked that I appear to be the first to make reference to the movie.)
In an effort to burn out their server properly
Okay, that was funny.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
big enough?
Supplies!
I didn't even know they were Catholic!
Call me blind, but I can't seem to put my virtual hands on a copy of that movie. And I'd rather like to see it. Sounds intresting, and I've always liked visualizations of cutting edge physics. Or would that be vanishing edge?
Z
I don't know in what format they provide the image, but if it's some kind of bitmap I've written a freeware for the express purpose of displaying quickly large image files (64 exabyte limit). Windows only, sorry.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Hamilton has had a set of visualizations of falling into a black hole up on his web site for almost 10 years now. It's great to finally see him do a much more sophisticated visualization. If you want to see cruder versions, look at the aforementioned web site.
...for when I get around to building that video-wall.
'We have no choice in what we are. Yet what are we,
but the sum of our choices.' --Rob Grant
Black holes were one of my favorite subjects. Say, for exemple, that you would fall into a black hole, and let's say that light doesn't get trapped in, so outside observers could see what's going on and let's also pretend you do not get crushed/melted in the process. What you would see could very well look like what TFA shows. But what if you look backwards, what if you gaze towards the universe instead of the chaotic center? Because a singularity is in fact an infinite curvature of space-time, that makes a black hole a spot where the universe ends. Would you see the universe fast foward to its end? Would external observers see you fall slowly, until the end of time?
Ok, IANAAstrophysicist. But I'm damn good at day-dreaming. And, again, I think it's a shame we spend trillions in weapons but cannot manage to have some sort of reasonable space program. Of course there are no direct economic benefits when going into and exploring space, so let's just forget about our origins, our future and everything that surrounds us. Let's just say we come from Jesus' father's balls and pretend we're the center of the universe. There. That's easy.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
Here's another fun toy for special relativity http://lightspeed.sourceforge.net/.
It shows how an object's appearance changes when it travels near light speed.
Here's a text version of the movie for those with low bandwidth.
w0000t
Whoa....
aaaaaa
*SPLAT*
(static)
THE END
Okay I am not a mathematician much to my chagrin. I keep telling people in my next life I am going to be a genius at math.......the next Einstein, so to speak.
The thing is people think I am kidding. Anyhow when the article states "10 light years per pixal" what exactly does that mean? From one side of the pixal to the other side is 10 years? Please do not laugh. I love astronomy and have a passion for galaxies.
So how exactly does one get any computer in this universe to compute what happens when all known laws of physics (newtonian or quantum) break down, as in a black hole?
10 lightyears?
Shouldn't that be quoted in arcseconds?
heay I can see my house!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The movie is apparently showing at a Museum, which has a page about it with a trailer. It's in WMV format :-( and I haven't been able to view it so I don't know if it's anything to see.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
"I would love to see a 'Star Wars'-type battle take place in the proximity of a black hole, with the physics intact," Dr. Hamilton said.
Farscape, man! Farscape.
It's funny the lengths journalists will go to in order to convince people that science is interesting. In this case highlighting an unbelievably tenuous link between games and astrophysics. Maybe someone should write a story about how astrophysics and finance are linked because those presentations so beloved of managers are also likely to have components rendered using OpenGL.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
" ...finds that there is an exit via a wormhole, and witnesses a kind of ultimate chaos."
Azathoth!!!!
(you might put carmina burana (O Fortuna) music here)
I Am No An Astrophysicist either, or any kind of physicist, for that matter, but...
At the center of the galaxy there is a black hole (in theory) that is large enough that the tidal forces would not rip you to your component particles as you approach the event horizon. So lets say that you decide that you have nothing left to live for in this universe and decide to journey to another something by traveling into this massive black hole.
By definition when you reach the event horizon, you will be traveling at the speed of light. As you approach the event horizion, the time dilation factor gets approaches infinity, until, at the event horizion it become infinite. So as you cross the event horizion, time has come to an end in the universe you left.
So relative to our universe, "stuff" that falls into a black hole never actually reaches the event horizon. The object just sticks there, as time dilation takes effect. This was, by the way, something that Fredric Pohl used his science fiction novel Gateway. The main character keep thinking of his lover, who is falling toward a black hole and who will fall throughout time.
As you approach the event horizon your mass also increases infinitely, as does your kenetic energy.
In short, an object that crosses the event horizon does not seem to make any sense. Things with mass simply do not travel at the speed of light. So in crossing the event horizon it seems like you've crossed into an undefined area. So this film seems misleading from the point of view of relatively theory. They are trying to simulate something which is outside of definition, because of all of these infinite terms.
But as I noted, IANAAstrophysicist, so perhaps I've gotten it all wrong. I read the New York Times article too, so I would appreciate it if someone pointed out any errors in what I've outlined above.
My understanding of string theory is that the strings are wrapped around the surface of the black hole. So in this view nothing can go down into the interior it just gets wrapped around the event horizon.
This raises the question of what happens when someone falls into a nice big black hole where the tidal forces at the horizon are small and you might think you could just cruise on through and down into the interior. However, from the point of view of an external observer no one ever gets there they just get slower and slower. From the point of view of the fallee however it takes a finite time to get to the horizon. Flip this around though and from the point of view of the fallee the external universe rushes off to infinite time - end of the universe whatever - in the time it takes to get to the event horizon. Now anything that comes in from the external universe will arrive at the event horizon at near light speed, this includes stuff like the micro-wave background which will be incoming as gamma rays and Hawking radiation from near the event horizon which will be similalrly coming in hard and energetic.
The conclusion from this seems to be that any one falling into an event horizon will be fried and turned into subatomic particles or strings before they get there. This is just a thought experiment and I would be fascinated to hear from any astrophysiscists out there who understand what would really happen.
This also implies that the simulation is somewhat misleading.