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."

Comments

Wow

[LiquidCoooled]

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

Re:Thru a black hole

[rknop]

I haven't looked at the video yet, but... ... if the black hole is big enough, this won't be a problem, at least for crossing the event horizon. It is true that if you cross the event horizon, you are destined to hit the center and will eventually be paste. However, the bigger the black hole, the less troublesome tidal forces are as you cross the event horizon. For a stellar mass black hole, they will rip you to shreds before you get in, yes.

I suspect, though, that the video is done from the point of view of a "point-camera". Easier that way....

-Rob

Re:No more comments?

[techno-vampire]

BTW how can something with zero volume have an interior?

You're confusing the singularity at the center of the black hole with the hole itself. The hole itself is the volume inside the Schwartzchild Radius, which is where the escape velocity equals the speed of light. Only the singularity has no volume of its own.