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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 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.
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
Added to that, there is the fact that as the observer is accelerated towards the singularity, reletavistic effects kick in and time passes more slowly for them. Given a big enough black hole, it's possible that the observer may not notice they've indeed crossed an event horizon.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
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