Slashdot Mirror
New Interactive Black Hole Simulation Published
quaith writes "The New Scientist reports on a simulation just published in the American Journal of Physics that shows how the sky would appear in the vicinity of a black hole — if an observer could actually get near one. Using real positions of around 118,000 stars, the simulation shows how the bending of light, the frequency shift, and the magnification caused by gravitational lensing and aberration in the vicinity of the black hole affect the sky's appearance. The simulation is interactive and allows the user to explore the stellar sky around the black hole. The simulation offers a couple of modes: 'quasi static' or 'freely falling' and the sample videos are quite spectacular. The New Scientist has a writeup, with an embedded video . The original article citation is here (abstract only). The simulation, which runs on Linux or Windows, as well as sample videos, can be downloaded from the University of Stuttgart website."
Perhaps, but it's common (and, I would argue, right) to mention work which has gone before, whether or not it was exactly the same. It gives alternative routes of learning about the given subject (which is, after all, the whole point of publishing results in the first place, right?). Sure, if the work isn't immediately applicable, then do it in a footnote or appendix, but unless one is totally unaware of the previously published (or even unpublished) work, it's better to be comprehensive than parochial.
If that's true, how can black holes grow at all? The time dilation effect would seem to suggest that nothing ever reaches the event horizon, because time slows down so it falls increasingly slowly towards the hole. Something must be wrong, because black holes can grow -- but what is it?