Event Horizon Telescope on the verge of possibly obtaining first picture of a black hole - Polidicks

Oh man. This is one of the things I want to see before I die. An actual picture of an actual black hole! I'm so excited!

[QUOTE=Str4fe;51851680]Black holes are so bizarre and amazing, it's almost as if the universe has a glitch that occurs when something grows too massive and dense[/QUOTE] Physics (but especially stuff like particle physics) get whacky and unstable when pushed to the extreme :v:

[QUOTE=sltungle;51852733]What's up with all of these weird replies? Einstein can still have been ultimately wrong (in fact, my understanding of the situation is that most people in the physics community working on foundational physics argue that he was) without it being a huge deal. Nothing, well at least nothing that you guys are alluding to, is going to go down the drain; astrophysics and cosmology will likely be largely unchanged except for in the most exceptional of cases (early universe cosmology, black holes, [I]etc.[/I]). The precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit isn't going to suddenly change because, "Einstein was wrong". Despite it being almost certainly true that general relativity is fundamentally an approximation to some far more foundational theory it still works in all but the most extreme cases, just as Newtonian mechanics still works for all intents and purposes in our day-to-day lives even though we know that it's merely the limiting case to more fundamental theories (GR with low velocity and minimal spacetime curvature becomes Newtonian mechanics, and quantum theory yields Newtonian predictions in the correspondence limit). Einstein having developed an effective theory to something more fundamental isn't going to taint the achievements of general relativity, and it certainly isn't going to undo all of the progress that has been made in the last century.[/QUOTE] Plus why would it be bad? A new theory, better theory would be written and who knows what that might predict. There wasnt some great depression when Einstein proved Newton incorrect.

So this is when every CGI sci-fi image of a blackhole is proven wrong?

[QUOTE=RoboChimp;51853788]So this is when every CGI sci-fi image of a blackhole is proven wrong?[/QUOTE] It's very difficult to visually convey to someone the idea of something that cannot actually be seen under normal conditions. And that being said I imagine if you COULD see one it wouldn't look all that interesting, I would wager it would look a lot like a star if light could escape from it.

[QUOTE=thisguy123;51853819]It's very difficult to visually convey to someone the idea of something that cannot actually be seen under normal conditions. And that being said I imagine if you COULD see one it wouldn't look all that interesting, I would wager it would look a lot like a star if light could escape from it.[/QUOTE] The idea that a planet could technically survive INSIDE a massive black hole and that the fucking SINGULARITY would provide light just confuses me to no end. See here: [url]https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423608/planets-could-orbit-singularities-inside-black-holes/[/url]

[QUOTE=SgtTupelo;51853926]The idea that a planet could technically survive INSIDE a massive black hole and that the fucking SINGULARITY would provide light just confuses me to no end. See here: [url]https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423608/planets-could-orbit-singularities-inside-black-holes/[/url][/QUOTE] Afaik the spacetime structure inside the black hole he's assuming relies on an unrealistically high degree of symmetry. The structure inside a realistic black hole is likely to be very different, and complex. Also, that's a completely classical analysis. We have no idea what the interior of a black hole looks like from a non-classical standpoint, and it's possible it may not exist in a meaningful sense (at least not as a place where people could survive). Also the diagrams in the paper are making my Chrome shit itself, lol

This has me so excited but then I realize these kinds of things usually turn out to be some fuzzy picture of an indistinguishable speck surrounded by blackness [editline]21st February 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=SgtTupelo;51853926]The idea that a planet could technically survive INSIDE a massive black hole and that the fucking SINGULARITY would provide light just confuses me to no end. See here: [url]https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423608/planets-could-orbit-singularities-inside-black-holes/[/url][/QUOTE] Apparently the universe is guessed to have started in a singularity. I wonder if this means parallel/alternate universes are actually trapped inside black holes all over the universe This is even cooler to me because now we would be able to say "hey how do I get to universe G?" and someone could be like, "yeah so you go 25 light years that way and take a left at the sombrero galaxy"

[QUOTE=GlebGuy;51851645]For some reason I imagined that we'd see a small eye right in the center, staring back at us.[/QUOTE] Or a gigantic arm reach out and grab the scope, and pull it back in.

[QUOTE=GlebGuy;51851645]For some reason I imagined that we'd see a small eye right in the center, staring back at us.[/QUOTE] Nietzsche is leaking

[img]http://i.imgur.com/tE3i4JI.png[/img] Better angle

Apparently, if you get sucked in a black hole, and reach event horizon and look behind, you would see the universe aging, maybe even untill its death, just before you turn to spaguetti, since black hole kinda suck up time. And if there is someone watching you entering a black hole, and you dance before you get to event horizon, he will see you freezing there at the last position you were then slowly fade away.

[QUOTE=alx12345;51856449]Apparently, if you get sucked in a black hole, and reach event horizon and look behind, you would see the universe aging, maybe even untill its death, just before you turn to spaguetti, since black hole kinda suck up time. And if there is someone watching you entering a black hole, and you dance before you get to event horizon, he will see you freezing there at the last position you were then slowly fade away.[/QUOTE] That's a common misconception, even among people who know some GR. It's true that someone far away from the black hole will see you freeze in time and fade away, but it is [I]not[/I] true that you see time speed up to the end of the universe as you fall into a black hole.

[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;51856708]That's a common misconception, even among people who know some GR. It's true that someone far away from the black hole will see you freeze in time and fade away, but it is [I]not[/I] true that you see time speed up to the end of the universe as you fall into a black hole.[/QUOTE] Yeah, probably not speeding time like that but since it suck up light all around you, and with affected space time, pretty sure something really funky will happen, hell we will probably never know the truth.

First of all, you would die. Second of all, at the event horizon light doesn't escape. If you look behind at the universe outside the black hole you'd see the same thing you'd usually do (assuming you're not dead), as light doesn't suddenly travel faster towards you now that you're in the black hole. Let's assume your time has been slowed down upon getting to the event horizon, well so has all the light as it got closer to the event horizon. It's gradually getting slower just as you have, so nothing has really changed with the 'speed' at which you're perceiving things.

Im talking about juust before you get in event horizon, this thing is literaly just a on and off switch, bit spark in between. Its that spark that im trying to understand.

[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;51857348]First of all, you would die. Second of all, at the event horizon light doesn't escape. If you look behind at the universe outside the black hole you'd see the same thing you'd usually do (assuming you're not dead), as light doesn't suddenly travel faster towards you now that you're in the black hole. Let's assume your time has been slowed down upon getting to the event horizon, well so has all the light as it got closer to the event horizon. It's gradually getting slower just as you have, so nothing has really changed with the 'speed' at which you're perceiving things.[/QUOTE] Im no actual scientist but i believe i have read that depending on the size of the blackhole you could possibly enter the event horizon alive if the blackhole is a super massive blackhole. Thats not to account for the radiation and other things possibly going wrong. But then again i could be entirely wrong.

Hopefully we won't get a glimpse of the Warp

[QUOTE=alx12345;51857027]Yeah, probably not speeding time like that but since it suck up light all around you, and with affected space time, pretty sure something really funky will happen, hell we will probably never know the truth.[/QUOTE] You'd get a REALLY sick tan

[QUOTE=shian;51852487]Its not too far off from what Interstellar shows[/QUOTE] [video=youtube;YdSz12Glhlw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdSz12Glhlw[/video] Fucking awesome.

[QUOTE=Kahgarak;51859009]Fucking awesome.[/QUOTE] It's because the depiction in Interstellar is based off of real physics. At least, the depiction of the outside of the black hole... Kip Thorne consulted on it, and he's a real, honest-to-god leader in the field of gravitational physics. [editline]22nd February 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=MistyVermin;51858686]Im no actual scientist but i believe i have read that depending on the size of the blackhole you could possibly enter the event horizon alive if the blackhole is a super massive blackhole. Thats not to account for the radiation and other things possibly going wrong. But then again i could be entirely wrong.[/QUOTE] That's correct. The problem being stretched to death is the difference in pull between your head and feet, and with a sufficiently large black hole that difference isn't too big and you can pass through the horizon alive. That's ignoring other stuff like you said though, like radiation and the possibility that the firewall conjecture is true.

[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;51859197]Kip Thorne consulted on it, and he's a real, honest-to-god leader in the field of gravitational physics.[/QUOTE] fun fact: kip thorne even wrote a whole book on the astrophysics involved in interstellar. i read the whole thing and it's one of my favorite astronomy books. go read it, it's great! it's called "the science of interstellar". it's exactly the type of book i wanted as a person who loves black holes.

is it true that you'd see the back of your own head?

[QUOTE=Lollipoopdeck;51859983]is it true that you'd see the back of your own head?[/QUOTE] For a Schwarzschild blackhole, if you were to chill out at a radius of 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius (where the Schwarzschild radius is the (coordinate-)distance from the centre of the blackhole to the the event horizon) and you were facing the right direction then in theory you should be able to see some light from the back of your own head. In reality you're not going to be able to resolve an image of your head. The photon sphere (that's the name given to the surface formed at this point that is 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius) is literally a 2D surface. It has no thickness. Any closer or further from the black hole light can't maintain a stable orbit. At most, from a classical physics point of view, you'd be able to detect an infinitesimally thin band of light from the back of your own head; certainly not enough to build an image.

[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;51858956]You'd get a REALLY sick tan[/QUOTE] Getting spaghettified certainly isnt fun game