Space: The Final Frontier

One thing I don't understand about black holes is how does gas shoot out as things are sucked in. Their gravitational pull is the alpha and omega on everything we know of, including light itself. How does a black hole "chew up" an object, then proceed to emit gas out into space when it's gravity...hell, maybe even it's literal space around it from my understanding, is collapsing inward?

How the hell could any gas withstand such a power?
 
here's a cool article from 2005.

_40850453_mag_hawaii_203.jpg


Astronomers say they have been stunned by the amount of energy released in a star explosion on the far side of our galaxy, 50,000 light-years away.
The flash of radiation on 27 December was so powerful that it bounced off the Moon and lit up the Earth's atmosphere.

The blast occurred on the surface of an exotic kind of star - a super-magnetic neutron star called SGR 1806-20.

If the explosion had been within just 10 light-years, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction, it is said.


This is a once-in-a-lifetime event
Dr Rob Fender, Southampton University
"We figure that it's probably the biggest explosion observed by humans within our galaxy since Johannes Kepler saw his supernova in 1604," Dr Rob Fender, of Southampton University, UK, told the BBC News website.

One calculation has the giant flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashing about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. We have observed an object only 20km across, on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a 10th of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years," said Dr Fender.

Fast turn

The event overwhelmed detectors on space-borne telescopes, such as the recently launched Swift observatory.

This facility was put above the Earth to detect and analyse gamma-ray bursts - very intense but fleeting flashes of radiation.

The giant flare it and other instruments caught in December has left scientists scrambling for superlatives.


Swift moved quickly to track down the source of the gamma-rays
Twenty institutes from around the world have joined the investigation and two teams are to report their findings in a forthcoming issue of the journal Nature.

The light detected from the giant flare was far brighter in gamma-rays than visible light or X-rays.

Research teams say the event can be traced to the magnetar SGR 1806-20.

This remarkable super-dense object is a neutron star - it is composed entirely of neutrons and is the remnant collapsed core of a once giant star.

Now, though, this remnant is just 20km across and spins so fast it completes one revolution every 7.5 seconds.

"It has this super-strong magnetic field and this produces some kind of structure which has undergone a rearrangement - it's an event that is sometimes characterised as a 'star-quake', a neutron star equivalent of an earthquake," explained Dr Fender.

"It's the only possible way we can think of releasing so much energy."

Continued glow

SGR 1806-20 is sited in the southern constellation Sagittarius. Its distance puts it beyond the centre of the Milky Way and a safe distance from Earth.

"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and would possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Dr Bryan Gaensler, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who is the lead author on one of the forthcoming Nature papers.

"Fortunately there are no magnetars anywhere near us."

The initial burst of high-energy radiation subsided quickly but there continues to be an afterglow at longer radio wavelengths.

This radio emission persists as the shockwave from the explosion moves out through space, ploughing through nearby gas and exciting matter to extraordinary energies.

"We may go on observing this radio source for much of this year," Dr Fender said.

This work is being done at several centres around the globe, including at the UK's Multi-Element Radio-Linked Interferometer Network (Merlin) and the Joint Institute for VLBI (Very Long Baseline for Interferometry) in Europe - both large networks of linked radio telescopes.
Click to expand...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4278005.stm


Incredible stuff.
 
BruiserBear said:
True, but it is kind of scary to think we didn't know that was coming, and the severity of it.
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It must have wiped out Earth like planets in it's killzone. No wonder why life is so rare...quasars, black holes, super magnetic neutron stars...space is a dangerous place.

I am wondering about the radius effected by such an event, so anything within 10 light years is toast?
 
abstract alien said:
One thing I don't understand about black holes is how does gas shoot out as things are sucked in. Their gravitational pull is the alpha and omega on everything we know of, including light itself. How does a black hole "chew up" an object, then proceed to emit gas out into space when it's gravity...hell, maybe even it's literal space around it from my understanding, is collapsing inward?

How the hell could any gas withstand such a power?
Click to expand...

Probably a silly question but black hole related:

Nothing escapes from one and they are always consuming matter etc. But where does that all go?
 
Chittagong said:
holy shit, that is truly an undiscovered gem. The best documentary ever made of man in space. Shows what it actually is to go to ISS and live there. How do you eat? How do you wash? How do you sleep?

Thanks so much for sharing, really made my day.
Click to expand...

You're welcome. Though I should have been more descriptive when linking it.
 
i'll be starting graduate school soon, so i think going take this time to pack it in and say goodbye. no account suicide, no attention whoring, just this cheery farewell post in my favorite thread. see ya!

~
 
kinn said:
Probably a silly question but black hole related:

Nothing escapes from one and they are always consuming matter etc. But where does that all go?
Click to expand...

That's at the heart of the biggest question(s) in physics. You'll need some tools:

1. Singularity
2. Information Loss
3. Multiple Dimensions

The crux of the issue, and I'm gonna butcher this because it's fucking astrophysics, but basically -- black holes keep growing until they run out of fuel, supposedly. where does it go? in the black hole. what happens then? that's the real question. you need to study why steven hawking is famous in the first place (hawking radiation), and his essential argument that physical information is lost in a black hole:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/aug/15/information-paradox-simplified

The second link probably has what you're looking for, but I think Hawking has since conceded his original theory:

The information paradox first surfaced in the early 1970s when Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University, building on earlier work by Jacob Bekenstein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, suggested that black holes are not totally black. Hawking showed that particle–antiparticle pairs generated at the event horizon – the outer periphery of a black hole – would be separated. One particle would fall into the black hole while the other would escape, making the black hole a radiating body.

Hawking's theory implied that, over time, a black hole would eventually evaporate away, leaving nothing. This presented a problem for quantum mechanics, which dictates that nothing, including information, can ever be lost. If black holes withheld information forever in their singularities, there would be a fundamental flaw with quantum mechanics.
Click to expand...

Basically, if a black hole takes one part of a matter/anti-matter pair -- but then the black hole evaporates, there's a loss of information.

I don't know or understand how Hawking was proven wrong. Something with Holographic something.

Last, I've seen some recent things -- that we've all kinda wondered/pondered on our own -- that the singularity in a black hole is awfully similar to the predicted singularity at the beginning of the big bang, right? So naturally at least some physicists are predicting that black holes (i'm guessing they have to be sufficient size) are the bulb-end of a new universe. That could be neat.
 
Tesseract said:
i'll be starting graduate school soon, so i think going take this time to pack it in and say goodbye. no account suicide, no attention whoring, just this cheery farewell post in my favorite thread. see ya!
Click to expand...

Great about your grad school, but why would you need to go on full internet celibacy?
 
The weird thing that comes with that is the fact that other universes would be different sizes, since each black holes "eats" a different amount of the universe around it. Well, logically they would, but there is not one single thing that is logical about a black hole.
 
abstract alien said:
The weird thing that comes with that is the fact that other universes would be different sizes, since each black holes "eats" a different amount of the universe around it. Well, logically they would, but there is not one single thing that is logical about a black hole.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_Cantor's_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_theorem

Simplified:
http://www.ccs3.lanl.gov/mega-math/workbk/infinity/inbkgd.html

Basically, and this is my limited understanding because I'm not an astrophysicist genius mathematician, it's possible to have two different sets of infinity (think: universes) and one still be bigger or smaller than the other.
 
PantherLotus said:
That's at the heart of the biggest question(s) in physics. You'll need some tools:

1. Singularity
2. Information Loss
3. Multiple Dimensions

The crux of the issue, and I'm gonna butcher this because it's fucking astrophysics, but basically -- black holes keep growing until they run out of fuel, supposedly. where does it go? in the black hole. what happens then? that's the real question. you need to study why steven hawking is famous in the first place (hawking radiation), and his essential argument that physical information is lost in a black hole:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/aug/15/information-paradox-simplified

The second link probably has what you're looking for, but I think Hawking has since conceded his original theory:



Basically, if a black hole takes one part of a matter/anti-matter pair -- but then the black hole evaporates, there's a loss of information.

I don't know or understand how Hawking was proven wrong. Something with Holographic something.

Last, I've seen some recent things -- that we've all kinda wondered/pondered on our own -- that the singularity in a black hole is awfully similar to the predicted singularity at the beginning of the big bang, right? So naturally at least some physicists are predicting that black holes (i'm guessing they have to be sufficient size) are the bulb-end of a new universe. That could be neat.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info!

Loving this thread!
 
PantherLotus said:
I don't know or understand how Hawking was proven wrong. Something with Holographic something.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

Leonard Susskind was the man who proved Hawking wrong. The holographic principal is so mindblowing and difiicult to grasp though.

In a larger and more speculative sense, the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies.
Click to expand...

I mean ... really ...
 
You all know the new mars rover is landing on Aug 5ht right?

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

Science channel is doing a special on the new rover and it's landing procedures on Aug 4th as well. DVR it.

Here's a really cool short on it as well. It's called 7 minutes of terror. The landing takes 7 minutes. The signal from Mars to earth takes 14. The rover will be dead of funtional for 7 minutes before we know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaP8YMM524&noredirect=1

Woorloog said:
*blinks*
wut?
That quote... Uh...

So... Is this mathematics or something? Because i feel perfectly three-dimensional.
Click to expand...

Susskind is a freaking genius. I've watched a couple different shows of him trying to explain this and it's just way too out there. But yeah ... lots of math.

Prior to hawking's assertion that information was lost in a blackhole, it was wideley believed that infromation could not be lost. Hawking rattled the physics world for a while and that sent Mr. Susskind on a mission to prove him wrong. We now think information is stored on the edge of the blackhole via this hologram thing.

The implications are greater than just blackholes though. Hence that wild quote.
 
Fenderputty said:
Susskind is a freaking genius. I've watched a couple different shows of him trying to explain this and it's just way too out there. But yeah ... lots of math.

Prior to hawking's assertion that information was lost in a blackhole, it was wideley believed that infromation could not be lost. Hawking rattled the physics world for a while and that sent Mr. Susskind on a mission to prove him wrong. We now think information is stored on the edge of the blackhole via this hologram thing.
Click to expand...

We live in a giant hologram?

I normally don't think science as scary but this... Well, it doesn't affect my life really but still, it sounds so damn odd it is scary.

Hmm. What if minds work in this hologram as well? Human mind, consciousness, soul if you will... Eh, i really need to set up that philosophy thread for stuff like this...
 
Woorloog said:
We live in a giant hologram?

I normally don't think science as scary but this... Well, it doesn't affect my life really but still, it sounds so damn odd it is scary.

Hmm. What if minds work in this hologram as well? Human mind, consciousness, soul if you will... Eh, i really need to set up that philosophy thread for stuff like this...
Click to expand...

That reminds me of Philip Dick's novel VALIS, which is based on his experiences, and tells about how some alien intelligence beamed revelations into his mind, including something to do with holograms.
 
Woorloog said:
We live in a giant hologram?
I normally don't think science as scary but this... Well, it doesn't affect my life really but still, it sounds so damn odd it is scary.

Hmm. What if minds work in this hologram as well? Human mind, consciousness, soul if you will... Eh, i really need to set up that philosophy thread for stuff like this...
Click to expand...

Obviously everything is pretty much theoretical at this point, but the math is there to suggest such a possibility.

Shamless bump for the mars rover too. I'm blown away that we have the ingenuity to pull it off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaP8YMM524&noredirect=1
 
Fenderputty said:
Obviously everything is pretty much theoretical at this point, but the math is there to suggest such a possibility.
Click to expand...

I'd prefer to stay in this comfortable three-dimensional form, thank you very much.
This is one of those things i'd rather not know. In a way. As i said, it doesn't affect my life (probably). Don't ask why.
I think mathematicians are crazy. Genius but crazy. But then aren't insanity and genius the two sides of a coin?
Next someone suggest the universe is a holographic memory or something on some beings computer. Hopefully that thing won't crash...
 
Counter-Clock World said:
Makes me yearn for another Space Race. Such interesting times they were. When it seemed mankind could accomplish anything.
Click to expand...

Yep, it's great that its the 43rd anniversary of the first steps on the moon, but the saddest part is that it has been 39 1/2 years since humans last stepped on the moon.

We need to step our shit up.
 
PantherLotus said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_Cantor's_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_theorem

Simplified:
http://www.ccs3.lanl.gov/mega-math/workbk/infinity/inbkgd.html

Basically, and this is my limited understanding because I'm not an astrophysicist genius mathematician, it's possible to have two different sets of infinity (think: universes) and one still be bigger or smaller than the other.
Click to expand...

I'm really trying hard to wrap my head around this, but there are instances in this logic I've never even began to think of. I honestly never knew there was such a deep and rounded theory on infinity. I some ways, I don't even feel comfortable using the term anymore, outside of a "loose" adjective. Ignorance really is bliss some times, but it's even more exciting to find out the truth.

endre said:
Cool russian documentary.
Click to expand...

Whoa...this is GOOD!
 
abstract alien said:
I'm really trying hard to wrap my head around this, but there are instances in this logic I've never even began to think of. I honestly never knew there was such a deep and rounded theory on infinity. I some ways, I don't even feel comfortable using the term anymore, outside of a "loose" adjective. Ignorance really is bliss some times, but it's even more exciting to find out the truth.



Whoa...this is GOOD!
Click to expand...

The only thing better to conceptualize than infinity is nothing. Seriously. Once your realize that latter isn't possible, it makes the former so much more vast.
 
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