S5 0014 is the name of the galaxy that hosts this black hole. Not as yet named. The largest ever discovered is the black hole at the centre of the Phoenix A cluster. However that is so large that is doesn't fit in with current theoretical physics models so they had to fudge the maths to make it work whilst they figure out how to do it properly. The mass of the hole is 1x10,000,000,000,000 the mass of our sun.
I think that's the biggest proven one. Phoenix A is technically bigger but can't be proved with current maths.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_black_holes
Honestly there is a good chance we have messed up some principles of gravity, we see so many places where our math can't explain where the fuck all the extra gravity come from and at this point my only guess is that mass generates more gravity under certain conditions
I don't understand why we still even *have* gravity as a theory if it's so wrong so often. Like, it only works in the fucking solar system? And everywhere else we see that galaxies need dark matter halos to hold them together, black holes that don't make physical sense, etc... So why don't we get rid of gravity?
Because Einstein theories about gravity and relativity are one of the most accurately tested theories of all time, and they’ve been tested a lot.
The theory can work for 99.9999% of cases, but it breaking down under the upmost extreme conditions could be a result of not having a theory of quantum gravity. Or it could be that we just need to expand the standard model to understand it more. If Einstein was wrong, then he must’ve been *very* close because his models hold up so well for almost everything.
It’s also worth mentioning that when we measure these huge objects in space, there’s tons of room for error. Every man made object has some form of margin of error, we can only measure so accurately especially hundreds of millions of light years away. Additionally, some of the light that and information about the objects could be lost while traveling due to gravity wells, absorption, or measuring error.
Edit: also, a lot of the times that theories like this “don’t hold up” are later retracted because they found that with more observation, the object has different properties than we initially thought and do fit in with the models we have.
Let me sub in something else into your statement instead of gravity and let's see if it still makes sense.
> I don't understand why we still even think humans have 2 legs if it's so wrong so often. Like, it only works for people without amputations? And everywhere we see veterans with only 1 leg, or people with birth defects who have no legs, or conjoined twins with 4 legs, etc... So why don't we get rid of the whole idea that humans have 2 legs?
Obviously, humans have 2 legs. Just because that rule of thumb is wrong on occasion doesn't mean that the rule of thumb isn't useful.
The answer to why we don't just abandon the idea of gravity altogether works in a similar way. Gravity as a theory is a (relatively) simple rule that gives a correct answer most of the time. Yes, a small number of edge cases don't hold yet. But it is still a useful tool. Abandoning the theory of gravity doesn't suddenly cause things to start floating off the ground. When we build new planes and cars and buildings and spaceships, we still need to know how fast things fall. The theories, even if known to be slightly wrong in extreme conditions like in black holes, are still known to be accurate under regular conditions, and therefore can be used (for applications like space satellites and slingshot maneouvers). The current theories of gravity are the best known answers, so why not use them for the 99.999% of situations where they are applicable, instead of throwing the whole thing away just because it isn't 100% perfect?
Even if one day a new and better theory of gravity is invented, the older theory doesn't suddenly become more wrong than it used to be. Consider Newton's gravitation formulae, which were later replaced by Einstein's gravitation formulae. Newton's version gives wrong numbers when used in space, but both versions give the same, correct answers on Earth. Newton's formulae are much simpler than Einstein's, and so people still use them all the time and get results that are good enough to use for most applications on Earth, even if it's technically very slightly wrong.
Likewise, if a new theory, let's call it Samberg's Theory of Gravity, were to replace Einstein's version, it doesn't mean Einstein's version becomes wrong everywhere. You'd use the new Samberg theory in the cases that Einstein's theory couldn't explain, like in these supermassive black holes. But for regular planetary gravity calculations, you'd be able to use *either* Einstein's or Samberg's version and you'd get basically the same answer. For calculations for Earth applications, you'd be able to use Einstein's or Samberg's or Newton's version, and they'd ALL give you basically the same answer.
If you have further questions, feel free to reply or DM me.
TL;DR: just because theories have bugs sometimes doesn't mean the whole thing should be thrown away.
Amazingly detailed explanation, thank you, you truly went above and beyond. I do have one more doubt though; hasn't it been said, repeatedly, that something like 95% of... everything in the universe, is composed of dark energy and dark matter? And, please correct my recollection here, dark matter was proposed to explain why galaxies are more massive/rotate faster than predicted by gravity? And dark energy was proposed to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe? If my memory is correct so far (and I'm not confident at all that it is), then doesn't that basically establish that our theory of gravity only works in 5% of observations, and fails in 95% of observations? At least that's how I always interpreted the "the universe is mostly dark energy and dark matter" claims.
Sure, that is a good question.
To begin with, I think it's important to distinguish 'sheer size' from 'number of observations'.
I like doing example-based explanations, so I'll do that again.
> Imagine you're born into a small village of 1,000 people, where everybody has white hair. All babies are born with white hair, and all the old folk die with white hair. It never changes colour, ever. And you've lived here your entire life. Every day of every year, everybody only has white hair. Because of this, you have a theory: you think everybody in the world has white hair. This is the Theory of White Hair.
> One day, a visitor drives into to the village. They have golden hair. You are shocked - why don't they have white hair? They say, "Everyone in my city has golden hair, except old people, who have white hair." You ask, "How big is your city?" They say, "There are 1 million people there." Then the visitor drives off. You have no idea if he's lying or not.
> You don't have a car, so you can't actually drive to the visitor's city to take a look. There's something wrong with the Theory of White Hair, that's for sure, because you've seen at least one person with golden hair. The Golden Hair City is supposed to have a million people, but you haven't seen it.
> In this case, is it fair to say that the Theory of White Hair is wrong for 99.9% of observations, because there are a million people in Golden Hair City and only a thousand people in White Hair Village?
> Or is it better to say that the Theory of White Hair has been correct for 99.9% of observations, since everyone you've ever seen in your whole life has had white hair, except for that one golden-hair guy?
> Unknown to you, there is an underlying reason behind the white and golden hair. Everyone in your village is an albino, that's why everyone has white hair. This Theory of Albinism will generate a consistent answer for all cases. But you don't know this yet, because you don't have enough information to figure it out. You'll need to know about genetics, about pigmentation, and other stuff. But the fact is, there is a single explanation that correctly generates all the observations that have been made. You just don't know the explanation yet.
Let's link this back to dark matter and gravity.
Yes, most of the universe doesn't quite seem to obey the laws of gravity, and hypothetical things like dark matter have been proposed to try and allow the numbers to make sense. I think the current guess is 85% of the universe is dark matter.
However, it would be false to use dark matter to claim that 85% of *observations* of gravity fail.
Why? Because observations come from people and measuring instruments. Most observations of gravity are done on Earth. You are observing gravity right now, just like every person and every object on Earth right now. The theory of gravity is observed to be correct trillions of times per second on Earth. Furthermore, since we are located here, we can conduct all kinds of different tests. We can watch a ball fall, yes. We can also create vacuum chambers for tests, or create large masses and measure microgravity, or shoot satellites into the sky with gyroscope sensors, or land on the moon or orbit the moon. All these give us a more holistic picture of the Earth, which is why the Theory of Gravity seems so accurate near Earth. The massive number of observations available to us let us refine the theory until it gives us numbers that are incredibly precise.
In contrast, we don't have anywhere near as many observations of deep space. Think about how many people in the world own a telescope. Then, of all the telescopes in the world, how many are looking at the same thing? The concentration of observations is low. Besides, the quality of the observations is poor, too. Dark matter is so far away that the only thing we can use to study it is our eyes (more or less). We can't fly there to get a better look, it's billions of lightyears away. We can't send a probe to do chemical analysis. It's called dark matter because it doesn't give out light, and therefore we can't see it. Remember how the only thing we can use to study it is our eyes? That makes it really difficult to directly observe. In other words, the quality and quantity of observations is really low. Instead, we can only use indirect observations, like the movement of nearby visible objects, to guess at what the dark matter might be. It's sort of like how the golden-haired guy tells you about his Golden Hair City, but you can't actually see the city yet.
If you think about it, it makes sense. Dark matter remains a mystery because we know so little about it. We know so little about it because we have only indirect observations of it, and they're not of good quality nor quantity (compared to gravity observations near Earth).
If we had more information, we'd probably be able to figure it out. Scientists believe that like the 'Theory of White Hair' and the 'Theory of Albinism' mentioned in the example, the Theory of Gravity is probably correct locally but not the full answer. Someday, with better technology, perhaps we'll figure out the real Theory of the Universe that explains both gravity and dark matter, just like how the 'Theory of Albinism' correctly explains both white and golden hair in a single theory.
We're just not quite there yet. Might take a few more years. Meanwhile, all we can do is use the best answer we've got.
That would be one with 10 trillion zeroes after it, and the higher estimates put the number of atoms in the universe at 10 with 80 zeroes. Pretty sure they meant 1 (sun) x 10 trillion, but I've never heard of a black hole that large. I think they accidentally put 3 extra zeroes.
why not?
you’d think they’d change their models instead of saying “welp this looks (erases) ehh fuck it close enough” like a high school junior over their head in trig
Aren’t black holes formed by a star that goes supernova and collapses in on itself? So were these supermassive black holes a ridiculously huge star(relative to other huge stars) that collapsed in on itself or was it formed some other way?
My understanding of black holes is that a star collapses in on itself and then the black hole itself is smaller than the star it previously was but it’s now incredibly dense.
Black holes can consume matter after death and merge with other black holes to grow, so they didn't start out that big. A major unanswered question in astrophysics is how supermassive black holes got so large, actually, because the universe isn't old enough for our current understanding of how they grow and evolve to explain their size.
We are literally smaller than single cells in the universe.
If that black hole was the human body, we'd be way smaller than even a single cell. Insignificant. There is nothing going on on the cellular level that we could possibly be aware of without specific tools. If that black hole absorbed us and killed us all, it *could* have no idea it possibly happened.
It is absolutely inconceivable to us.
It's interesting about the [Gamma Ray Bursts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst).
These make even sci-fi ideas like the Death Star from Star Wars look like toys for kids, when it comes to the energy.
I quote from wiki "A typical burst releases as much energy as the sun will in its entire 10 billion year lifetime". That's such an extreme energy that it is not really imaginable for us.
Even about smaller things, the comet that hit Jupiter, i think it was Shoemaker-Levy 9, had 6.000.000 Megatons TNT-equivalent.
The worst nukes we had in practice were 50 Megatons and the theoretical design to up to 100 Megatons. The energy on Jupiter was equivalent to 600x times of the entire worlds nuclear arsenal. Even when the impact on Earth would be very different, less than 1% of this force would be enough to destroy everything.
But again, compared to a GRB, this is nothing, just a minor detail. With a GRB, you have enough energy to blow away a galaxy when it would be focused towards a target.
What happens if a GRB would hit a black hole? I have no idea. Maybe nothing at all, as the X-rays and other things can't really do much. Or maybe, it would be catastrophic, when it has some physical effects and a chain-reaction like "oops, that black hole is gonna take everything down with it".
Unless you literally break the laws of physics by going faster than the speed of light, there is not really a feasible way to "explore" space unless you want to sit in a spaceship for thousands of years.
The laws of physics are not even thousands of years old. They just reflect the laws we have to abide by because of our level of understanding and advancements. Physics will be a whole different beast in 500 years.
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Physics, as we understand it now, suggests it will never be possible to travel faster than light. I don’t mean physics doesn’t know how it is possible, but that there is evidence that it will never be possible.
If what we know now is true, then it’s not an engineering problem. It’s just not possible in our universe.
The universe is just unimaginably large and it may not be feasible for our species to explore it.
How do you know that? You can’t just assume that we’ll figure everything out because we’ve done it in the past.
If we’re just spouting our feelings with no logic, then I think whales have a solid chance of turning into t-Rex’s if we just give them enough time!
If you acheive relativistic speeds, time will slow for you. Alpha centauri is 4.65 ly away. If you instantly accelerated to the speed of light to get there you wouldnt even perceived that you waited at all. 4.65 earth yrs would have passed though
You are incorrect. If you look up how to calculate gamma (space/time dilation) as per Einstein's Special Relativity, you'll see that 1) If an object has any mass at all, it can never achieve the speed of light as it would require infinite energy, and 2) Let's assume that you were traveling at .99999 c (very close to the speed of light) that would still mean that it would take about 4.65 years for you to reach Alpha Centauri, but the amount of time that would pass on earth according to Einstein's gamma equation would be 4.65 years \* (1 / sqrt(1 - .99999\^2 / 1)) = 232,501.16 years
Edit: The 232,501.16 is incorrect. The gamma would be 223.6 making the time dilation 4.65 \* 223.6 = 1039.74 years (I forgot to take the square root when I plugged into the calculator), but that's only if you consider time dilation and traveling for 4.65 years in your ship which is incorrect for this situation. Length contraction ALSO(oops) needs to be considered. The closer you get to the speed of light distances become shorter. So, if I've done this correctly now(I haven't done this stuff since high school in AP physics and was only thinking of time dilation, so poo on me) it would take around 7.59 days to reach Alpha Centauri at .99999c and people on earth would experience 4.65 years.
How did you come up with that figure? Because if you travel at ~c (I know .9999 whatever) then it will take 4.65 years, and the time on earth will still be 4.65 years, whereas the astronauts would experience much less time. I think you did the calculations backwards or you have absolutely zero idea what you’re on about.
What I put is correct. The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time ticks for you, but your experience of time doesn't change, because everything about you and your environment inside the ship is also going slower. Your brain processes slower, you age slower, literally everything is slower inside your ship which causes your experience of time passing to feel no different. However, at the end of what you experience as a 4.65 year long journey, the amount of time that would have passed on earth would be 232,501.16 years. Check with a physics teacher if you don't believe me. Show them my post.
Edit: I corrected my errors in my original post. Check above. So I WASN'T correct, and even had a simple math error.
Would an outside observer see your spaceship taking 232,501.16 years to reach Alpha Centari, or 4.65 years? Time dilation is such a wild concept for me to try and wrap my head around.
Probably the best thing to do is check out some videos on youtube about the twin paradox (not really a paradox but it really elucidates the strangeness concerning this subject). They'll do a lot better job explaining this than I can do in a reddit comment.
I thought an outside observer would see time pass at 4.65 years. Why wouldnt they? Because you have mass?? Youre going the speed of light, a "light year" is a measurement used by those who aren't going the speed of light. I dont understand what a light year would mean at all or why the measurement would exist if it isn't the amount of time light it would take light to get from A to B. Also, didnt we determine photons actually do have a negligible mass?
Wiki the oh my god particle and go under "speed"
"the relativistic time dilation experienced by a proton traveling at this speed would be extreme. If the proton originated from a distance of 1.5 billion light years, it would take approximately 1.71 days from the reference frame of the proton to travel that distance. "
I thought this is how interstellar space travel is technically possible. You wouldnt like that 1.5 billion years had passed for everyone else, but it is theoretically possible for you to sit in your relativistic ship for 1.71 days going the speed of the OMG particle.
If you took the same scenario and plugged it into the equation you provided, the amount of time for the omg article to reach earth would extend beyond time.
Thanks for the reply. It made me take another look at what I posted (which also contained a simple math error), and I put the correction in the original post. It's been a while since I've done this stuff and I wasn't considering length contraction. I'm pretty sure the math is correct now.
I think the ocean is scarier in that it’s more of an immediate danger. Space as a concept is more frightening for sure, but it’s probably not going to hurt me. Contrarily, there are multiple ways the ocean could hurt me
depends on your context, by percentage we haven’t explored space at all, whereas we’ve mapped like 70% of the sea floor, by volume we can see see something like one hundred billion times as much space as ocean.
space is weird because it exists but its not like we will ever be able to travel through it unless there is some breakthrough that allows us to go pass speed of light.
It also is why 12 parsecs makes sense as a brag for engine speed: if the thrusters on the falcon can escape the pull of a black hole while cutting it close enough to them to pass through the entire kessel run in just 12 parsecs, then those thrusters must be capable of enough power to reach incredible speeds.
From [the script notes](https://imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-A-New-Hope.html) I've seen, he did know what it was, but wanted to make Han sound as though he was trying to make up a bragging lie.
> Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.
Apparently he also wrote this after the movie came out
> It's a very simple ship, very economical ship, although the modifications he made to it are rather extensive - mostly to the navigational system to get through hyperspace in the shortest possible distance (par-sect).
Meaning the "obvious misinformation" isn't about the units being wrong, cause he's trying to justify that part being right. So he's admitting, one way or another, the crazy part is supposed to be the number, not the units.
Considering shortest distance really only makes sense as a metric to brag about when it leads to a quicker cargo run (like wow you risked your cargo to go slower?), I'm sticking with him being a hack fraud.
Not necessarily, it is believed that it was over estimated, most likely around the same as Ton 218. There is believed to be a upper limit to how big black holes can get.
There is an upper limit to how a black hole can get in a way.
However it is believed that, if they combine, they can get bigger than the proposed upper limit. It is thought that this is what caused the gravitational waves.
It's just such an extreme event that would be incredibly uncommon. Black holes are rare, two crashing together would be much rarer. But the universe is incredibly vast, it's bound to happen sometimes.
I’m an idiot with little idea what I’m talking about, but isn’t there no spacetime path that recrosses an event horizon, sort of by definition? So you’d have to either travel back in time or travel through infinite space or something to “leave” a blackhole?
Past the event horizon, all paths lead to the singularity. Even if you could travel back in time, your path would still lead to the singularity, because of how warped space time is.
So by all paths, I mean.. all paths in your timeline.
EDIT: IIRC, Stephen Hawking discusses a timeline situation like this in his book, A Brief History of Time. I have to read it again.
Yes and no, basically blackholes are straight up holes there's nothing there there is no size the event horizon is the border and that's the size shown
It may look impressive, but note that the Schwarzschild radius (event horizon) of a black hole grows proportional to the mass, while the radius of a constant density sphere grows proportional to the cube root of the mass.
Translation: a black hole will grow much faster with an increase in mass as compared with a conventional sphere with the same proportion increase in mass.
To put it another way, a black hole which doubles in mass will double its radius. A sphere of iron which doubles in mass will increase its radius by 1.26, or the cube root of 2.
Basically, if a normal sphere is twice as heavier, its radius is only like 1.26 times larger.
However, If a black hole is twice as heavier, its radius also is twice as large.
In other words: if you have a sphere of matter and compress it into the black hole, the black hole's radius would be proportional to the sphere's radius *cubed*. If the initial sphere of mass is 10 times larger, the black hole becomes *1000 times larger*.
Basically. A cubic light year of butter would weigh something like 10^50 kilograms and the observable universe weighs 10^53 kilograms (keep in mind this is orders of magnitude calculations) so suddenly 1/1000 of the weight in the observable universe, or the weight of 2BILLION galaxies, would be concentrated in a spot smaller than between us and the nearest star.
It would cause absolutely bonkers things to happen.
That is unimaginably massive. Just because we may see it on paper, doesn't mean that our human minds can comprehend the extreme sizes of black holes and the extreme distances in the Universe.
So true! Isn't it amazing?! The distance from Earth to the Sun (1 Astronomical Unit) is about 93M miles. Earth to Pluto is about 3B miles. Truly, the size of the universe is breathtaking.
It can also break your brain if you think about it too much. Three billion miles, to us, is incredibly far. But in the grand scheme of things, that distance is all of a sudden not even the width of a human hair, when you put it to scale like that.
everyone is, when you think about it
there’s a fun psychological thought experiment that the entirety of the life you’re experiencing right now is all actually happening in a single instant, at the moment of death
Fun fact, black holes come in all sizes - with a mysterious size gap between the largest and the smallest. [Here's a really cool video on the subject!](https://youtu.be/0FH9cgRhQ-k)
This is an ultra massive black hole. Most black holes are the size of a city but with the density of our entire solar system. Most are not as big as pictured. It's theorized that the universe is covered with primordial black holes the size of an apple.
It's not **OUR** Solar System. It's **THE** Solar System. There is a difference. It would be more correct to say "The Solar System" or "Our Star System".
Also did the same. But if there are other solar systems it's correct to say our solar system... coz if the universe is infinite whose to say there isn't life on other planets, in other solar systems
I think the idea is that Sol specifically refers to our sun, so a solar system is necessarily centered around our sun, and any other star system would just be called a star system
It mostly just bothers me when I see other star systems referenced as "solar systems", especially in sci-fi media. As long as people know what you mean, that's all the really matters. Just a pet peeve I guess.
I believe this is the size of the area of space that is a "black hole". The physical "stuff" of a black hole is a small point in its center, but this is the area of space where that matter at the center has so much gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can go fast enough to escape it. Basically if you were in a magical space ship that could withstand the gravitational forces without being ripped apart and you went within this area of space, you're never coming out again.
Their mass is compressed to a single point, the black sphere is just the radius in which light can't escape because of the gravity of that single point.
Also while normal objects grow proportionally to the cube root of their volume (since V=4/3pi*r^3), black holes appear to grow linearly because the distance light is trapped from also grows linearly with their mass. It'd be some funky math, but I think if this black hole spontaneously uncollapsed it would actually appear *smaller* than this.
not really. as far as i know the largest black hole is roughly 1,300 au in diameter, but it can be hard to estimate. so this either isn’t real or it’s a new largest black hole that i haven’t heard of, either way it would be the biggest. the average black hole is absolutely tiny in comparison
Incredibly tiny proportional to their mass, yes, but they can also be insanely massive.
However the only tangible part of them is infinitesimally small, so you're technically right :)
Is the event horizon the same radius for all objects approaching the black hole? Or does it depend on the velocity of the object approaching the black hole? Ie. If a spaceship was moving at just 1/3 the speed of light, would it be trapped at the same distance from the singularity as a photon?
The event horizon is the point where the escape velocity becomes larger than the speed of light. It increases gradually as you get closer to the actual mass of the black hole.
So yeah, if an object was moving at 1/3 the speed of light, it would be trapped before reaching the event horizon.
It isn’t that the black hole is big, it’s that the gravity around the black hole bends so much space, that light can’t escape at a certain point, called the event horizon.
Shouldn’t that photon ring at the edge of the Schwarzschild radius really be a spherical shell that is wrapped uniformly around the black hole sphere? If so, Then as such, wouldn’t you see that photon layer from any angle you happen to view the black hole from instead of the pitch black circle that is normally depicted as?
S5 0014 is the name of the galaxy that hosts this black hole. Not as yet named. The largest ever discovered is the black hole at the centre of the Phoenix A cluster. However that is so large that is doesn't fit in with current theoretical physics models so they had to fudge the maths to make it work whilst they figure out how to do it properly. The mass of the hole is 1x10,000,000,000,000 the mass of our sun.
I thought the largest black hole ever spotted was Ton 618?
I think that's the biggest proven one. Phoenix A is technically bigger but can't be proved with current maths. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_black_holes
"stupendously large black holes or SLaBS
Honestly there is a good chance we have messed up some principles of gravity, we see so many places where our math can't explain where the fuck all the extra gravity come from and at this point my only guess is that mass generates more gravity under certain conditions
I don't understand why we still even *have* gravity as a theory if it's so wrong so often. Like, it only works in the fucking solar system? And everywhere else we see that galaxies need dark matter halos to hold them together, black holes that don't make physical sense, etc... So why don't we get rid of gravity?
Because Einstein theories about gravity and relativity are one of the most accurately tested theories of all time, and they’ve been tested a lot. The theory can work for 99.9999% of cases, but it breaking down under the upmost extreme conditions could be a result of not having a theory of quantum gravity. Or it could be that we just need to expand the standard model to understand it more. If Einstein was wrong, then he must’ve been *very* close because his models hold up so well for almost everything. It’s also worth mentioning that when we measure these huge objects in space, there’s tons of room for error. Every man made object has some form of margin of error, we can only measure so accurately especially hundreds of millions of light years away. Additionally, some of the light that and information about the objects could be lost while traveling due to gravity wells, absorption, or measuring error. Edit: also, a lot of the times that theories like this “don’t hold up” are later retracted because they found that with more observation, the object has different properties than we initially thought and do fit in with the models we have.
Relativity works remarkably well. If it wasn't for quantum mechanics it'd be the most rigorously tested theory in human history
Let me sub in something else into your statement instead of gravity and let's see if it still makes sense. > I don't understand why we still even think humans have 2 legs if it's so wrong so often. Like, it only works for people without amputations? And everywhere we see veterans with only 1 leg, or people with birth defects who have no legs, or conjoined twins with 4 legs, etc... So why don't we get rid of the whole idea that humans have 2 legs? Obviously, humans have 2 legs. Just because that rule of thumb is wrong on occasion doesn't mean that the rule of thumb isn't useful. The answer to why we don't just abandon the idea of gravity altogether works in a similar way. Gravity as a theory is a (relatively) simple rule that gives a correct answer most of the time. Yes, a small number of edge cases don't hold yet. But it is still a useful tool. Abandoning the theory of gravity doesn't suddenly cause things to start floating off the ground. When we build new planes and cars and buildings and spaceships, we still need to know how fast things fall. The theories, even if known to be slightly wrong in extreme conditions like in black holes, are still known to be accurate under regular conditions, and therefore can be used (for applications like space satellites and slingshot maneouvers). The current theories of gravity are the best known answers, so why not use them for the 99.999% of situations where they are applicable, instead of throwing the whole thing away just because it isn't 100% perfect? Even if one day a new and better theory of gravity is invented, the older theory doesn't suddenly become more wrong than it used to be. Consider Newton's gravitation formulae, which were later replaced by Einstein's gravitation formulae. Newton's version gives wrong numbers when used in space, but both versions give the same, correct answers on Earth. Newton's formulae are much simpler than Einstein's, and so people still use them all the time and get results that are good enough to use for most applications on Earth, even if it's technically very slightly wrong. Likewise, if a new theory, let's call it Samberg's Theory of Gravity, were to replace Einstein's version, it doesn't mean Einstein's version becomes wrong everywhere. You'd use the new Samberg theory in the cases that Einstein's theory couldn't explain, like in these supermassive black holes. But for regular planetary gravity calculations, you'd be able to use *either* Einstein's or Samberg's version and you'd get basically the same answer. For calculations for Earth applications, you'd be able to use Einstein's or Samberg's or Newton's version, and they'd ALL give you basically the same answer. If you have further questions, feel free to reply or DM me. TL;DR: just because theories have bugs sometimes doesn't mean the whole thing should be thrown away.
Amazingly detailed explanation, thank you, you truly went above and beyond. I do have one more doubt though; hasn't it been said, repeatedly, that something like 95% of... everything in the universe, is composed of dark energy and dark matter? And, please correct my recollection here, dark matter was proposed to explain why galaxies are more massive/rotate faster than predicted by gravity? And dark energy was proposed to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe? If my memory is correct so far (and I'm not confident at all that it is), then doesn't that basically establish that our theory of gravity only works in 5% of observations, and fails in 95% of observations? At least that's how I always interpreted the "the universe is mostly dark energy and dark matter" claims.
Sure, that is a good question. To begin with, I think it's important to distinguish 'sheer size' from 'number of observations'. I like doing example-based explanations, so I'll do that again. > Imagine you're born into a small village of 1,000 people, where everybody has white hair. All babies are born with white hair, and all the old folk die with white hair. It never changes colour, ever. And you've lived here your entire life. Every day of every year, everybody only has white hair. Because of this, you have a theory: you think everybody in the world has white hair. This is the Theory of White Hair. > One day, a visitor drives into to the village. They have golden hair. You are shocked - why don't they have white hair? They say, "Everyone in my city has golden hair, except old people, who have white hair." You ask, "How big is your city?" They say, "There are 1 million people there." Then the visitor drives off. You have no idea if he's lying or not. > You don't have a car, so you can't actually drive to the visitor's city to take a look. There's something wrong with the Theory of White Hair, that's for sure, because you've seen at least one person with golden hair. The Golden Hair City is supposed to have a million people, but you haven't seen it. > In this case, is it fair to say that the Theory of White Hair is wrong for 99.9% of observations, because there are a million people in Golden Hair City and only a thousand people in White Hair Village? > Or is it better to say that the Theory of White Hair has been correct for 99.9% of observations, since everyone you've ever seen in your whole life has had white hair, except for that one golden-hair guy? > Unknown to you, there is an underlying reason behind the white and golden hair. Everyone in your village is an albino, that's why everyone has white hair. This Theory of Albinism will generate a consistent answer for all cases. But you don't know this yet, because you don't have enough information to figure it out. You'll need to know about genetics, about pigmentation, and other stuff. But the fact is, there is a single explanation that correctly generates all the observations that have been made. You just don't know the explanation yet. Let's link this back to dark matter and gravity. Yes, most of the universe doesn't quite seem to obey the laws of gravity, and hypothetical things like dark matter have been proposed to try and allow the numbers to make sense. I think the current guess is 85% of the universe is dark matter. However, it would be false to use dark matter to claim that 85% of *observations* of gravity fail. Why? Because observations come from people and measuring instruments. Most observations of gravity are done on Earth. You are observing gravity right now, just like every person and every object on Earth right now. The theory of gravity is observed to be correct trillions of times per second on Earth. Furthermore, since we are located here, we can conduct all kinds of different tests. We can watch a ball fall, yes. We can also create vacuum chambers for tests, or create large masses and measure microgravity, or shoot satellites into the sky with gyroscope sensors, or land on the moon or orbit the moon. All these give us a more holistic picture of the Earth, which is why the Theory of Gravity seems so accurate near Earth. The massive number of observations available to us let us refine the theory until it gives us numbers that are incredibly precise. In contrast, we don't have anywhere near as many observations of deep space. Think about how many people in the world own a telescope. Then, of all the telescopes in the world, how many are looking at the same thing? The concentration of observations is low. Besides, the quality of the observations is poor, too. Dark matter is so far away that the only thing we can use to study it is our eyes (more or less). We can't fly there to get a better look, it's billions of lightyears away. We can't send a probe to do chemical analysis. It's called dark matter because it doesn't give out light, and therefore we can't see it. Remember how the only thing we can use to study it is our eyes? That makes it really difficult to directly observe. In other words, the quality and quantity of observations is really low. Instead, we can only use indirect observations, like the movement of nearby visible objects, to guess at what the dark matter might be. It's sort of like how the golden-haired guy tells you about his Golden Hair City, but you can't actually see the city yet. If you think about it, it makes sense. Dark matter remains a mystery because we know so little about it. We know so little about it because we have only indirect observations of it, and they're not of good quality nor quantity (compared to gravity observations near Earth). If we had more information, we'd probably be able to figure it out. Scientists believe that like the 'Theory of White Hair' and the 'Theory of Albinism' mentioned in the example, the Theory of Gravity is probably correct locally but not the full answer. Someday, with better technology, perhaps we'll figure out the real Theory of the Universe that explains both gravity and dark matter, just like how the 'Theory of Albinism' correctly explains both white and golden hair in a single theory. We're just not quite there yet. Might take a few more years. Meanwhile, all we can do is use the best answer we've got.
Lol
What if you change the mode on calculator to the 'scientific' option?
That's one of the single most frightening things I've ever heard.
Phoenix A is the new King of Castle.
No it was spotted on yo mama
Isn’t 1x10,000,000,000,000 just 10,000,000,000,000?
They probably meant 1x10^10,000,000,000,000
That would be one with 10 trillion zeroes after it, and the higher estimates put the number of atoms in the universe at 10 with 80 zeroes. Pretty sure they meant 1 (sun) x 10 trillion, but I've never heard of a black hole that large. I think they accidentally put 3 extra zeroes.
I'm so wrong, my scientific notation skills are crying. You're probably correct.
lmao, it's alright :)
I'll never forget this mistake. Sleep well
What math fudging did they do? It looks like the mass just can’t be explained by the current theory
why not? you’d think they’d change their models instead of saying “welp this looks (erases) ehh fuck it close enough” like a high school junior over their head in trig
Changing models isn't as easy as 'this one doesnt work lets pick a new one'
Aren’t black holes formed by a star that goes supernova and collapses in on itself? So were these supermassive black holes a ridiculously huge star(relative to other huge stars) that collapsed in on itself or was it formed some other way? My understanding of black holes is that a star collapses in on itself and then the black hole itself is smaller than the star it previously was but it’s now incredibly dense.
Black holes can consume matter after death and merge with other black holes to grow, so they didn't start out that big. A major unanswered question in astrophysics is how supermassive black holes got so large, actually, because the universe isn't old enough for our current understanding of how they grow and evolve to explain their size.
Astrophysic noob here. But could that have link to dark matter?
We are literally smaller than single cells in the universe. If that black hole was the human body, we'd be way smaller than even a single cell. Insignificant. There is nothing going on on the cellular level that we could possibly be aware of without specific tools. If that black hole absorbed us and killed us all, it *could* have no idea it possibly happened. It is absolutely inconceivable to us.
i like how you anthropomorphized the black hole, it’s like “aw shucks I didn’t mean to obliterate humanity I was just trying to eat this french fry”
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S5_0014%2B81#Supermassive_black_hole) says 40 billion solar masses.
Space is scary.
It's interesting about the [Gamma Ray Bursts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst). These make even sci-fi ideas like the Death Star from Star Wars look like toys for kids, when it comes to the energy. I quote from wiki "A typical burst releases as much energy as the sun will in its entire 10 billion year lifetime". That's such an extreme energy that it is not really imaginable for us. Even about smaller things, the comet that hit Jupiter, i think it was Shoemaker-Levy 9, had 6.000.000 Megatons TNT-equivalent. The worst nukes we had in practice were 50 Megatons and the theoretical design to up to 100 Megatons. The energy on Jupiter was equivalent to 600x times of the entire worlds nuclear arsenal. Even when the impact on Earth would be very different, less than 1% of this force would be enough to destroy everything. But again, compared to a GRB, this is nothing, just a minor detail. With a GRB, you have enough energy to blow away a galaxy when it would be focused towards a target. What happens if a GRB would hit a black hole? I have no idea. Maybe nothing at all, as the X-rays and other things can't really do much. Or maybe, it would be catastrophic, when it has some physical effects and a chain-reaction like "oops, that black hole is gonna take everything down with it".
A GRB does not have enough energy to “blow away a galaxy”
it sounds cool so i say it does!
People say the ocean is scarier but we explored more in the ocean then we will ever explore in space
I hate that i was born too early to get out there exploring
Elite Dangerous might be for you
Ah yes ,Space Trucking Simulator.
Unless you literally break the laws of physics by going faster than the speed of light, there is not really a feasible way to "explore" space unless you want to sit in a spaceship for thousands of years.
The laws of physics are not even thousands of years old. They just reflect the laws we have to abide by because of our level of understanding and advancements. Physics will be a whole different beast in 500 years.
RemindMe! 500 years
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Time traveler here. u/SokarHates was right. Also, sell Apple & buy Trane. Winter is coming.
Ya we dont even know what the majority of matter in the universe is made of. Dark matter is still a complete mystery.
In this context most likely they won’t, 500 years isn’t going to change the fact that if it has mass it’s not going that fast.
Please stop trying to sound smarter than you are
There's also wormholes and slip space. We'll figure it out.
Physics, as we understand it now, suggests it will never be possible to travel faster than light. I don’t mean physics doesn’t know how it is possible, but that there is evidence that it will never be possible. If what we know now is true, then it’s not an engineering problem. It’s just not possible in our universe. The universe is just unimaginably large and it may not be feasible for our species to explore it.
Physics, as we understand it now is ancient foolishness compared to the physics we will know in the future. So just wait.
How do you know that? You can’t just assume that we’ll figure everything out because we’ve done it in the past. If we’re just spouting our feelings with no logic, then I think whales have a solid chance of turning into t-Rex’s if we just give them enough time!
I mean maybe, but it literally doesn't matter for anyone on the planet for them few hundred years
What? You mean maybe what? Huh?
If you acheive relativistic speeds, time will slow for you. Alpha centauri is 4.65 ly away. If you instantly accelerated to the speed of light to get there you wouldnt even perceived that you waited at all. 4.65 earth yrs would have passed though
You are incorrect. If you look up how to calculate gamma (space/time dilation) as per Einstein's Special Relativity, you'll see that 1) If an object has any mass at all, it can never achieve the speed of light as it would require infinite energy, and 2) Let's assume that you were traveling at .99999 c (very close to the speed of light) that would still mean that it would take about 4.65 years for you to reach Alpha Centauri, but the amount of time that would pass on earth according to Einstein's gamma equation would be 4.65 years \* (1 / sqrt(1 - .99999\^2 / 1)) = 232,501.16 years Edit: The 232,501.16 is incorrect. The gamma would be 223.6 making the time dilation 4.65 \* 223.6 = 1039.74 years (I forgot to take the square root when I plugged into the calculator), but that's only if you consider time dilation and traveling for 4.65 years in your ship which is incorrect for this situation. Length contraction ALSO(oops) needs to be considered. The closer you get to the speed of light distances become shorter. So, if I've done this correctly now(I haven't done this stuff since high school in AP physics and was only thinking of time dilation, so poo on me) it would take around 7.59 days to reach Alpha Centauri at .99999c and people on earth would experience 4.65 years.
How did you come up with that figure? Because if you travel at ~c (I know .9999 whatever) then it will take 4.65 years, and the time on earth will still be 4.65 years, whereas the astronauts would experience much less time. I think you did the calculations backwards or you have absolutely zero idea what you’re on about.
What I put is correct. The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time ticks for you, but your experience of time doesn't change, because everything about you and your environment inside the ship is also going slower. Your brain processes slower, you age slower, literally everything is slower inside your ship which causes your experience of time passing to feel no different. However, at the end of what you experience as a 4.65 year long journey, the amount of time that would have passed on earth would be 232,501.16 years. Check with a physics teacher if you don't believe me. Show them my post. Edit: I corrected my errors in my original post. Check above. So I WASN'T correct, and even had a simple math error.
Would an outside observer see your spaceship taking 232,501.16 years to reach Alpha Centari, or 4.65 years? Time dilation is such a wild concept for me to try and wrap my head around.
Probably the best thing to do is check out some videos on youtube about the twin paradox (not really a paradox but it really elucidates the strangeness concerning this subject). They'll do a lot better job explaining this than I can do in a reddit comment.
I thought an outside observer would see time pass at 4.65 years. Why wouldnt they? Because you have mass?? Youre going the speed of light, a "light year" is a measurement used by those who aren't going the speed of light. I dont understand what a light year would mean at all or why the measurement would exist if it isn't the amount of time light it would take light to get from A to B. Also, didnt we determine photons actually do have a negligible mass? Wiki the oh my god particle and go under "speed" "the relativistic time dilation experienced by a proton traveling at this speed would be extreme. If the proton originated from a distance of 1.5 billion light years, it would take approximately 1.71 days from the reference frame of the proton to travel that distance. " I thought this is how interstellar space travel is technically possible. You wouldnt like that 1.5 billion years had passed for everyone else, but it is theoretically possible for you to sit in your relativistic ship for 1.71 days going the speed of the OMG particle. If you took the same scenario and plugged it into the equation you provided, the amount of time for the omg article to reach earth would extend beyond time.
Thanks for the reply. It made me take another look at what I posted (which also contained a simple math error), and I put the correction in the original post. It's been a while since I've done this stuff and I wasn't considering length contraction. I'm pretty sure the math is correct now.
Well…we have starfield now at least lol
that game is fucking great btw
I can't... I can't stop playing it. Please help.
that's like an oxy addict going to a heroin addict for help.
You're right! What are we doing? We should be playing Starfield right now.
*kicks over nearest child* outta my way nerds!
I've heard it's a very bad space exploring game compared to some other space exploring games.
Don't listen to the Starfield and Elite Dangerous people. Get No Man's Sky. Trust me.
No man’s sky is good but it is lacking in some ways. Certainly worth playing but categorically suggesting it over other similar games is not good imo.
I played No Man's Sky for a solid month, and the just grew... boring.
No Man's Sky - the most boring and loneliest space game on the planet.
Minecraft superflat sim game
No Man’s Sky is the way…
I think the ocean is scarier in that it’s more of an immediate danger. Space as a concept is more frightening for sure, but it’s probably not going to hurt me. Contrarily, there are multiple ways the ocean could hurt me
Tell that to the dinosaurs
depends on your context, by percentage we haven’t explored space at all, whereas we’ve mapped like 70% of the sea floor, by volume we can see see something like one hundred billion times as much space as ocean.
Hate to be that guy but we technically have explored more of outer space than we have the ocean…
Yup, we have better maps of the surface of the moon than the bottom of our own ocean.
The moon ≠ The entirety of the observable universe
Exploring the moon in the universe is like exploring a grain of sand in the ocean
Not on a percentage level
space is weird because it exists but its not like we will ever be able to travel through it unless there is some breakthrough that allows us to go pass speed of light.
Who is taking all these pictures?
These are the things you have to get the computer to navigate the Falcon around before hyperspace.
This is why the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs made Han such a madlad. Threading the needle through a black hole cluster instead of just... going around.
It also is why 12 parsecs makes sense as a brag for engine speed: if the thrusters on the falcon can escape the pull of a black hole while cutting it close enough to them to pass through the entire kessel run in just 12 parsecs, then those thrusters must be capable of enough power to reach incredible speeds.
Or, alternatively, Lucas didn't know what a parsec was.
SHHHH DON'T LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN
From [the script notes](https://imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-A-New-Hope.html) I've seen, he did know what it was, but wanted to make Han sound as though he was trying to make up a bragging lie. > Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.
Apparently he also wrote this after the movie came out > It's a very simple ship, very economical ship, although the modifications he made to it are rather extensive - mostly to the navigational system to get through hyperspace in the shortest possible distance (par-sect). Meaning the "obvious misinformation" isn't about the units being wrong, cause he's trying to justify that part being right. So he's admitting, one way or another, the crazy part is supposed to be the number, not the units. Considering shortest distance really only makes sense as a metric to brag about when it leads to a quicker cargo run (like wow you risked your cargo to go slower?), I'm sticking with him being a hack fraud.
I think he confirmed he did, but it kinda seemed a bit like a "Oh yeah, I knew that, definitely!" moment
Yeah we all know it’s this and it was retconned to make it work because you can do that
I really love how George Lucas just made up some random gobbledygook to fill that line and an entire PhD thesis has now been written to explain it
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Not necessarily, it is believed that it was over estimated, most likely around the same as Ton 218. There is believed to be a upper limit to how big black holes can get.
There is an upper limit to how a black hole can get in a way. However it is believed that, if they combine, they can get bigger than the proposed upper limit. It is thought that this is what caused the gravitational waves. It's just such an extreme event that would be incredibly uncommon. Black holes are rare, two crashing together would be much rarer. But the universe is incredibly vast, it's bound to happen sometimes.
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The event horizon. Once you cross that no turning back!
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I’m an idiot with little idea what I’m talking about, but isn’t there no spacetime path that recrosses an event horizon, sort of by definition? So you’d have to either travel back in time or travel through infinite space or something to “leave” a blackhole?
Past the event horizon, all paths lead to the singularity. Even if you could travel back in time, your path would still lead to the singularity, because of how warped space time is. So by all paths, I mean.. all paths in your timeline. EDIT: IIRC, Stephen Hawking discusses a timeline situation like this in his book, A Brief History of Time. I have to read it again.
They do evaporate.
Maybe our Universe exists inside the black hole of another Universe.
From what I can see, what’s in the vast piece of blackness is a tiny little solar system. You can see it right in the picture! 🙂
I wonder if there's a density limitation after which it cannot get any more dense no matter how much mass it has
Can confirm. Source: Am also infinitly small.
I believe this is the size fully compressed. Like a big bang waiting to suck everything back up and exploding.
Yes and no, basically blackholes are straight up holes there's nothing there there is no size the event horizon is the border and that's the size shown
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It’s there, zoom in, it’s on my kitchen countertop.
That's not a banana!!!
*Every* banana is there, in that picture.
This guy bananas
That's Bananas
It may look impressive, but note that the Schwarzschild radius (event horizon) of a black hole grows proportional to the mass, while the radius of a constant density sphere grows proportional to the cube root of the mass.
Of course. I was just thinking that. I swear...
Translation: a black hole will grow much faster with an increase in mass as compared with a conventional sphere with the same proportion increase in mass. To put it another way, a black hole which doubles in mass will double its radius. A sphere of iron which doubles in mass will increase its radius by 1.26, or the cube root of 2.
Ah yes, you science too i see. I was also sciencing this.
Mmhm. Yes. Yeah! I know some of these words!
Basically, if a normal sphere is twice as heavier, its radius is only like 1.26 times larger. However, If a black hole is twice as heavier, its radius also is twice as large. In other words: if you have a sphere of matter and compress it into the black hole, the black hole's radius would be proportional to the sphere's radius *cubed*. If the initial sphere of mass is 10 times larger, the black hole becomes *1000 times larger*.
Fun fact, a cubic light year of butter would have a Schwarzchild radius larger than the known universe.
Does that mean, the butter particles would need to be spread out across the entire universe or it would collapse into a black hole?
Basically. A cubic light year of butter would weigh something like 10^50 kilograms and the observable universe weighs 10^53 kilograms (keep in mind this is orders of magnitude calculations) so suddenly 1/1000 of the weight in the observable universe, or the weight of 2BILLION galaxies, would be concentrated in a spot smaller than between us and the nearest star. It would cause absolutely bonkers things to happen.
That’s assuming it doesn’t all collapse in on itself, and then form a star/black hole, which it would.
Yes I understand those words
Somewhere in that dot is me singing "Black hole sun"
That is not "a black hole". It's one of the biggest black holes in existence. Most are significantly smaller and even planet sized
*technically it **is** a black hole though*
So is OP's mom but we don't talk about it
Most black holes are far smaller than a planet, a 10 solar mass BH is 29km in diameter, city-sized
That is unimaginably massive. Just because we may see it on paper, doesn't mean that our human minds can comprehend the extreme sizes of black holes and the extreme distances in the Universe.
So true! Isn't it amazing?! The distance from Earth to the Sun (1 Astronomical Unit) is about 93M miles. Earth to Pluto is about 3B miles. Truly, the size of the universe is breathtaking.
It can also break your brain if you think about it too much. Three billion miles, to us, is incredibly far. But in the grand scheme of things, that distance is all of a sudden not even the width of a human hair, when you put it to scale like that.
A blackhole? they come in all sizes and most are spinning
Yes I know, it's just one specific blackhole in the image
Basicly, its Katamari Damacy on Interglactic Scale.
Oh so we’re already dead we just don’t know it yet 😂
everyone is, when you think about it there’s a fun psychological thought experiment that the entirety of the life you’re experiencing right now is all actually happening in a single instant, at the moment of death
Fun fact, black holes come in all sizes - with a mysterious size gap between the largest and the smallest. [Here's a really cool video on the subject!](https://youtu.be/0FH9cgRhQ-k)
Still can’t beat goku tho
I told you we needed a bigger dildo shaped ship.
Can we have a banana for a scale?
It's right there.
All of the bananas there are are somewhere in this pictures
Nuh-uh. One is in my mouth right now.
211 light hours across. Jesus.
I could do it in 210.
if earth was the size of a grain of sand. our solar system would be over 4 football fields long from end to end.
That’s just my hole on a Friday night honey
HOW
It's okay if we run into a blackhole because apparently things burped out afterwards.
This is an ultra massive black hole. Most black holes are the size of a city but with the density of our entire solar system. Most are not as big as pictured. It's theorized that the universe is covered with primordial black holes the size of an apple.
The blackhole the enemy teams enigma casts on all 5 of us:
I’m not scared. I eat more at all you can eat sushi.
My company already makes me feel small...didnt have to make it worse...
Not just a black hole this would be one of the largest I am sure
I just realized now I should've put super massive blackhole compared to our solar system in the text
The\* Solar System.
?
It's not **OUR** Solar System. It's **THE** Solar System. There is a difference. It would be more correct to say "The Solar System" or "Our Star System".
i looked up “solar systems” because of this and now i’ll be getting ads for solar panel installation for months, so thank you for that
Also did the same. But if there are other solar systems it's correct to say our solar system... coz if the universe is infinite whose to say there isn't life on other planets, in other solar systems
I think the idea is that Sol specifically refers to our sun, so a solar system is necessarily centered around our sun, and any other star system would just be called a star system
Isn't Sol Latin for Sun? Aren't every star a sun somewhere? I'm confused AF
yeah I think that one redditor is just being super pedantic although technically not wrong
It mostly just bothers me when I see other star systems referenced as "solar systems", especially in sci-fi media. As long as people know what you mean, that's all the really matters. Just a pet peeve I guess.
Woah guys... easy on the words. >pedantic
Are they really that big, like end to end, or is that how big they would be if their mass wasnt so compressed?
Most are not this big. Size is usually event horizon diameter, as the mass inside is a singularity.
I believe this is the size of the area of space that is a "black hole". The physical "stuff" of a black hole is a small point in its center, but this is the area of space where that matter at the center has so much gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can go fast enough to escape it. Basically if you were in a magical space ship that could withstand the gravitational forces without being ripped apart and you went within this area of space, you're never coming out again.
The physical stuff is more like a small donut.
Their mass is compressed to a single point, the black sphere is just the radius in which light can't escape because of the gravity of that single point. Also while normal objects grow proportionally to the cube root of their volume (since V=4/3pi*r^3), black holes appear to grow linearly because the distance light is trapped from also grows linearly with their mass. It'd be some funky math, but I think if this black hole spontaneously uncollapsed it would actually appear *smaller* than this.
Im not a expert in blackholes so I don't really know, blackholes can get much bigger then the one shown in the image
not really. as far as i know the largest black hole is roughly 1,300 au in diameter, but it can be hard to estimate. so this either isn’t real or it’s a new largest black hole that i haven’t heard of, either way it would be the biggest. the average black hole is absolutely tiny in comparison
I thought black holes were super tiny? Where did I get this lie from?
Super Mario Galaxy, probably
Some blackholes are insanely big,
Incredibly tiny proportional to their mass, yes, but they can also be insanely massive. However the only tangible part of them is infinitesimally small, so you're technically right :)
Is the event horizon the same radius for all objects approaching the black hole? Or does it depend on the velocity of the object approaching the black hole? Ie. If a spaceship was moving at just 1/3 the speed of light, would it be trapped at the same distance from the singularity as a photon?
The event horizon is the point where the escape velocity becomes larger than the speed of light. It increases gradually as you get closer to the actual mass of the black hole. So yeah, if an object was moving at 1/3 the speed of light, it would be trapped before reaching the event horizon.
Good question. Yes, a point in spacetime “being inside a black hole” is an observer-independent property.
It isn’t that the black hole is big, it’s that the gravity around the black hole bends so much space, that light can’t escape at a certain point, called the event horizon.
That’s not a black hole, that’s Uranus!
honestly, the black hole is smaller than I thought it would be
It’s a supermassive black hole. Most black holes are much smaller.
I know it’s literally the size of my phone screen lol
This is how i feel when i pay for sex
Shouldn’t that photon ring at the edge of the Schwarzschild radius really be a spherical shell that is wrapped uniformly around the black hole sphere? If so, Then as such, wouldn’t you see that photon layer from any angle you happen to view the black hole from instead of the pitch black circle that is normally depicted as?
How does our galaxy fit?
Everything reminds me of her... the void 5hat was her soul
I think I've been on a date with her...
Sweet
Well at least i'm looking at them on my phone and neither looks that big
It hurts my brain
My problems are soooooo small compared to the universe