Black holes

1. 58

   vydyulashashiposted 13 years ago

   Do you think black holes re;;y exist?

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      Evan G Rogersposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      ... they've pretty much been "seen".
      
      Sure, that doesn't prove that they exist: but "looking at a table" doesn't really prove that a table exists.
      
      Black holes have an AMAZING amount of evidence supporting their existence, and there is yet to be a good argument disproving the theory.
      
      Kind of like the Theory of Gravity - we still haven't proved it exists, but it's the best explanation we have.... and boy howdy does it have a lot of evidence supporting it.

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         vydyulashashiposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Yeah till now I believed black holes do exist.
         But i remember recently there came theory which is opposing the existence of black holes. I don't remember that theories name but if that theory is correct there will be no black holes at all.

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         1. 61

            RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Hawking will pe peed concerning great parts of his work (when he was young) have been calculations on black holes
            Humans always believe what they see, and until there's no other explanation for all those observed phenomena we stick with the idea of black holes

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2. 60

   knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

   NO.

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3. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   Yes. This one appears to be a proven fact.

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4. 96

   wildernessposted 13 years ago

   As paradigm says, it is pretty well accepted.
   
   That doesn't mean, though, that we truly know what they are.  The terms "black hole" and "singularity" don't say much and I'm not sure that the mathematics have even been invented to truly describe one.  We seem to have only a general idea of what is going on there.

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5. 60

   knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

   My theory. If the universe is not expanding as some people now believe, to keep the big-bang theory alive they need a new source of gravity to hold it together. Black holes - no evidence, cause it can't be detected, like prove you have no weapons of mass destruction it Iraq.

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      wildernessposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Many things can't be detected by normal means, but rather by their effect on other matter.  Black holes are found by their gravitational effect on surrounding matter and light.

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      RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Why shouldn't it expand ? do you think they're faking the evidence from dozens of space observations?
      O.k. lets assume that it really doesn't expand (this discussion has really been brought up by some physicist again, since many bulletproof facts from the 1960s-1980s turn out to be varnished or are based on what is today considered "imprecise measurements").
      
      Nevertheless, assume that it's not expanding, why wouldn't we still be able to measure cosmic background radiation (and you can't deny that since I myself have measured this several times )? Why does it show this one pattern that can be calculated to come from a 14 billion year old event where a large amount of energy e.g. in the form of radiation, has been set off?
      
      Oh and Hubble Space Telescope AND the Chandra X-ray project (both stand-alone) have both clearly shown phenomena that totally behave like the black holes we expect to exist! How would one explain this enormous amount of gravity detected ?

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   3. 58

      Beelzedadposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      That wouldn't be a theory, that would an uniformed assertion.
      
      Black holes can be detected, sorry to burst your bubble.

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         RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Says both Einstein AND Beelzedad (and me of course )

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   4. 75

      Richieb799posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Astrologists have photographed light being distorted around multiple galaxys passing each other, this proves that gravity has the ability to manipulate light, this is why we believe blackholes are invisible. NO light can escape from them.

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   5. 60

      peterxdunnposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      The Universe IS still expanding. What 's more the rate at which it is expanding is accelerating.
      
      Point of interest the concept of a 'dark star': a star with a gravitational field so intense that light wouldn't escape it, was first postulated by the guy (a teacher) that taught Napoleon Bonaparte maths ( can't remember his name).

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6. 60

   knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

   I believe that astronomy students are not going to get a passing grade if they express
   the fact that they do not believe in the big-band or black holes. Where no opposing theory is allowed all data is interpreted relative to the prevailing theory, wherein however other interpretations are possible if allowed. The big-bang is progressive meaning
   it supports the notion of primitive/elite
   human relations.

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   1. 61

      RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Well but I've looked through dozens of telescopes, analyzed hundreds of data sheets etc. and while I cannot be 100% sure (nobody can!) I'm 99% sure that the Universe is expanding! Data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe AND COBE clearly support this theory (the Big Bang AND the expanding Universe!) all this observed red-shifts cannot be a coincidence and aren't just interpreted to match these theories!
      While even Albert Einstein used to think the Universe is not expanding (he even "invented" the cosmological constant for that purpose) he later corrected himself and called it "the biggest mistake of his life" .
      
      Also the black holes are the reason why galaxies we observe look similar to the one in my avatar picture. Where would such an enormous amount of mass or in this context gravitation come from?
      
      I'm happy to hear about any counter theories but they have to at least prove why we observe what we observe .

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         qwarkposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         2 thumbs up PhD!  :
         Qwark

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7. 60

   knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

   I don't think any proofs exist. So If I may.
   An astronomer. I like the "Astronaut Pen". "It writes upside down."
   I was just a kid when Albert Einstein betrayed the Conservative cause. Thought so then and still do. What I notice is that all galaxies have huge bright spots in their centers not dark, as shown in your avatar. Maybe you know better than me and tell me if I am wrong,  but I have always thought those solar masses possessed enough gravity to hold a galaxy together. 
   There are other explanations for red-shifts, but it has been a number of years now and I am too lazy to look them up right at the moment, if indeed I could find them.

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   1. 83

      Midnight Oilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I have a black hole in my house, as all the pens seem to disappear into it.  I have bought dozens of pens, and within days they have all disappeared  QED...
      
      Okay, if both space itself and black holes are still expanding, what are they expanding into?  (and do they have current planning permission?)

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   2. 61

      RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Are you trying to say I'm an Astronomer ?
      
      Well the "bright spot" is an AGN
      
      Quote from Wikipedia, (ok thou shall not quote from there - but I make an exception )
      An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the centre of a galaxy that has a much higher than normal luminosity over at least some portion, and possibly all, of the electromagnetic spectrum. Such excess emission has been observed in the radio, infrared, optical, ultra-violet, X-ray and gamma ray wavebands. A galaxy hosting an AGN is called an active galaxy. The radiation from AGN is believed to be a result of accretion of mass by the supermassive black hole at the centre of the host galaxy. AGN are the most luminous persistent sources of electromagnetic radiation in the universe, and as such can be used as a means of discovering distant objects; their evolution as a function of cosmic time also provides constraints on models of the cosmos.
      
      basically what this is, is a super black hole, and what presumably makes the bright part is the accretion disc not the black hole itself
      
      Oh and you can view those as the waypoints of Universe (that's at least how we sometimes marked the coordinates of Earth in messages sent into the Universe, so that "they" find us )
      
      
      Btw. I'm interested: what about you? what do you do for a living? (your profile is very mysterious

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8. 60

   knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

   A gentleman's fancy, "if both space itself and black holes are still expanding, what are they expanding into?" Probably into that place where all your pens are.

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9. 60

   knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

   RDSPhD: I am interested.
   Whatsamatter with wikipedia?
   "(your profile is very mysterious", as is yours btw.
   I am retired living in poverty on social security. But I have always been poor. Made that decision when I was twenty-one. Chose to be a seeker of knowledge which doesn't pay $$$ much, but in my case a fortune in
   high-mind feel great all the time. Live alone for the first time in my life for about two years now. Does get lonely, solitary confinement most of the time. However nice in that total freedom of intellectual pursuits keeps me fairly occupied, empire politics for entertainment and original philosophy and psychology as my serious endeavor. I am non-academic, because I have a fickle memory with a personality of its own, prevents burn-out, but my ex was/is an academic. So what's your story if I may ask?

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      RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Hey knolyourself,
      Wow, thanks for the detailed Answer! I'm sorry about your breakup, that always hurts badly but well  I don't want to dig it up again!
      Oh, you really do have a special personality and your writing style is very refined! (That's why I'm still wondering whether "solitary confinement" is meant metaphorically or not )
      Well about wikipedia, you're not allowed to quote from it since it's not an approved source (also I notice errors every day, some of them quite heavy!) that's at least what I've been told in school/university
      
      O.k. so in elementary school my teacher thought that I was dumb because I never said something during the lesson and never talked much after school either. But three years later they then told me that I wasn't challenged enough because my intellect is higher than average persons (I didn't understand what they meant of course) - after doing dozens of tests, they then put my in a higher class, and from then on my marks went up and down . Well I don't think these tests are useful that's why I really don't care whether i'm above or below average and that's why I've never done an IQ test since then.
      I then started studying Chemistry and Physics parallel to each other, which some consider crazy (but 9 other guys in my year did it and more and more people start studying several subjects at once so it's nothing special). I can't get enough knowledge that's probably why I succeeded (I had literally no spare time and it was quite hard but I wouldn't change my decision when looking back).
      So I did my B.S., M.S. and finally Ph.D. in General Physics and General Chemistry. After the B.S. I actually had to work in the army for more than a year as a WOM/ABC-Weapons specialist which wasn't very exciting (but very time consuming xD).
      My wife is an Astrophysicist but I've known her since college (so it's not the "Physicists only date Physicists" cliché ).
      I work in different research groups/on different projects and also for the pharmaceutical industry.

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10. 60

    knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

    RDSPhD:
    Not necessarily in reference to your early life, but you might be interested. Started watching:
    "Temple Grandin is a 2010 biopic directed by Mick Jackson and starring Claire Danes" from HBO, and Netflix, and maybe finish it tonight. From what I have seen it is a fantastic insight into the mind of a specific autistic person.

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       RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Hey knolyourself,
       Thanks for the tip! From what I've read there are certain parallels to my early life but I've never been diagnosed with any form of autism. But I've been diagnosed with ADHD, which I don't see as a disease however, more as a source of energy and since 80% of my fellow students also had the ADHD diagnose, I think that it's a much wider spread "disease" than autism even though the two "diseases" are sometimes said to be similar to each other.
       Nevertheless if you would see me walking by on the street you wouldn't notice anything at all .
       
       But I do know someone with Asperger syndrome, the guy's a pure math genius but the sad part about that is that he actually sees his skills as a punishment and not as a skill since for him solving mathematical problems is more of a anankastia than of a challenge.
       Well all these "diseases" are something fascinating!! So thanks again for the movie tip

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11. 60

    knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

    "Black holes can be detected, sorry to burst your bubble."
    The bubble astronomy.
    There were no black-holes not so long ago.
    There was the 'balloon expansion'. Then came
    black holes that cannot be detected because the gravity sucks in all light. These black wholes were said to be in space outside galaxies and to be sucking whole galaxies into them. Now suddenly black-holes are inside the centers of galaxies. They have to be recent developments seems to me in terms of their age, or fairly weak forces, or otherwise they would have swallowed any given entire galaxies.

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    1. 0

       andycoolposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       What is a black hole? When a star is dead it becomes a black hole. In an alive star like our sun there is always a burning process going on. Eventually the star is left with no fuel for further burning. So gradually the 'red giant' stage of the star appears... when fuel like hydrogen becomes much less and the star becomes red (have you seen a barbeque, same phenomenon happens in a star too). Such a star is called a 'super nova' sometimes. The next stage is the 'white dwarf' stage when the star is left with only ashes which is much smaller in size, but it is still visible. Finally the star becomes an enormous mass containing burnt out fuel only. The gravity is so huge that it attracts light particles inside itself. You should note here that in space light shows the property of 'electro-magnetic particles', and not an wave. The dead star is called a black hole because it attracts everything inside it along with light... it behaves like a black hole in the space.
       
       This explains that black holes are facts and not myths.

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          Beelzedadposted 13 years agoin reply to this

          Yes, but our sun will not become a black hole as it does not have the sufficient mass to do so.
          
          
          
          Actually, the hydrogen nuclei undergoes fusion due to the intense gravity from the stars mass. The hydrogen undergoes fusion thus turning hydrogen into helium and so on through the periodic table until it becomes lead and cannot possibly fuse further.
          
          
          
          Electromagnetic radiation has the properties of both particle and wave (duality) depending on the reference frame applied. Space itself is not considered a reference frame.
          

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       Beelzedadposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       When, exactly, were there no black holes?
       
       
       
       Uh, do you even know what a black hole is?

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12. 60

    knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

    "Astronomers could be misinterpreting their observations of distant stars, suggest mathematicians. Starlight may be bent in odd directions when it passes close to a rotating black hole, the researchers say, unexpectedly shifting its source's apparent position in the sky.
    
    The cause is a recently discovered phenomenon called negative refraction, which physicists are still struggling to understand."

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    1. 61

       RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Haha there was an article on this recently I think in "Science", though i'm not sure: some day we will have invisible fighting jets and a bit further in future invisible spaceships due to this phenomenon (o.k. maybe even a cloaking device to make humans invisible although it's very improbable this will be allowed for public use )
       
       The mathematicians are just jealous Nah really mathematics is also only made up by us humans as long as it serves its purpose and is able to explain the things we see we aren't changing anything about it, and this is true for every theory, even the one of the black holes! Maybe it's just some aliens playing a prank on us, or a huge ball of flaming cheese that sits in the middle of every galaxy, but as long as we can only observe radiation data rather than real optical data we can only assume that it's a black hole (btw. andycool: you described the black hole very well!).

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       Beelzedadposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       So what? Is there some point to your plagiarized post? Yes, I read the article in Nature from which you lifted that quote.

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13. 60

    knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

    "So what? Is there some point to your plagiarized post? Yes, I read the article in Nature from which you lifted that quote."
    Do you not know what quotation marks mean?
    The plagiarism means your black hole doesn't seem to be staying one place. THUS other factors may be involved beside the theory of black holes.

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       Beelzedadposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       There aren't any objects in the universe that are "staying in one place" - they are all in motion. And, it is well known that some black holes are rotating and some are not, and in fact, this is how two of the four solutions are defined.

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14. 61

    RDSPhDposted 13 years ago

    Good point but I don't think that black holes have to stay at the same place, since they're not really holes but if we believe the black-holes theory they're rather a small dense ball with a huge gravitational field around them. But they too can be affected by stronger gravitational fields.
    It's like an apple on earth, just because we think the apple is only falling on the ground doesn't mean that earth isn't actually also "falling" towards the apple! But not only is earth "falling" towards the apple but also towards the sun, and the sun is "falling" towards the center of the galaxy etc.
    Maybe there's even a bigger black hole somewhere which affects all galaxies and other black holes. Hopefully NASA's budget is increased again, so we can put more effort in space exploration projects. But rather than spending money on that, the U.S. need billions just to pay the interest of their enormous debts (not to mention the debts themselves, which are on a record high!).
    So maybe it's a Chinese space program doing all the discoveries in future (since Russia's financial status is also pretty ugly!)

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    superwagsposted 13 years ago

    I can't add any more to the answers given by RDSPhD which have been excellent. Obviously science dictates that we have have to leave open the possibility that there is something else going on, but this seems extremely unlikely given the data we've gathered since the 50s on black holes. In fact it's likely that most galaxies, including out own have black holes at their centre. Below is a link to a recent beautiful photo from the Chandra X-ray observatory of the Persius Galaxy. 
    
    http://science.nationalgeographic.com/s … s-gallery/
    
    Anyway, if the idea of black holes seems counterintuitive, then wait 'til you do a bit of reading on the Holographic Principle which black hole thermodynamics inspired! It'll blow your mind!

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       RDSPhDposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Thanks superwags
       I blushed while reading your comment
       And you're right, the Holographic Principle really sounds strange at first, but once you start to understand it, it starts to make sense! (ok. that's true for everything ). Susskind (one of the guys behind the whole thing ) really is a freaking genius!

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          superwagsposted 13 years agoin reply to this

          Haha! My pleasure! You've got to love a bit of mind bending science!

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