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How awesome are Black Holes??


Mastermold

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Seriously, black holes are the coolest things out there. Basically, a little background before my question, a black hole is a body of matter that has an escape speed greater than light speed, which means that not even light can escape. And usually these are formed from stars too massive to go nova, and instead collapse on themselves and more and more gravitational force propagates from all of the mass, until it is so massive that a black hole forms. And escape speed is just the speed necessary to completely escape the gravitational pull of a body.. such as Earth, which has an escape velocity of 11km/s. An escape speed is proportional to a body's mass divided by its volume. So if you could throw a ball straight up with an initial velocity of 11km/s, then it would continue upward forever, until is encounters another gravitational body.. of hits the international space station. (Bush would say, "We have no doubt Al Quieda was involved and have decided to bomb Russia, because they might be there.") Talk about off-topic! Anyway, with all of that knowledge of black holes.. my questions are:

 

If black holes exist, then won't ALL matter eventually enter existing black holes because nothing can be travelling at the speed of light? (What a dismal future!) I mean, technically we are all just orbitting black holes then... similar to our galaxy's contents that are orbitting the black hole in the center.

 

And second, if our universe has a certain amount of mass (which has been roughly estimated), and a certain volume (which is infinitely large) the escape speed would be a number less than the speed of light... but how is that possible considering we are all trapped by the pull of black holes? In other words, you cannot escape a black hole, but the same equation says that you CAN escape the universe??? Is the equation for escape speed wrong? Any other ideas?

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And just one thing to comment on how cool black holes are... we did a Physics problem where you have the calculate the force on one person's head if they are near a black hole... and you basically calculate that the force would rip them in half.. hahaha:)

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It is believed that there is a Black Hole in the center of our galaxy. Only thing is the Black hole isn't active (eating) at this point. The think it is just off now and my become active again. This was thought to be true until good proof came: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030107/od_nm/space_hole_dc_2

 

Super-massive Black Hole. Good artical.

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If it became active, Im not sure what would happen. I think wouldn't be able to tell. If the galaxy moved faster our solar system would still be routating around the sun.

But the question, "How long until it ate us"? Don't know that etheir, but I doubt it would be less then half a million years.

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The influence of gravity decreases proportional to distance; most objects are so far away from black holes that their velocity makes the pull of a black hole negligible. (Why doesn't the moon crash into Earth because of Earth's gravitational field? same thing.)

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Two things I just have to reply to... first it is a misconception to think of a black hole as "sucking us in," because as Fafalone explained, it is just a super dense area of gravity, so we are always being pulled in.. but we are orbitting the body. The only reason we orbit is because of the black hole's pull. You need to understand centripetal acceleration to really grasp it, but basically we are going in circles because we are being accelerated toward the center. If you shoot water through a curved hose, the water comes out in a straight line, it does not curve all the way in circles as it's falling to the ground. It must have a centripetal force applied to change direction into a circular path. When you spin something around your head on the end of a string.. you must continually pull on the string to keep it moving. Same situation in the way the moon orbits us, we orbit the sun, the galaxy's contents orbit the black hole... etc.

 

Note: (For the true Physicist out there, let me just mention that the centripetal 'force' is not ACTUALLY a force, it is simply the component of the force that is perpendicular to the diretion of the velocity. I lost major points on a test for that.. and it is important to note... I didn't want to get yelled out if anyone noticed.)

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The other thing is, black holes do not have 'another end' because they are a point singularity... a super massive area that does not allow even light to escape its gravity. Now, it is possible, but not known, if the singularity creates some sort of 'tunnel' (like a wormhole) because of the power of such a singularity. Physicists do not know enough about the medium of the Universe to understand the nature of the interaction.. and what it would do to the 'fabric' of space.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest malco94

Radical Edward,

 

What exactly do you mean?

 

I thoughtthat since a "black hole" is infinitely dense it rips a hole in space-time. This is where the theory of wormholes comes from. Imagine the universe like a pulled out blanket, when you drop objects onto it it creates sort of craters, isn't this the effect of gravity? :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

the wormhole thing is a topological argument like bending a rubber sheet over, poking a hole in it, and then connecting it to the sheet underneath. the same can also be done for a 3D space bent in 4D. my point was that the hole doesn't nescessarily go anywhere, though in fact, it does. it ends at the singularity.

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Originally posted by Radical Edward

the wormhole thing is a topological argument like bending a rubber sheet over, poking a hole in it, and then connecting it to the sheet underneath. the same can also be done for a 3D space bent in 4D. my point was that the hole doesn't nescessarily go anywhere, though in fact, it does. it ends at the singularity.

 

 

If the universe is indeed shaped like a doughnut, could it emerge at another point? I don't think we know enough to say it ends at the singularity, because we lack the laws to explain the workings of physics on that scale.

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