3 ms·
Well, slight semantic nuances of English aside, we absolutely have taken pictures of black-hole-emitted radiation; see [0] for an example. Search for photos of
by myWindoonn 8y ago
Well, slight semantic nuances of English aside, we absolutely have taken pictures of black-hole-emitted radiation; see [0] for an example. Search for photos of X-ray emissions. It's true that most of the energy seen from the direction of a black hole will be leftover scraps from its messy eating habits, but Hawking radiation should be a thing (although we'll likely never observe it above the CMBR), and rotating black holes should also be a thing.
If you decide to go the fuzzball route, then perception without direct visualization isn't too hard, aside from the holographic principle, which helpfully justifies the idea that fuzzballs are a place where 3D movement becomes 2D movement. On a fuzzball, you might imagine strings moving around on the surface, but there's no meaningful way to move further into the fuzzball nor to detach from the surface and leave, aside from getting lots of energy and popping off as Hawking radiation/firewall. Incidentally, 2D movement is something that we have tons of intuition for already!
[0] https://www.space.com/35231-deepest-x-ray-image-black-holes.html https://www.space.com/35231-deepest-x-ray-image-black-holes....
Edit: Many folks would consider our gravitational-wave telescopes, like LIGO, to give us data which could be interpreted visually. [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_88S8DWbcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_88S8DWbcU
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoThis is exactly my point and the semantics do matter here because they relate to the epistemic nature of the content. Namely that humans can't directly interpret X-Rays (or other non-visible light emissions). We have to convert X-Ray emissions into images or mathematical representations which we then interpret visually/logically. So there is some level of information compression which we have to do just to be able to do some interpretation. This is not a hit on them at all, in fact it's a genius workaround. All I really want to point out here really is the limits to our perception and the lengths that we go to, in order to transform non-perceivable phenomena into into modalities that we can perceive. It's an exercise in investigating the boundaries of our epistemic capabilities.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SiempreViernes 8y agoStrictly speaking we don't see colours at all, we just hallucinate them from the monochrome response in three (or fewer) filters. So, for example, we commonly confuse mixes of different colours with a colour between them. In this strict frame of mind, it is not a trivial epistemic statement to say that "the highlight colour at yellow.com is yellow", since your screen can not physically emit yellow light.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoYes, the rabbit hole goes deep in the perception question. Which is why I think it's important that we recognize the nested abstractions when we are trying to describe concepts - especially when they are interpreted from things that we don't have even fundamental perceptual abstractions for.
- mkagenius 8y agox-ray shouldn't be that different from the other rays of light in its behavior in illuminating an object had our eyes had evolved to detect them. So they should be same.
- qubex 8y ago”I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more. —John Cavil, Cylon Model Number One, Battlestar Galactica