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It wouldn't do anything special actually. A black hole from a distance does nothing a sun can't do. Black holes only become destructive/powerful when you are v
by ars 1y ago
It wouldn't do anything special actually. A black hole from a distance does nothing a sun can't do.
Black holes only become destructive/powerful when you are very close to them.
To elaborate: A black hole is mass, a sun is mass. From a distance there's no difference. The only difference is up close - you can get a lot closer to a black hole dramatically increasing the gravitational force.
But from a distance? Nothing special.
- adrianN 1y agoExcept black holes can be a lot more massive than the biggest stars.
- atoav 1y agoWhich is true, but also just means you need more distance. And if there is anything in space it is distance.
- ikari_pl 1y agothen there are the jets the black holes may form, and I wouldn't like to pass through one
- ars 1y agoNo, those jets look amazing from a distance, where you are looking at a galaxy sized object. But up close they are very thin and you probably would not notice passing through one unless you were checking carefully.
- ErigmolCt 1y agoWe often imagine them as space vacuums sucking everything in, but they're really just compact mass: spooky only if you get way too close
- abrookewood 1y agoThanks for that. I guess I had always assumed that over a long enough time frame, black holes would eventually swallow everything.
- IAmBroom 1y agoIn a static universe, they absolutely would. In a shrinking univers, they absolutely would. (But neither of these things would necessarily have already happened.) In an expanding universe, some things will eventually so far away from black holes that they won't get "eaten". Also, they won't see them anymore, nor most of the rest of the universe. That third option is, to our best knowledge, the one we live in. An interesting implication is that, if intelligent life evolves several billion years from now in any given galaxy, it's galaxy might be so far away from its nearest neighbors that light from them will never reach it. That civilization's Hubble will never be able to test their crazy theory that "there could be more than one galaxy in the universe".
- misja111 1y agoWhat about the huge gravitational waves?
- tvshtr 1y agoinconsequential for the most part, gravity doesn't interact directly with matter (which I understand, might be still quite counterintuitive to many). I do wonder though if it would be possible for the "ripple" to deorbit us (or any other body).
- IAmBroom 1y agoThe waves aren't that strong, at "safe" distances. Otherwise, we'd all experience shared vertigo.
- ars 1y agoYou would not notice even a strong wave. The wave moves your entire body, and the ground, all at the same time. You would not notice anything because it all moves together. OK, not at exactly the same time - but you need specialized equipment to detect it, AKA the machines in the article. A person would not notice even a strong wave.
- IAmBroom 1y agoWe're agreeing.
- djmips 1y agoBlack holes can have a relativistic jet. M87 has one that extends ~5000 light years. These jets can kill from a long distance.
- ars 1y agoSuns can also kill from a long distance. From even a reasonable distance those jets are quite diffuse, you could pass through one and not notice.