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[Night Hunter]

...that's a lot of bookcases.

This comment needs more love.

 

[DarkFlow]

Well not really, you should be able to see it through some form of infrared camera if you have the right tech (because they produce heat or something along those lines).

EDIT: Plus as long as you're not past the event horizon you should be able to observe it (although obviously not without risk)

He meant with his eyes, not with cameras.

 

[Napoleonthechimp]

I like the quantum bounce idea:
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-bounce-could-make-black-holes-explode-1.15573

It says that black holes are implosions stuck in time because of the insane gravity. Stars would implode, and as soon as it reaches a critical size it would bounce and explode. The problem is, it would take much more than the actual age of the universe for this to happen.

So... like a big bang then? Interesting.

 

[kyser73]

I was thinking that too. It's just... I mean we are so unsignificant in such scales it's mindblowing.

By the way, I love reading these topics but always wonder how can they pinpoint with such accuracy. I mean we know so little about our own Solar System, hell even our own planet. How can we know the age of something so far away or its size, how was this created and so on. I mean I'm trying to understand here, I appreciate science but to me everything seems like hypothesis. Kinda like Pluto is a planet then it no longer is, discovery of planets orbiting 2 suns, etc...



My thoughts exactly

OK, first you need to learn the difference between a hypothesis, and a classification.

That's what happened with Pluto. One of the many international bodies that decides these things changed its classification from a planet to a planetoid.

Answering the rest of your question...is pretty complex. This was about the best thing I could find on the subject. The first section deals with the basics of measuring things in space, the second specifically about how interstellar observation works.

http://www.astronomyforbeginners.com/astronomy/howknow.php

http://www.astronomyforbeginners.com/astronomy/howknow2.php

 

[WhiskerFrisker]

As you approach a black hole (before the event horizon), both time and space will gradually become increasingly distorted. In regards to space, what you would see is that, as you approached the black hole, it would gradually take up an increasingly large portion of your field of view. That's true of everything, in a small way; even a nickel looks larger as you approach it. But imagine this effect is magnified hugely by the dense gravity; the black hole isn't just "larger," but gradually all encompassing. If you were to turn around to look behind you, the rest of the universe would gradually become a tinier portion of your vision, until eventually (as you hit the event horizon), everything besides the black hole is just one tiny speck directly behind you. The black hole is everywhere else -- up, down, left, right, in front of you. This is space warping around and folding in on itself.

Time would also become warped; specifically, it would slow down. From your perspective, though, you don't slow down -- time for any individual person always seems to go the same speed -- so instead, you see everything else speed up. As you approach the black hole, let's imagine you're still looking behind you, back towards the rest of the universe. Time will gradually speed up, and as you actually hit the event horizon of the black hole, time would become almost infinitely fast; you'd see the galaxy behind you rapidly age, erupt in to supernovas, and then fade away in to nothingness. To you, this would just be a few seconds, but to the rest of the galaxy/universe, it will be billions of years.

Finally, you enter the black hole. At this point, the idea of "looking behind you" ceases to have any meaning. The space that you think of as "behind you" has become so warped by gravity that it also points... in to the black hole. In fact, every direction you look is towards the black hole. Every direction you move is towards the black hole. If you could look "outside," you'd see time speeding by at an infinite rate, and from your perspective, the next thing you know is the end of the universe.

What makes this confusing for me is the concept of time moving "infinitely fast." How does that work? How would I perceive this? Our brains wouldn't be able to process that.

Time being a separate entity is mind boggling. When did time begin?

 

[squarerootofpie]

He meant with his eyes, not with cameras.

Yeah I know, I'm just playing devils advocate

 

[maquiladora]

I keep seeing submissive instead of supermassive. I blame the BDSM thread.

 

[SargerusBR]

Now we only need a wormhole to get us there so that we can enter the black hole, find a tesseract composed of a little girl's room so that we can save humankind.

Spoiler

/s

 

[SiegfriedFM]

Space, the length of time it takes for things to happen in space, the absolute vastness of it, and things like this black hole make the ~80 years I'll live feel so insignificant and pointless in the grand scheme of things. We have this black hole infinitely more mass than me or all of Earth or the entire solar system. And I'm just me. Fuck you space. You keep me up at night.

But we can think, and make decisions. And there are probably less of us than there are black holes in the universe. So we're pretty damn special either way.

 

[Xun]

In perspective

more people should play around with Universe Sandbox 2

I'm probably being incredibly naive, but surely you wouldn't be able to see the sun?

Whilst this is scarily big I was expecting bigger.

 

[Screaming Meat]

The real question, if it's that big is HOW DID WE MISS IT?

It's black on a black background.

 

[Gr1mLock]

The Universe stahp. pls. My puny brain can't handle it.

 

[Yagharek]

...that's a lot of bookcases.

Eh, you're limited to the horizon, not the internal volume.

 

[Dice]

The black hole was discovered a team of global scientists led by Xue-Bing Wu at Peking University, China, as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which provided imagery data of 35 percent of the northern hemisphere sky.

China science been so good lately. We better haul ass to Mars if we want to be first.

 

[longdi]

NASA instead of just looking up at the sky and send raido, should also try to band humans together to use our collective brain powah so we leave earth rather than kill ourselves here.

 

[Red]

I keep seeing submissive instead of supermassive. I blame the BDSM thread.

Damned to a life of infinite sucking.

 

[DeaviL]

What if the universe is black because we live inside the biggest black hole of all?

Spoiler

Yes, that is in fact a stupid question

 

[The Technomancer]

What makes this confusing for me is the concept of time moving "infinitely fast." How does that work? How would I perceive this? Our brains wouldn't be able to process that.

Time being a separate entity is mind boggling. When did time begin?

Its actually the exact opposite: time and space are fundamentally intertwined.

 

[Yagharek]

What if the universe is black because we live inside the biggest black hole of all?

Spoiler

Yes, that is in fact a stupid question

Not entirely a stupid theory. It's not the same as what you suggest, but read up on the Holographic Theory of the Universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle Quick and dirty wiki link

 

[terrisus]

I keep seeing submissive instead of supermassive. I blame the BDSM thread.

Damned to a life of infinite sucking.

And crushing.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

In perspective

more people should play around with Universe Sandbox 2

Tell me more about this universe sandbox 2 and how it can help me impress my mum and her friends!


No seriously tho, that is cool as fuck. Is that a free program? What can it do?

 

[Log4Girlz]

What if the universe is black because we live inside the biggest black hole of all?

Spoiler

Yes, that is in fact a stupid question

One theory postulates that we are in an event that could be a black hole and white hole simultaneously.