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Gravitational waves felt from black-hole merger 3 billion light-years away

TheOfficeMut

Unconfirmed Member
If you fall into a singularity, it's over for you within minutes. Depends on how much mass the black hole has, which makes the event horizon expand further from the singularity.

To an outside observer watching you fall into a black hole, you appear to freeze in time and then eventually redshift out of view.

Correct.

However, is it not theoretically possible to survive much longer passing the horizon should the black hole be considerably larger? My understanding is that smaller black holes are actually incredibly more dangerous when approaching their singularities because there's less time approaching theirs as compared to those in supermassive black holes.

Could a person not survive being torn to shreds, then, if the black hole was massive enough to make the transition from the horizon to the singularity predictably smooth?

Edit: I also wrote "event horizon" earlier. LOL
 
This just sounds like a yo mama joke in the making
An object weighing 31 solar masses collided with an object weighing 19 solar masses, kinda like when yer mum collided with muh dick huehue.

On topic, it's fascinating and horrifying at the same time when our peephole into the universe widens a little. All new cosmic terrors and wonders await, just out of sight.
 

Armaros

Member
If you fell in, and could look back into the universe, you would see the universe race ahead forward in time and then you would die soon after as tidal forces rip you apart. The person falling in doesn't feel millions of years, they have 'normal' time, its just that space is warped to the point that the rest of the universe will race ahead.
 
Among other things, you would see the entirety of the universe pass by in front of you.

(Or, what the person above me said).

His explanation was the opposite of yours lol, at least the way I understood it.

Do you have some easily digestible source for this? I don't see how any of this would equate to infinite suffering.
 
Do you have some easily digestible source for this?

I mean, it's astrophysics, so "easily digestible" doesn't generally go hand in hand.

That said, you could check out some of Hawking's books.
"Black Holes: The Reith Lectures," "Black Holes and Baby Universes," "A Brief History of Time," etc. - they're all relatively approachable.
 

Roubjon

Member
If you fell in, and could look back into the universe, you would see the universe race ahead forward in time and then you would die soon after as tidal forces rip you apart. The person falling in doesn't feel millions of years, they have 'normal' time, its just that space is warped to the point that the rest of the universe will race ahead.

I feel weird now.
 
To reiterate, to the person that is falling into the black hole, it takes a finite amount of time to reach the singularity, there's no eternal suffering or anything. To somebody outside, he would see the person falling slow down from the time dilation and he would never cross the horizon, but that is just from his (outside) perspective.

The horizon is not a place where anything significant happens for the infalling observer. If the hole is large enough, nothing weird would be felt. The only thing is that now his fate is sealed and he can no longer go back, no matter what. As he approaches the singularity, the tidal stresses will grow increasingly larger and he will meet a violent end.
 
To reiterate, to the person that is falling into the black hole, it takes a finite amount of time to reach the singularity, there's no eternal suffering or anything. To somebody outside, he would see the person falling slow down from the time dilation and he would never cross the horizon, but that is just from his (outside) perspective.

The horizon is not a place where anything significant happens for the infalling observer. If the hole is large enough, nothing weird would be felt. The only thing is that now his fate is sealed and he can no longer go back, no matter what. As he approaches the singularity, the tidal stresses will grow increasingly larger and he will meet a violent end.

Okay, that makes more sense. The whole eternal suffering thing seemed pretty bunk lol
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
a pit of infinitely deep darkness weighing as much as 49 suns

That's a stupid diaper baby black hole. We've observed them with 6.6 BILLION times a solar mass. The universe is pretty baller.
 

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
mPjR8hd.gif

In the Southern hemisphere they rotate in the opposite direction.
 

KoopaTheCasual

Junior Member
To reiterate, to the person that is falling into the black hole, it takes a finite amount of time to reach the singularity, there's no eternal suffering or anything. To somebody outside, he would see the person falling slow down from the time dilation and he would never cross the horizon, but that is just from his (outside) perspective.

The horizon is not a place where anything significant happens for the infalling observer. If the hole is large enough, nothing weird would be felt. The only thing is that now his fate is sealed and he can no longer go back, no matter what. As he approaches the singularity, the tidal stresses will grow increasingly larger and he will meet a violent end.
It's so cool how science at abstract/extreme enough levels is basically modern "magic"
 

FyreWulff

Member
I feel weird now.

it's the same math behind if you take off from earth and travel at near light speed and come back, a 10 year trip for you (to your arbitary destination in space and back to earth) will result in 500 years passing on Earth.

Falling into a black hole just takes the math to it's extreme where you can look out and watch the universe go in fast forward to it's end.

This is already proven, btw, by GPS satellites. We have to account for time dilation to make them even work correctly for our needs. So just using your phone for navigation has to deal with time dilation.
 

Aikidoka

Member
I know that feel, bro.




Time slows down. It would take an increasingly lengthy amount of time for the "stress" to affect you.



Ah, never saw it.

I don't think this is really correct. Time dilation is noticeable from an observer in a reference with different velocity/gravitational field. Time still passes as normal from your own reference frame.
So, if you fell into a black hole, you'd die as expected but people would see you frozen in space
 
A lot of cool explanations in this thread. Truly fascinating to read and imagine.

Is there any way possible to feel time going backward though?
 
I don't think this is really correct. Time dilation is noticeable from an observer in a reference with different velocity/gravitational field. Time still passes as normal from your own reference frame.
So, if you fell into a black hole, you'd die as expected but people would see you frozen in space

Sorry, I guess I kind of used "time with respect to the observer" and "time with respect to the actor" a bit too obliquely. Other posts should have it cleared up.
 

Linkyn

Member
but if time doesnt exist how can death exist

The thing is that you don't experience the time dilation yourself, because you are in the dilated reference frame. Only an outside observer would see your time moving more slowly - to you, it would appear as though nothing had happened (assuming you wouldn't be torn to shreds by tidal forces). This leads to the interesting consideration that if you were to pass beyond a black hole's event horizon, you would pass through 'normally', while others on the outside would never see this event taking place, as time in your frame would tend to an infinitely dilated state as you approached it.
 

KurtFehl

Member
A lot of cool explanations in this thread. Truly fascinating to read and imagine.

Is there any way possible to feel time going backward though?

No. "Time travel" is possible.

Two ways. Time is relative,

Way one, the faster you go the slower time moves. If you're going 90% the speed of light, time is going slower on the outside world. Therefore you're traveling to the future.

Way two. If you are near a black hole (or anywhere near a stronger gravity mass), time goes slower for you vs the outside world. Five minutes close to a black hole could mean 10 years outside of it. Fun fact, those on the ISS for example are older than those on the ground. By a very very very small fraction of a second thought, but still.
 
The thing is that you don't experience the time dilation yourself, because you are in the dilated reference frame. Only an outside observer would see your time moving more slowly - to you, it would appear as though nothing had happened (assuming you wouldn't be torn to shreds by tidal forces). This leads to the interesting consideration that if you were to pass beyond a black hole's event horizon, you would pass through 'normally', while others on the outside would never see this event taking place, as time in your frame would tend to an infinitely dilated state as you approached it.

Would time not dilate even in reference to viewing your own body? Look down at your legs and watch them slowly accelerate toward being longer or shorter?
 
Would time not dilate even in reference to viewing your own body? Look down at your legs and watch them slowly accelerate toward being longer or shorter?
Yes, but such an extreme time differential would only be noticeable very close to the singularity. Far from it, near the horizon, such an effect is too small.
 
No. "Time travel" is possible.

Two ways. Time is relative,

Way one, the faster you go the slower time moves. If you're going 90% the speed of light, time is going slower on the outside world. Therefore you're traveling to the future.

Way two. If you are near a black hole (or anywhere near a stronger gravity mass), time goes slower for you vs the outside world. Five minutes close to a black hole could mean 10 years outside of it. Fun fact, those on the ISS for example are older than those on the ground. By a very very very small fraction of a second thought, but still.
Thanks for the explanation. So forward time travel is possible but not backward i.e it was BS in movies :p

Both of these makes sense and I did knew about the ISS space station example. So if these guys in space are near a strong gravity mass, which will obviously pull them inside, but if they can somehow avoid it, they will experience time slower than the outside world.
 
A lot of cool explanations in this thread. Truly fascinating to read and imagine.

Is there any way possible to feel time going backward though?

Not really. I mean, there are space-times with closed time-like curves where while from your perspective time is always moving forwards, you still end up in the past relative to an external observer. Such a time machine is most likely not physically realizable because it requires the existence of exotic matter with negative energy, same as FTL drives.

An entirely different sense in which "traveling backwards in time" is possible is anti-matter. A particle of anti-matter moving forward in time is indistinguishable from a particle moving backwards in time carrying negative energy, but this is just a mathematical curiosity, since all you can detect are anti-particles moving in the ordinary direction of time anyway.
 

Linkyn

Member
Would time not dilate even in reference to viewing your own body? Look down at your legs and watch them slowly accelerate toward being longer or shorter?

It would, but not noticeably so. It should be stressed that all the effects of spacetime curvature are practically negligible in weak gravitational fields (which accounts for the vast majority of the universe). Unless you were very close to a very massive object, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

However, these kinds of thought experiments are all dependent on the premise that you'd actually make it that far, which is nonsense. In reality, your atoms would be pulled apart long before you could observe these effects. So technically, you would also be stretched along the direction of motion, because the part of you closer to the attracting body would experience a greater force (and hence greater acceleration).

Interestingly enough, though, there is no gravitational equivalent to the Lorentz contraction of special relativity, so you wouldn't see contraction either way.

Thanks for the explanation. So forward time travel is possible but not backward i.e it was BS in movies :p

Both of these makes sense and I did knew about the ISS space station example. So if these guys in space are near a strong gravity mass, which will obviously pull them inside, but if they can somehow avoid it, they will experience time slower than the outside world.

That's not necessarily true. Depending on your initial state of motion relative to the other object, you might also start orbiting it. In that respect, black holes are not really any different from other objects like planets or stars.
 

spekkeh

Banned
That's a stupid diaper baby black hole. We've observed them with 6.6 BILLION times a solar mass. The universe is pretty baller.
I was thinking the same thing, isn't that like close to the minimum of a star even becoming a black hole?
 

Linkyn

Member
I was thinking the same thing, isn't that like close to the minimum of a star even becoming a black hole?

The Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit gives a minimum of around 20 solar masses (of the star) for the formation of black holes after a star dies. Below this limit, gravitational contraction is eventually stopped by quantum-mechanical degeneracy pressure of electrons (white dwarf) or neutrons (neutron star) - you can think of it as these particles not wanting to be pushed too close together, which leads to an outward pressure (technically, this is rooted in the uncertainty principle). Above this limit, the gravitational contraction gets so strong that nothing can balance it out, so that you end up with a black hole.

Edit: The lightest black holes can actually have rather low masses (comparable to that of the Sun even) - the difference is mainly that those black holes are much, much smaller than a star (typically less than a kilometer in radius).
 
I was thinking the same thing, isn't that like close to the minimum of a star even becoming a black hole?

Actually it's a bit above what you would expect from a collapsing star, which gives you BH from about 3 to 10 solar masses or so. These intermediate mass BHs could form from the collision of stellar BHs or maybe they're primordial BHs made at the Big Bang.

The Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit gives a minimum of around 20 solar masses for the formation of black holes after a star dies. Below this limit, gravitational contraction is eventually stopped by quantum-mechanical degeneracy pressure of electrons (white dwarf) or neutrons (neutron star) - you can think of it as these particles not wanting to be pushed too close together, which leads to an outward pressure (technically, this is rooted in the uncertainty principle). Above this limit, the gravitational contraction gets so strong that nothing can balance it out, so that you end up with a black hole.

To be clear, we should note that this limit of 20 solar masses is before the collapse. In the process a lot of mass is lost, and this is how you get a final BH with only about 3 solar masses.
 

MogCakes

Member
This is awesome. We are less than dust in the grand scheme of the universe. I doubt we would even realize our planet was being eviscerated by time-space tears before we died in a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second stretched wide by immense gravitational pressure.
 
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