if somehow an electromagnetic force could be created that was greater than the force of gravity from a blackhole, would it be able to extract matter from the blackhole? And if it could how large of an electromagnetic force would be needed to do this to a supermassive black hole?
Hello Paintball
Yes to your question.
We see it when two black holes are close. They eject matter out.
Yes to your question.
We see it when two black holes are close. They eject matter out.
The ejection of matter via particle jets is not extracting matter from the black hole but is the material falling into the black hole being swirled up into the jets due to powerful electromagnetic fields.
There are two ways to extract energy from a black hole itself, the Penrose process and the Hawking process.
The Penrose process only works for spinning black holes because it uses the rotating black hole's properties to steal angular mometum from it. For spinning black holes there's a region of space-time outside the event horizon called the ergosphere. Within it it's not possible for someone to 'hover' at a fixed position above the black hole, they move go into an orbit (unless they can move faster than light!). Within the region certain properties of space-time are different and it basically means that it's possible to create objects (not just particles but normal objects) with negative energy. The process would involve dropping a probe into the ergosphere and blowing it into two pieces at just the right moment. The infalling piece will hae negative energy, which goes into the black hole and annihilates some of it and the outgoing piece has the probe's original energy, plus the energy lost from the black hole. The black hole loses some angular momentum so there is a limit to how much energy you can extract (something like 17% of the mass total if memory serves).
The second way, the Hawking process, is essentially a quantum extension. Virtual pairs created just above the event horizon can be seperated by the huge gravitational fields there. One particle is 'boosted' into a negative energy frame and is pulled into the black hole. The other particle is boosted out into open space with that extra energy. There's no limit to how much energy can be extracted because it happens to all black holes and this process is thought to be the way a black hole would ultimately meet it's dimise.
Neither process requires an electromagnetically charged black hole, but having charge can play a role in the Penrose process. In terms of the Hawking process it would alter slightly the ratio of charges emitted because the black hole would repel like charges and so would slowly neutralise it's own charge.
There are two ways to extract energy from a black hole itself, the Penrose process and the Hawking process.
The Penrose process only works for spinning black holes because it uses the rotating black hole's properties to steal angular mometum from it. For spinning black holes there's a region of space-time outside the event horizon called the ergosphere. Within it it's not possible for someone to 'hover' at a fixed position above the black hole, they move go into an orbit (unless they can move faster than light!). Within the region certain properties of space-time are different and it basically means that it's possible to create objects (not just particles but normal objects) with negative energy. The process would involve dropping a probe into the ergosphere and blowing it into two pieces at just the right moment. The infalling piece will hae negative energy, which goes into the black hole and annihilates some of it and the outgoing piece has the probe's original energy, plus the energy lost from the black hole. The black hole loses some angular momentum so there is a limit to how much energy you can extract (something like 17% of the mass total if memory serves).
The second way, the Hawking process, is essentially a quantum extension. Virtual pairs created just above the event horizon can be seperated by the huge gravitational fields there. One particle is 'boosted' into a negative energy frame and is pulled into the black hole. The other particle is boosted out into open space with that extra energy. There's no limit to how much energy can be extracted because it happens to all black holes and this process is thought to be the way a black hole would ultimately meet it's dimise.
Neither process requires an electromagnetically charged black hole, but having charge can play a role in the Penrose process. In terms of the Hawking process it would alter slightly the ratio of charges emitted because the black hole would repel like charges and so would slowly neutralise it's own charge.
paintball6818. AN has given you what you will find in any text book. I'll try to be more helpful.
One problem with an electromagnetic force is that they work at light speed and to successfully get beyond the event horizon of a black hole you need faster than light which as far as we know is not possible.
Black holes have tremendous magnetic fields, in the trillions of gauss (Earth is 1/2 gauss). it could be possible to stop a black hole rotating with a strong enough magnetic field. It may even be possible to deform the event horizon. If this could be done sufficiently so that the EH touches the inner sphere of material, then it could release huge amounts of energy as well as fundamental particles.
Alternately, if you could deform space sufficiently to produce an event horizon, you could merge it with the EH of the black hole and then somehow transfer some matter from the BH to inside the created EH, then later reduce the EH though unless you could gravitationally bind the material in it, you risk it exploding like a super-nova.
You could try ripping a black hole apart by using two super-massive black holes, one on either side which would pull at it equally. You would not want to be anywhere nearby if that happened.
But these are for ordinary black holes. A super-massive black hole would need hugely more force to make any process work.
One problem with an electromagnetic force is that they work at light speed and to successfully get beyond the event horizon of a black hole you need faster than light which as far as we know is not possible.
Black holes have tremendous magnetic fields, in the trillions of gauss (Earth is 1/2 gauss). it could be possible to stop a black hole rotating with a strong enough magnetic field. It may even be possible to deform the event horizon. If this could be done sufficiently so that the EH touches the inner sphere of material, then it could release huge amounts of energy as well as fundamental particles.
Alternately, if you could deform space sufficiently to produce an event horizon, you could merge it with the EH of the black hole and then somehow transfer some matter from the BH to inside the created EH, then later reduce the EH though unless you could gravitationally bind the material in it, you risk it exploding like a super-nova.
You could try ripping a black hole apart by using two super-massive black holes, one on either side which would pull at it equally. You would not want to be anywhere nearby if that happened.
But these are for ordinary black holes. A super-massive black hole would need hugely more force to make any process work.
Hello Alpha numeric
You said
So far we know very little of black holes and their workings.
It is generally noted that material falling into a black hole creates the jet. This is old ideas.
The jet created by the sun, neutron stars and the so called black holes have a common property. The internal matrix of the plasma creates high magnetic fields directing jet streams from both poles. We can observe this in the three cases.
A Powerful Solar Flare
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031029.html
http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/flares.htm
Radiation of Neutron Stars Produced by Superfluid Core
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_...44b49ccb5502389
http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/topic...mpactStars.html
Sun Storm: A Coronal Mass Ejection
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070206.html
Binary Black Hole in 3C 75
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060412.html
M87's Energetic Jet
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041211.html
In all cases the jet seems to be coming from the core of the compact cores and driven by it.
More research into this is needed to confirm the matter ejected.
Remain open minded.
You said
QUOTE
The ejection of matter via particle jets is not extracting matter from the black hole but is the material falling into the black hole being swirled up into the jets due to powerful electromagnetic fields.
There are two ways to extract energy from a black hole itself, the Penrose process and the Hawking process.
There are two ways to extract energy from a black hole itself, the Penrose process and the Hawking process.
So far we know very little of black holes and their workings.
It is generally noted that material falling into a black hole creates the jet. This is old ideas.
The jet created by the sun, neutron stars and the so called black holes have a common property. The internal matrix of the plasma creates high magnetic fields directing jet streams from both poles. We can observe this in the three cases.
A Powerful Solar Flare
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031029.html
http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/flares.htm
Radiation of Neutron Stars Produced by Superfluid Core
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_...44b49ccb5502389
http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/topic...mpactStars.html
Sun Storm: A Coronal Mass Ejection
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070206.html
Binary Black Hole in 3C 75
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060412.html
M87's Energetic Jet
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041211.html
In all cases the jet seems to be coming from the core of the compact cores and driven by it.
More research into this is needed to confirm the matter ejected.
Remain open minded.
Black hole singularities and limit circles connect universes of different spatial and time dimensions – extraterrestrial space-time connectors for fast propagation
India Daily Technology Team
Apr. 7, 2007
The black hole singularities and limit circles are problems in our terrestrial physics. Physicists just cannot handle the concept of a physical singularity. The main reason behind that is the rigid concept of three spatial dimensions and a forward traversing time dimension with zero predictability.
The same Black hole singularities and limit circles become the fundamental building blocks of extraterrestrial travel manipulating space and time. Black hole singularities and limit circles connect universes of different spatial and time dimensions. They act as the extraterrestrial space time connectors for fast propagation.
The physical singularities connect higher dimensions with our 3D spatial dimension. The space-time manipulation allows opening into these singularities from universes of different spatial and time dimensions. The gravity wave propagation mechanisms allow fast propagation through the Black hole singularities – impossibility in terrestrial mathematical physics.
Black holes actually allow creating “super highways between universes within the Hyperspace”. An advanced extraterrestrial entity or space module normally stays on the other side of black hole singularity. They can easily project their desired shape and size into the SD Universe ours.
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Black hole singularities and limit circles connect universes of different spatial and time dimensions – extraterrestrial space-time connectors for fast propagation
India Daily Technology Team
Apr. 7, 2007
The black hole singularities and limit circles are problems in our terrestrial physics. Physicists just cannot handle the concept of a physical singularity. The main reason behind that is the rigid concept of three spatial dimensions and a forward traversing time dimension with zero predictability.
The same Black hole singularities and limit circles become the fundamental building blocks of extraterrestrial travel manipulating space and time. Black hole singularities and limit circles connect universes of different spatial and time dimensions. They act as the extraterrestrial space time connectors for fast propagation.
The physical singularities connect higher dimensions with our 3D spatial dimension. The space-time manipulation allows opening into these singularities from universes of different spatial and time dimensions. The gravity wave propagation mechanisms allow fast propagation through the Black hole singularities – impossibility in terrestrial mathematical physics.
Black holes actually allow creating “super highways between universes within the Hyperspace”. An advanced extraterrestrial entity or space module normally stays on the other side of black hole singularity. They can easily project their desired shape and size into the SD Universe ours.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/16392.asp
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Hello Alokmohan
Wormholes as you speak do not exist.
Time and other dimensions, are fantasy ideas.
Wormholes as you speak do not exist.
Time and other dimensions, are fantasy ideas.
Harry Costas.
You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores.
How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed?
You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores.
How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed?
Remain open minded.
Give it a try some time.
QUOTE
In all cases the jet seems to be coming from the core of the compact cores and driven by it.
You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores.
How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed?
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| In all cases the jet seems to be coming from the core of the compact cores and driven by it. |
You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores.
How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed?
Remain open minded.
Give it a try some time.
alokmohan. Printing a statement twice as well as ads doesn't make anything from India Daily true. While India does has some very good scientists, some of the the newspapers there can be little better than supermarket tabloids.
I believe the topic creator's post is about how strong the electromagnetic field is of a blackhole. Since electromagnetism is about 1000 times stronger than gravity.
Electromagnetism is about 10^40 times stronger than gravity.
QUOTE (AlphaNumeric+Apr 9 2007, 07:09 PM)
Electromagnetism is about 10^40 times stronger than gravity.
I've often wondered where this determination comes from... let me take a guess:
The if the gravitationally attractive force between two protons is 1, the electromagnetically repulsive force between the same two protons is 10^40 times that?
But whatever the case... seeing as electromagnetism is a lot stronger than gravity, I think the topic creator's question still stands. Will the magnetic field of a black hole be significantly stronger than its gravity? If so, would that be strong enough to extract matter from a black hole if the conditions were right?
I think I know the answer, which is no, because:
(1) matter is withing the Schwarzschild radius, which means it is continuously falling towards infinitesimal, and it does not interact with the outside universe
(2) the matter is in a degraded state and has no electrons, so therefore will not interact with an EM field
.
I've often wondered where this determination comes from... let me take a guess:
The if the gravitationally attractive force between two protons is 1, the electromagnetically repulsive force between the same two protons is 10^40 times that?
But whatever the case... seeing as electromagnetism is a lot stronger than gravity, I think the topic creator's question still stands. Will the magnetic field of a black hole be significantly stronger than its gravity? If so, would that be strong enough to extract matter from a black hole if the conditions were right?
I think I know the answer, which is no, because:
(1) matter is withing the Schwarzschild radius, which means it is continuously falling towards infinitesimal, and it does not interact with the outside universe
(2) the matter is in a degraded state and has no electrons, so therefore will not interact with an EM field
.
What has deterium to do about it?Possibly what you say is not correct.
Hello Kaneda
You said
Kaneda this is the reason why you should read up on the properties of Plasma matter.
Your response is so simple, lacking any backbone.
How can I discuss compact matter with you when you don't even read up on it.
Kaneda this is the reason why you should read up on the properties of Plasma matter.
Your response is so simple, lacking any backbone.
How can I discuss compact matter with you when you don't even read up on it.
You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores
Degenerated matter, once it leaves a compact core it reforms atoms.
I'm not here trying to educate. But! here to discuss some issues. But! I find it going around in circles.
Compact matter creates the magnetic field and drives the jet to eject matter away from.
You need to study plasma science.
You said
QUOTE
You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores.
How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed?
QUOTE
Remain open minded.
Give it a try some time.
How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed?
QUOTE
Remain open minded.
Give it a try some time.
Kaneda this is the reason why you should read up on the properties of Plasma matter.
Your response is so simple, lacking any backbone.
How can I discuss compact matter with you when you don't even read up on it.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores. How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed? QUOTE Remain open minded. Give it a try some time. |
Kaneda this is the reason why you should read up on the properties of Plasma matter.
Your response is so simple, lacking any backbone.
How can I discuss compact matter with you when you don't even read up on it.
You have yet to explain how astronomers have found protons and other large particles in the jets from black holes. Obviously they have not come from the cores
Degenerated matter, once it leaves a compact core it reforms atoms.
I'm not here trying to educate. But! here to discuss some issues. But! I find it going around in circles.
QUOTE
How can magnetic fields rip apart "compacted matter" as you call it so they can send trillions of tons of it off into space at near light speed?
Compact matter creates the magnetic field and drives the jet to eject matter away from.
You need to study plasma science.
Latrosicarius writes:
:"...seeing as electromagnetism is a lot stronger than gravity, I think the topic creator's question still stands. Will the magnetic field of a black hole be significantly stronger than its gravity? If so, would that be strong enough to extract matter from a black hole if the conditions were right?"
Not really.
(1) Focusing on which is the stronger FORCE overlooks which is the stronger energy well. Yes the electromagnetic field near a black hole is very strong BUT it's a quadrupole field, ( i.e. the field lines loop back after a comparatively short distance ). The field strength falls off as the inverse cube of distance outside the near zone. At 100 times the distance, the field strength is down to 1 millionth.
(2) It's important not to confuse short-range concentrations of magnetic FORCE with the much longer range and much deeper gravitational ENERGY well ( a.k.a. gravity well ). The depth of a black hole's gravity well varies as 1 / r -- the well is very deep AND wide.
To expel matter from near the event horizon, you'd need to provide enough sheer ENERGY for the long climb out of that gravity well. It's not just a matter of 'breaking the hold' of gravity locally like in cheesy sci-fi.
Recall that energy = force x distance -- even the super-intense magnetic field near a black hole acts over too short a distance to impart enough energy. Also bear in mind that the concentrated magnetic field near a black hole is partly due to compression of spacetime. Although an object falling into a black hole is elongated ( pulled apart like taffy by the gravitational field gradient, which pulls harder on the nearer side of an object ), anything falling into a black hole becomes flattened against the event horizon and frozen in time -- i.e. requires an infinite time to fall any farther, as viewed from outside the hole. That spacetime compression, distortion, whatever you want to call it, also concentrates the magnetic field near a black hole, making its field strength much more impressive but its reach much less -- like a person with really short arms trying to throw a baseball out of a really huge ballpark.
In other words, the high-strength magnetic field is partly an ARTIFACT of the same black-hole suction that's pulling matter in -- the field gets compacted ( as viewed from outside ) by Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction.
The huge magnetic field is also partly an artifact of ionized matter (plasma) that's BEING pulled in through a decaying orbit ( accretion disk (, magnetic fields and all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole . A black hole doesn't just suck in matter -- it also sucks in light, which is pure electromagnetic field. Certain pulse lasers can generate stupendously powerful electromagnetic fields packed into an ultrashort laser pulse -- able to accelerate electrons to near-lightspeed over a distance of mere microns. http://www.aip.org/pnu/2000/split/510-1.html .
If you aimed such a laser at a grazing angle to the event horizon, the light would still fall in -- and AS the light falls in, it gets Doppler-downshifted and weakens as viewed from outside. So even if you could beam in a super-ultra-powerful rescue pulse to 'spring' an electron at the very boundary, you'd see the rescue pulse peter out as it reached the rendezvous point.
A logical question might be "What happens if the rescue pulse [of highly concentrated laser light] contains MORE total energy than the gravity well of the black hole, packed into a tiny single-photon torpedo. Can it then overpower the black hole locally? The answer is no, because such a photon would carry mass-energy GREATER than the mass-energy of the black hole -- such a photon would function AS a black hole of sorts. ( A photon has no rest mass, but it has what's called kinetic mass, because in Einstein's theory mass and energy are not only equivalent, "they're the same thing". An ultra-high energy gamma ray has hefty momentum associated with its kinetic mass, and can collide with a free electron so violently that the electron recoils at very nearly the speed of light.
Therein lies the catch-22 -- anytime you scrape together enough concentrated field-energy to 'spring' matter from a black hole, the concentrated mass-energy ITSELF acts as a black hole -- and if you try to zing one black hole with another black hole, they merge and you end up with a single dumb-bell shaped black hole, at least for an instant. It's a catch-22 -- if you send in enough energy to spring matter from a black hole, either (a) the black hole eats the energy WHILE it's interacting with the matter, making the black hole stronger, or (
the energy you send in becomes a de facto black hole, and adds to the gravity well of the black hole it's approaching, effectively extending its reach so that the matter is ALREADY inside the about-to-be-merged black holes.
Even if you could zing one black hole with another black hole so that they merged and separated (unlikely), the best you could do would be to transfer matter from the 'custody' of one black hole to another -- you still can't bring the matter BACK through the event-horizon into the 'outside universe'.
I'd also suggest that before theorizing about electromagnetic fields and black holes, people wait for the results of Gravity Probe B, a satellite which has experimentally tested Einstein's prediction of a gravitomagnetic field ( a.k.a. frame dragging ) around rotating massive objects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame-dragging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitomagnetism
Preliminary results of Gravity Probe B are due to be released April 14'th, with final results "toward the end of they year". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B
Getting back on topic, the question isn't just whether electromagnetism is 'strong enough' to 'overpower' Electromagnetic fields move IN spacetime. The mass of a black hole causes distortion OF the spacetime in which the electromagnetic field exists. Thus, a gravity well is observed to draw light towards it ( gravitational lensing ),
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features.../grav_lens.html , as predicted by Einstein. Starlight, for example, bends slightly when passing close to the Sun during an eclipse, or when passing close to Jupiter.
The light does not 'fight the pull'; in fact high-energy light photons ( gamma rays ) are deflected by the same amount as infrared photons. Thus, a distant astronomical object made visible by a naturally occurring gravitational lens can be viewed in either gamma ray or infrared.
In other words, Gravity 'pulls in' a moving electromagnetic field without regard to the strength of the E-M field. You cannot therefore use electromagnetic fields to 'cancel out' a gravity well around a black hole, or to negate the spacetime distortion around a black hole that gives rise to the event horizon. According to Einstein, gravity and the spacetime distortion are one and the same -- no experimental distinction has ever been found.
Stated another way, there are two ways to expel matter. (1) You can use a force such as electromagnetism, which acts IN spacetime ON the matter, or (2) you can use gavity to move the spacetime CONTAINING the matter. This is why Gravity Probe B is so intriguing -- it tests "frame dragging", defined as the ability of a massive object [such as the spinning Earth[ to drag a spacetime frame of reference DIRECTLY, bringing along any matter and fields that the spacetime contains. Gravity Probe B consists of four nearly perfect free-spinning gyroscopes, floating in a vacuum, aligned with a reference star. If a force in the usual sense tried to twist those gyroscopes, they'd precess at right angles to the twisting force. But if the spinning earth beneath twists the spacetime frame of reference CONTAINING the gyroscopes, they don't fight the rotation, and don't even 'know' that the spacetime frame of reference containing them has been rotated. That's what Gravity Probe B will confirm or refute -- whether spacetime ITSELF yets accelerated ( dragged ) by a rotating nearby mass.
For those of you who persist in trying to pry matter out of a black hole, there are 2 ways to do it:
(1) A sufficiently small black hole ( proton-sized or smaller ) can lose mass by evaporation ( Hawking radiation ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation .
(2) The other way to deconstruct a black hole is to blow it up before it can become a black hole. Case in point: the Bog Bang, which supposedy started out as a near-infinitely dense point, containing the mass-energy of the entire universe. Yet the Big Bang didn't end up a black hole, and the initial Big Bang timeline says spacetime ITSELF expanded faster than light, so that spacetime itself formed the surface of a hypersphere. That's why Hubble can look in any direction and see the same early small universe. Hubble doesn't see the point-of-origin of the Big Bang, because all points in spacetime are on the SURFACE of the hypersphere, equidistant from the center of the hypersphere whee the Big Bang happened. Hence, to blow up a black hole, all you need is enough energy to create a universe, packed into an almost infinitely small point, causing spacetime itself to expand rapidly -- even though the matter WITHIN spacetime can onn only move at below-lightspeed relative to the spacetime containing it.
High-energy physicists are pretty sure a different set of physical laws comes into play at energy densities approaching the Big Bang, and they're starting to approach those energy densities in TEV ( trillion electron volt ) particle accelerators. Again, it'll be much easier to theorize when there are experimental observations of what the laws of physics actually look like under Big Bang conditions.
:"...seeing as electromagnetism is a lot stronger than gravity, I think the topic creator's question still stands. Will the magnetic field of a black hole be significantly stronger than its gravity? If so, would that be strong enough to extract matter from a black hole if the conditions were right?"
Not really.
(1) Focusing on which is the stronger FORCE overlooks which is the stronger energy well. Yes the electromagnetic field near a black hole is very strong BUT it's a quadrupole field, ( i.e. the field lines loop back after a comparatively short distance ). The field strength falls off as the inverse cube of distance outside the near zone. At 100 times the distance, the field strength is down to 1 millionth.
(2) It's important not to confuse short-range concentrations of magnetic FORCE with the much longer range and much deeper gravitational ENERGY well ( a.k.a. gravity well ). The depth of a black hole's gravity well varies as 1 / r -- the well is very deep AND wide.
To expel matter from near the event horizon, you'd need to provide enough sheer ENERGY for the long climb out of that gravity well. It's not just a matter of 'breaking the hold' of gravity locally like in cheesy sci-fi.
Recall that energy = force x distance -- even the super-intense magnetic field near a black hole acts over too short a distance to impart enough energy. Also bear in mind that the concentrated magnetic field near a black hole is partly due to compression of spacetime. Although an object falling into a black hole is elongated ( pulled apart like taffy by the gravitational field gradient, which pulls harder on the nearer side of an object ), anything falling into a black hole becomes flattened against the event horizon and frozen in time -- i.e. requires an infinite time to fall any farther, as viewed from outside the hole. That spacetime compression, distortion, whatever you want to call it, also concentrates the magnetic field near a black hole, making its field strength much more impressive but its reach much less -- like a person with really short arms trying to throw a baseball out of a really huge ballpark.
In other words, the high-strength magnetic field is partly an ARTIFACT of the same black-hole suction that's pulling matter in -- the field gets compacted ( as viewed from outside ) by Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction.
The huge magnetic field is also partly an artifact of ionized matter (plasma) that's BEING pulled in through a decaying orbit ( accretion disk (, magnetic fields and all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole . A black hole doesn't just suck in matter -- it also sucks in light, which is pure electromagnetic field. Certain pulse lasers can generate stupendously powerful electromagnetic fields packed into an ultrashort laser pulse -- able to accelerate electrons to near-lightspeed over a distance of mere microns. http://www.aip.org/pnu/2000/split/510-1.html .
If you aimed such a laser at a grazing angle to the event horizon, the light would still fall in -- and AS the light falls in, it gets Doppler-downshifted and weakens as viewed from outside. So even if you could beam in a super-ultra-powerful rescue pulse to 'spring' an electron at the very boundary, you'd see the rescue pulse peter out as it reached the rendezvous point.
A logical question might be "What happens if the rescue pulse [of highly concentrated laser light] contains MORE total energy than the gravity well of the black hole, packed into a tiny single-photon torpedo. Can it then overpower the black hole locally? The answer is no, because such a photon would carry mass-energy GREATER than the mass-energy of the black hole -- such a photon would function AS a black hole of sorts. ( A photon has no rest mass, but it has what's called kinetic mass, because in Einstein's theory mass and energy are not only equivalent, "they're the same thing". An ultra-high energy gamma ray has hefty momentum associated with its kinetic mass, and can collide with a free electron so violently that the electron recoils at very nearly the speed of light.
Therein lies the catch-22 -- anytime you scrape together enough concentrated field-energy to 'spring' matter from a black hole, the concentrated mass-energy ITSELF acts as a black hole -- and if you try to zing one black hole with another black hole, they merge and you end up with a single dumb-bell shaped black hole, at least for an instant. It's a catch-22 -- if you send in enough energy to spring matter from a black hole, either (a) the black hole eats the energy WHILE it's interacting with the matter, making the black hole stronger, or (
the energy you send in becomes a de facto black hole, and adds to the gravity well of the black hole it's approaching, effectively extending its reach so that the matter is ALREADY inside the about-to-be-merged black holes.Even if you could zing one black hole with another black hole so that they merged and separated (unlikely), the best you could do would be to transfer matter from the 'custody' of one black hole to another -- you still can't bring the matter BACK through the event-horizon into the 'outside universe'.
I'd also suggest that before theorizing about electromagnetic fields and black holes, people wait for the results of Gravity Probe B, a satellite which has experimentally tested Einstein's prediction of a gravitomagnetic field ( a.k.a. frame dragging ) around rotating massive objects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame-dragging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitomagnetism
Preliminary results of Gravity Probe B are due to be released April 14'th, with final results "toward the end of they year". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B
Getting back on topic, the question isn't just whether electromagnetism is 'strong enough' to 'overpower' Electromagnetic fields move IN spacetime. The mass of a black hole causes distortion OF the spacetime in which the electromagnetic field exists. Thus, a gravity well is observed to draw light towards it ( gravitational lensing ),
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features.../grav_lens.html , as predicted by Einstein. Starlight, for example, bends slightly when passing close to the Sun during an eclipse, or when passing close to Jupiter.
The light does not 'fight the pull'; in fact high-energy light photons ( gamma rays ) are deflected by the same amount as infrared photons. Thus, a distant astronomical object made visible by a naturally occurring gravitational lens can be viewed in either gamma ray or infrared.
In other words, Gravity 'pulls in' a moving electromagnetic field without regard to the strength of the E-M field. You cannot therefore use electromagnetic fields to 'cancel out' a gravity well around a black hole, or to negate the spacetime distortion around a black hole that gives rise to the event horizon. According to Einstein, gravity and the spacetime distortion are one and the same -- no experimental distinction has ever been found.
Stated another way, there are two ways to expel matter. (1) You can use a force such as electromagnetism, which acts IN spacetime ON the matter, or (2) you can use gavity to move the spacetime CONTAINING the matter. This is why Gravity Probe B is so intriguing -- it tests "frame dragging", defined as the ability of a massive object [such as the spinning Earth[ to drag a spacetime frame of reference DIRECTLY, bringing along any matter and fields that the spacetime contains. Gravity Probe B consists of four nearly perfect free-spinning gyroscopes, floating in a vacuum, aligned with a reference star. If a force in the usual sense tried to twist those gyroscopes, they'd precess at right angles to the twisting force. But if the spinning earth beneath twists the spacetime frame of reference CONTAINING the gyroscopes, they don't fight the rotation, and don't even 'know' that the spacetime frame of reference containing them has been rotated. That's what Gravity Probe B will confirm or refute -- whether spacetime ITSELF yets accelerated ( dragged ) by a rotating nearby mass.
For those of you who persist in trying to pry matter out of a black hole, there are 2 ways to do it:
(1) A sufficiently small black hole ( proton-sized or smaller ) can lose mass by evaporation ( Hawking radiation ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation .
(2) The other way to deconstruct a black hole is to blow it up before it can become a black hole. Case in point: the Bog Bang, which supposedy started out as a near-infinitely dense point, containing the mass-energy of the entire universe. Yet the Big Bang didn't end up a black hole, and the initial Big Bang timeline says spacetime ITSELF expanded faster than light, so that spacetime itself formed the surface of a hypersphere. That's why Hubble can look in any direction and see the same early small universe. Hubble doesn't see the point-of-origin of the Big Bang, because all points in spacetime are on the SURFACE of the hypersphere, equidistant from the center of the hypersphere whee the Big Bang happened. Hence, to blow up a black hole, all you need is enough energy to create a universe, packed into an almost infinitely small point, causing spacetime itself to expand rapidly -- even though the matter WITHIN spacetime can onn only move at below-lightspeed relative to the spacetime containing it.
High-energy physicists are pretty sure a different set of physical laws comes into play at energy densities approaching the Big Bang, and they're starting to approach those energy densities in TEV ( trillion electron volt ) particle accelerators. Again, it'll be much easier to theorize when there are experimental observations of what the laws of physics actually look like under Big Bang conditions.
As Wheeler says quantum gravity.
Harry Costas.
I have read up on plasma matter as you have requested in the past and pointed out many immediate and obvious problems with these ideas. You have never answered those problems.
If my response is so simple, as your insult claims, why can you not answer? Is it because you are even more simple? Because from many past experiences this is your way of admitting you do not have a clue and hoping I will go away. You really are stupid if you think you can still get away with such rubbish to cover your absolute horror of answering a question. People know what a phoney you are because you have pulled this stunt so many times.
You discuss any matter?
I have read up on plasma matter as you have requested in the past and pointed out many immediate and obvious problems with these ideas. You have never answered those problems.
If my response is so simple, as your insult claims, why can you not answer? Is it because you are even more simple? Because from many past experiences this is your way of admitting you do not have a clue and hoping I will go away. You really are stupid if you think you can still get away with such rubbish to cover your absolute horror of answering a question. People know what a phoney you are because you have pulled this stunt so many times.
You discuss any matter?
Degenerated matter, once it leaves a compact core it reforms atoms.
I'm not here trying to educate. But! here to discuss some issues. But! I find it going around in circles.
As I and others have pointed out to you many times but with dad1 denial you refuse to accept what astronomers know but prefer to listen to a crank instead.
Gravity of a black hole is such that escape velocity is beyond light speed so material cannot leave from inside it. If you know otherwise, explain rather than contiunually repeating what even a school boy knows to be a lie.
A black hole jet travels at very close to light speed. Explain how particles can reform under such conditions which would necessitate some of them travelling at light speed.
To educate someone you have to know a subject yourself. You have continually shown yourself to be totally ignorant of black holes so can educate nobody.
Yes, you are going around in circles, repeating crank theories that are provably wrong.
No magnetic field, even from a magnetar which can be hundreds of trillions of gauss can tear away such compacted matter.
You need to study science then you may be able to answer some questions instead of trying to cover up your ignorance by using hypocrisy.
QUOTE
Kaneda this is the reason why you should read up on the properties of Plasma matter.
Your response is so simple, lacking any backbone.
How can I discuss compact matter with you when you don't even read up on it.
Your response is so simple, lacking any backbone.
How can I discuss compact matter with you when you don't even read up on it.
I have read up on plasma matter as you have requested in the past and pointed out many immediate and obvious problems with these ideas. You have never answered those problems.
If my response is so simple, as your insult claims, why can you not answer? Is it because you are even more simple? Because from many past experiences this is your way of admitting you do not have a clue and hoping I will go away. You really are stupid if you think you can still get away with such rubbish to cover your absolute horror of answering a question. People know what a phoney you are because you have pulled this stunt so many times.
You discuss any matter?
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| Kaneda this is the reason why you should read up on the properties of Plasma matter. Your response is so simple, lacking any backbone. How can I discuss compact matter with you when you don't even read up on it. |
I have read up on plasma matter as you have requested in the past and pointed out many immediate and obvious problems with these ideas. You have never answered those problems.
If my response is so simple, as your insult claims, why can you not answer? Is it because you are even more simple? Because from many past experiences this is your way of admitting you do not have a clue and hoping I will go away. You really are stupid if you think you can still get away with such rubbish to cover your absolute horror of answering a question. People know what a phoney you are because you have pulled this stunt so many times.
You discuss any matter?
Degenerated matter, once it leaves a compact core it reforms atoms.
I'm not here trying to educate. But! here to discuss some issues. But! I find it going around in circles.
As I and others have pointed out to you many times but with dad1 denial you refuse to accept what astronomers know but prefer to listen to a crank instead.
Gravity of a black hole is such that escape velocity is beyond light speed so material cannot leave from inside it. If you know otherwise, explain rather than contiunually repeating what even a school boy knows to be a lie.
A black hole jet travels at very close to light speed. Explain how particles can reform under such conditions which would necessitate some of them travelling at light speed.
To educate someone you have to know a subject yourself. You have continually shown yourself to be totally ignorant of black holes so can educate nobody.
Yes, you are going around in circles, repeating crank theories that are provably wrong.
No magnetic field, even from a magnetar which can be hundreds of trillions of gauss can tear away such compacted matter.
You need to study science then you may be able to answer some questions instead of trying to cover up your ignorance by using hypocrisy.
World-famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking was in the Seattle spotlight Monday night to explain the big questions: Why does time seem to move always forward but never backward? Why does he think running time backwards the only way to solve the universe's biggest mystery? But the small questions can be just as intriguing: For example, how does Hawking “autograph” a book? When he composes a sentence on his gesture-controlled computer, does he blink or does he sneer?
Here are some insights into those questions, great and small, gleaned during a close encounter with Cambridge University's frail genius:
Kimberly Wright / Reuters file
Physicist Stephen Hawking uses an infrared sensor
mounted on his eyeglasses as part of a
computerized writing/speaking system.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The title of Hawking's advertised talk was "The History of the Universe Backwards," but he actually delivered two lectures - one looking back at his own career in physics, and another focusing on his latest theories about a "top-down" approach to cosmology.
The first talk touched on the milestones of his career: how he went into cosmology rather than particle physics, the subdiscipline du jour, because he marched to the beat of a different scientific drummer ... how he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease, known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, while he was in graduate school ... and how, despite his increasing disability, he went on to plumb the theoretical depths of black holes and the big bang.
Hawking has gone back and forth about what happens to the things that are sucked into a black hole. At one time, he held that the "information" falling into the black hole is lost forever, but recently he has said that the contents of a black hole would leak out in the form of "Hawking radiation," until the black hole itself dissipates.
"Information is not lost, but it is not returned in a useful way," he said. "It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, but it is very hard to read."
Speaking of encyclopedias, Hawking noted that his reversal caused him to lose a bet to a fellow physicist, with the payoff coming in the form of a baseball encyclopedia. "Maybe I should have just given him the ashes," Hawking joked.
It was the second talk that really spurred my interest. Hawking and a colleague from CERN, Thomas Hertog, recently declared that the best way to understand how the universe arose was to look at our current cosmic conditions, then work back through "the sum of all histories" to figure out which theory would produce those conditions.
Hawking calls it a "top-down" approach to what he has long considered the biggest cosmic question: What was the initial state of the universe? Did God just create the universe the way it was, and that's it? Or is there a scientific reason for why the cosmos is just so ... why, for instance, it could lead to the conditions for intelligent beings like us?
Hawking's top-down vs. bottom-up approach goes to the heart of the issue covered in his best-known bestseller: "A Brief History of Time." During his Seattle talk, Hawking contended that cosmologists essentially had to look at time in reverse.
If time is a definite dimension like up-down, left-right and forward-back, why does time only move forward? Hawking said the answer to that question might lie in the Second Law of Thermodynamics - the idea that an enclosed system must move from a more ordered to a less ordered state:
"We don't really know how the human brain works. I find women's brains a particular mystery. But it is reasonable to assume that humans remember the same direction of time as computers do. ... We understand how computers work, unlike humans. And one can show that when a computer records an item in its memory, the total amount of disorder goes up. So computers and humans remember the past, and not the future. That is, because of the Second Law, we usually recount history forward.
"We say that later events are caused by earlier events, but not that earlier events happen in order to lead to the later. This 'bottom-up' approach, as I call it, works well in situations in which we can choose the initial state and observe the outcome. But the bottom-up approach does not work in cosmology.
"We do not know what the initial state of the universe was, and we currently can't try out different initial states and see what kinds of universes they would produce."
General relativity alone can't solve the problem, so quantum mechanics has to come into play to figure out what's the likeliest backward history for our universe, Hawking said.
As we've mentioned before, the twists in mathematics that link up general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to imply that we live in an 10- or 11-dimensional universe, perhaps with up to seven dimensions somehow rolled up into immeasurably small loops. The math also implies that there is a virtually immeasurable number of ways that our universe could have developed - nearly driving theoreticians to despair.
Hawking, however, isn't the despairing type: He said physicists should focus just on the scenarios that have three large spatial dimensions, like ours. It may sound like the anthropic principle - that is, the view that the universe is the way it is simply because there would be no intelligent life around to observe it if things were much different. But Hawking preferred to use another term - "the selection principle" - because the selection "doesn't depend on intelligent life."
That's not to say the loop dimensions don't count. Hawking said those other dimensions, which he called "internal space," may well determine the fundamental characteristics of our cosmos, such as the charge of an electron or the nature of subatomic interactions.
So how can physicists work their way backwards and map out that internal space? Strangely enough, Hawking endorsed the same approach favored by Columbia physicist Brian Greene, an earlier speaker in the Seattle lecture series: looking closely at irregularities in the "fingerprint" of the early universe, as seen in the background radiation left behind by the big bang. Those irregularities, which could soon be mapped in greater precision by probes such as the Planck spacecraft, may reveal the imprint of our own internal space.
Hawking said that the universe may represent just one "bubble" in a cosmic froth - perhaps longer-lasting than some other blips. Rather than dwelling so much on how many other unseeable bubbles there could be, Hawking advised concentrating on what makes our bubble the way it is.
"There seems to be a vast landscape of possible 'internal spaces,'" he said, setting up for a final joke. "We live in the anthropically allowed region, in which life is possible. But I think we might have chosen a better location."
I met Hawking at a reception after the talk, and here are some impressions on those smaller questions at the beginning:
If you want to get on Hawking's good side, stand to his right. That's the natural direction of his gaze when he's fixed in his wheelchair, and the tiny infrared sensor that he uses for his computerized communication system is mounted on the right temple of his eyeglass frames. For the record, he wore an open-neck, striped dress shirt, brown suit jacket and slacks, and brown suede shoes for Monday's talk. His hands were composed in his lap, and he was attended by two British assistants.
The system Hawking uses to compose the phrases for his mechanical voice is often called a "blink-controlled" computer, but I'd call it more of a twitch or a sneer. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He raises his upper lip over his teeth for an instant, and the cursor on his wheelchair-mounted computer screen jumps. First, Hawking highlights a block of words, then a row, then the desired word or letter sequence to add to his sentence. Each twitch of the lip and cheek is acknowledged by a beep of the computer.
Long lectures are pre-written, of course, but Hawking controls the delivery of the talk phrase by phrase - pausing for emphasis, applause or laughter.
If you ask a question, the response can take a while. Sometimes a short "Yes" will do the trick, but other times you just have to be patient. He has to build up his reply, word by word, then activate his computerized voice to deliver the answer. When one questioner asked Hawking to expound on the possibility that time may be curved in more than one dimension, Hawking took about five minutes to craft two short sentences: "General relativity allows [time] to loop back on itself. However, quantum theory seems to prevent travel into the past."
Instead of autographing books, Hawking thumbprints them, with the aid of an assistant and an ink pad. A thumbprint also serves as his signature for letters.
Even though Hawking is almost completely paralyzed, there is lots of expressiveness in his eyes and mouth. X Prize founder Peter Diamandis remarked last week about Hawking's smile - and he's right, it's wonderful. He even has a goofy, paternal grin that showed up during Monday's reception when his toddling grandson scampered around his wheelchair. (Yes, Hawking is a proud grandpa, and he's been visiting family during his U.S. tour).
If you want to see him smile, just mention his upcoming zero-gravity flight, which serves as a practice run for the outer-space trip Hawking is hoping to take someday aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. During the warmup to Monday's talk, video from SpaceShipOne's prize-winning flight was shown on the auditorium's big screen - and SpaceShipOne was shown as one of the historical milestones during the talk itself. Is Hawking looking forward to going into weightlessness? One of those smiles was the only answer I needed.
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Comments
I was reading this a lot of interest until I read the line "Did God just create the universe the way it was, and that's it?" Why is the writer inserting religion into an article that should be just about science? He lost all credibility in my opinon.
Richard Guzman (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:00 PM)
Richard, I included that reference because that's central to the way Hawking has framed the question. I added a hyperlink to a specific Web reference to provide further background on Dr. Hawking and God. Sorry about losing all credibility ... that won't be the first or the last time folks have told me that. I just keep plugging along, and I hope I'll eventually win you back.
By the way, as long as we're on the subject of cosmology in Seattle, I'd be remiss if I didn't pass along this link to a story about John Cramer's endangered experiment in retro-causality, written by my colleague and friend Tom Paulson at the P-I:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18015951/
I've written about Cramer's work as well, and I do hope he'll be able to do the experiment:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15817394/
Alan Boyle (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:13 PM)
In response to yesterday's column about Hawking, someone expressed concern that such a valuable individual would risk his life on a zero G or suborbital flight. I am glad that Mr. Hawking may get both of those opportunities. It was stated before his lecture last night that Mr. Hawking is no longer able to use his hand to control his computer, and that he now must use his eye. That leads me to wonder how much longer he will be with us. If someone who has contributed so much to science gets the opportunity to experience weightlessness for 25 seconds at a time, and possibly for a few minutes with spectacular view at a later date, then that is fantastic. And considering his inability to do physical things that most of us take for granted, how fitting that he would get to experience physical sensations most of us can only dream of.
Blair Johnson, Seattle, WA (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:16 PM)
Thank you for the article. It was extremely interesting to me.
About a year or so ago, I thought of the bubble filled with smoke scenario when trying to figure out why the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. What if, for whatever reason, a bubble (not of air, but maybe of time) was formed at the bottom of an extremely deep entity, and contained some energy and/or matter? The bubble would be drawn in the direction of the least resistance. As the resistance decreased, even just a little, the bubble would expand. This would pull and swirl everything inside the bubble without being aware of the larger motion since there are no visible or tangible reference points as the bubble grows and grows, heading for an ever more path of least resistance.
Oh well, just a thought.
Thanks again for the article. It was very nicely done.
Just holler if you get time and let me know what you think.
Just a thought.
John Reeder, Houston, TX (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:18 PM)
Needless to say, reading: "That's not to say the loop dimensions don't count. Hawking said those other dimensions, which he called "internal space," may well determine the fundamental characteristics of our cosmos, such as the charge of an electron or the nature of subatomic interactions."
...was just too cool! I'm not sure he's quite saying what I've been trying to argue and reason out, but it sure is close. The properties of magnetism and the forces of the atom could be just the physical "effect" of the 4th and 5th "physical" dimensions that are working to broaden out a singular one-dimensional essence that we are all inflated around.
P.S. I loved hearing all the details of how he talks! I guess I just thought he had a microphone up against his neck.
Chris Eldridge, Harrisburg PA (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:53 PM)
Why such a fuss over God? Concentrate on the article as a whole, not one sentence that may have a word in it that you do not like. I just don't understand..
Jeremy, Texas (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 10:09 PM)
John, the bubble universe concept is interesting on a couple of counts.
It meshes with Hawking's "no-boundary" concept of time ... that the "beginning" of the universe is like any other point in the space-time continuum, just like the South Pole. To ask what happened before the universe began is like asking what's south of the South Pole. There is no sense of "before" before the beginning.
It also meshes with the idea that there are multiple universes out there, bubbles of different sizes and shapes. Some bubbles are a small blip, others are stable enough to allow for the emergence of stars, galaxies and eventually life.
The interesting thing is that if you wrap all this together, "time" is just the movement through a dimension on the surface of this extradimensional "globe." Continuing this metaphor, all moments in the universe's history exist as different latitudes on the globe, from the singularity at 90 degrees north to the singularity at 90 degrees south. Our brains are just constructed to move through the latitudes at a particular rate. That's what Hawking was referring to when he talked about the way human brains and computer brains w
Here are some insights into those questions, great and small, gleaned during a close encounter with Cambridge University's frail genius:
Kimberly Wright / Reuters file
Physicist Stephen Hawking uses an infrared sensor
mounted on his eyeglasses as part of a
computerized writing/speaking system.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The title of Hawking's advertised talk was "The History of the Universe Backwards," but he actually delivered two lectures - one looking back at his own career in physics, and another focusing on his latest theories about a "top-down" approach to cosmology.
The first talk touched on the milestones of his career: how he went into cosmology rather than particle physics, the subdiscipline du jour, because he marched to the beat of a different scientific drummer ... how he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease, known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, while he was in graduate school ... and how, despite his increasing disability, he went on to plumb the theoretical depths of black holes and the big bang.
Hawking has gone back and forth about what happens to the things that are sucked into a black hole. At one time, he held that the "information" falling into the black hole is lost forever, but recently he has said that the contents of a black hole would leak out in the form of "Hawking radiation," until the black hole itself dissipates.
"Information is not lost, but it is not returned in a useful way," he said. "It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, but it is very hard to read."
Speaking of encyclopedias, Hawking noted that his reversal caused him to lose a bet to a fellow physicist, with the payoff coming in the form of a baseball encyclopedia. "Maybe I should have just given him the ashes," Hawking joked.
It was the second talk that really spurred my interest. Hawking and a colleague from CERN, Thomas Hertog, recently declared that the best way to understand how the universe arose was to look at our current cosmic conditions, then work back through "the sum of all histories" to figure out which theory would produce those conditions.
Hawking calls it a "top-down" approach to what he has long considered the biggest cosmic question: What was the initial state of the universe? Did God just create the universe the way it was, and that's it? Or is there a scientific reason for why the cosmos is just so ... why, for instance, it could lead to the conditions for intelligent beings like us?
Hawking's top-down vs. bottom-up approach goes to the heart of the issue covered in his best-known bestseller: "A Brief History of Time." During his Seattle talk, Hawking contended that cosmologists essentially had to look at time in reverse.
If time is a definite dimension like up-down, left-right and forward-back, why does time only move forward? Hawking said the answer to that question might lie in the Second Law of Thermodynamics - the idea that an enclosed system must move from a more ordered to a less ordered state:
"We don't really know how the human brain works. I find women's brains a particular mystery. But it is reasonable to assume that humans remember the same direction of time as computers do. ... We understand how computers work, unlike humans. And one can show that when a computer records an item in its memory, the total amount of disorder goes up. So computers and humans remember the past, and not the future. That is, because of the Second Law, we usually recount history forward.
"We say that later events are caused by earlier events, but not that earlier events happen in order to lead to the later. This 'bottom-up' approach, as I call it, works well in situations in which we can choose the initial state and observe the outcome. But the bottom-up approach does not work in cosmology.
"We do not know what the initial state of the universe was, and we currently can't try out different initial states and see what kinds of universes they would produce."
General relativity alone can't solve the problem, so quantum mechanics has to come into play to figure out what's the likeliest backward history for our universe, Hawking said.
As we've mentioned before, the twists in mathematics that link up general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to imply that we live in an 10- or 11-dimensional universe, perhaps with up to seven dimensions somehow rolled up into immeasurably small loops. The math also implies that there is a virtually immeasurable number of ways that our universe could have developed - nearly driving theoreticians to despair.
Hawking, however, isn't the despairing type: He said physicists should focus just on the scenarios that have three large spatial dimensions, like ours. It may sound like the anthropic principle - that is, the view that the universe is the way it is simply because there would be no intelligent life around to observe it if things were much different. But Hawking preferred to use another term - "the selection principle" - because the selection "doesn't depend on intelligent life."
That's not to say the loop dimensions don't count. Hawking said those other dimensions, which he called "internal space," may well determine the fundamental characteristics of our cosmos, such as the charge of an electron or the nature of subatomic interactions.
So how can physicists work their way backwards and map out that internal space? Strangely enough, Hawking endorsed the same approach favored by Columbia physicist Brian Greene, an earlier speaker in the Seattle lecture series: looking closely at irregularities in the "fingerprint" of the early universe, as seen in the background radiation left behind by the big bang. Those irregularities, which could soon be mapped in greater precision by probes such as the Planck spacecraft, may reveal the imprint of our own internal space.
Hawking said that the universe may represent just one "bubble" in a cosmic froth - perhaps longer-lasting than some other blips. Rather than dwelling so much on how many other unseeable bubbles there could be, Hawking advised concentrating on what makes our bubble the way it is.
"There seems to be a vast landscape of possible 'internal spaces,'" he said, setting up for a final joke. "We live in the anthropically allowed region, in which life is possible. But I think we might have chosen a better location."
I met Hawking at a reception after the talk, and here are some impressions on those smaller questions at the beginning:
If you want to get on Hawking's good side, stand to his right. That's the natural direction of his gaze when he's fixed in his wheelchair, and the tiny infrared sensor that he uses for his computerized communication system is mounted on the right temple of his eyeglass frames. For the record, he wore an open-neck, striped dress shirt, brown suit jacket and slacks, and brown suede shoes for Monday's talk. His hands were composed in his lap, and he was attended by two British assistants.
The system Hawking uses to compose the phrases for his mechanical voice is often called a "blink-controlled" computer, but I'd call it more of a twitch or a sneer. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He raises his upper lip over his teeth for an instant, and the cursor on his wheelchair-mounted computer screen jumps. First, Hawking highlights a block of words, then a row, then the desired word or letter sequence to add to his sentence. Each twitch of the lip and cheek is acknowledged by a beep of the computer.
Long lectures are pre-written, of course, but Hawking controls the delivery of the talk phrase by phrase - pausing for emphasis, applause or laughter.
If you ask a question, the response can take a while. Sometimes a short "Yes" will do the trick, but other times you just have to be patient. He has to build up his reply, word by word, then activate his computerized voice to deliver the answer. When one questioner asked Hawking to expound on the possibility that time may be curved in more than one dimension, Hawking took about five minutes to craft two short sentences: "General relativity allows [time] to loop back on itself. However, quantum theory seems to prevent travel into the past."
Instead of autographing books, Hawking thumbprints them, with the aid of an assistant and an ink pad. A thumbprint also serves as his signature for letters.
Even though Hawking is almost completely paralyzed, there is lots of expressiveness in his eyes and mouth. X Prize founder Peter Diamandis remarked last week about Hawking's smile - and he's right, it's wonderful. He even has a goofy, paternal grin that showed up during Monday's reception when his toddling grandson scampered around his wheelchair. (Yes, Hawking is a proud grandpa, and he's been visiting family during his U.S. tour).
If you want to see him smile, just mention his upcoming zero-gravity flight, which serves as a practice run for the outer-space trip Hawking is hoping to take someday aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. During the warmup to Monday's talk, video from SpaceShipOne's prize-winning flight was shown on the auditorium's big screen - and SpaceShipOne was shown as one of the historical milestones during the talk itself. Is Hawking looking forward to going into weightlessness? One of those smiles was the only answer I needed.
EMAIL THIS
Comments
I was reading this a lot of interest until I read the line "Did God just create the universe the way it was, and that's it?" Why is the writer inserting religion into an article that should be just about science? He lost all credibility in my opinon.
Richard Guzman (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:00 PM)
Richard, I included that reference because that's central to the way Hawking has framed the question. I added a hyperlink to a specific Web reference to provide further background on Dr. Hawking and God. Sorry about losing all credibility ... that won't be the first or the last time folks have told me that. I just keep plugging along, and I hope I'll eventually win you back.
By the way, as long as we're on the subject of cosmology in Seattle, I'd be remiss if I didn't pass along this link to a story about John Cramer's endangered experiment in retro-causality, written by my colleague and friend Tom Paulson at the P-I:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18015951/
I've written about Cramer's work as well, and I do hope he'll be able to do the experiment:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15817394/
Alan Boyle (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:13 PM)
In response to yesterday's column about Hawking, someone expressed concern that such a valuable individual would risk his life on a zero G or suborbital flight. I am glad that Mr. Hawking may get both of those opportunities. It was stated before his lecture last night that Mr. Hawking is no longer able to use his hand to control his computer, and that he now must use his eye. That leads me to wonder how much longer he will be with us. If someone who has contributed so much to science gets the opportunity to experience weightlessness for 25 seconds at a time, and possibly for a few minutes with spectacular view at a later date, then that is fantastic. And considering his inability to do physical things that most of us take for granted, how fitting that he would get to experience physical sensations most of us can only dream of.
Blair Johnson, Seattle, WA (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:16 PM)
Thank you for the article. It was extremely interesting to me.
About a year or so ago, I thought of the bubble filled with smoke scenario when trying to figure out why the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. What if, for whatever reason, a bubble (not of air, but maybe of time) was formed at the bottom of an extremely deep entity, and contained some energy and/or matter? The bubble would be drawn in the direction of the least resistance. As the resistance decreased, even just a little, the bubble would expand. This would pull and swirl everything inside the bubble without being aware of the larger motion since there are no visible or tangible reference points as the bubble grows and grows, heading for an ever more path of least resistance.
Oh well, just a thought.
Thanks again for the article. It was very nicely done.
Just holler if you get time and let me know what you think.
Just a thought.
John Reeder, Houston, TX (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:18 PM)
Needless to say, reading: "That's not to say the loop dimensions don't count. Hawking said those other dimensions, which he called "internal space," may well determine the fundamental characteristics of our cosmos, such as the charge of an electron or the nature of subatomic interactions."
...was just too cool! I'm not sure he's quite saying what I've been trying to argue and reason out, but it sure is close. The properties of magnetism and the forces of the atom could be just the physical "effect" of the 4th and 5th "physical" dimensions that are working to broaden out a singular one-dimensional essence that we are all inflated around.
P.S. I loved hearing all the details of how he talks! I guess I just thought he had a microphone up against his neck.
Chris Eldridge, Harrisburg PA (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:53 PM)
Why such a fuss over God? Concentrate on the article as a whole, not one sentence that may have a word in it that you do not like. I just don't understand..
Jeremy, Texas (Sent Tuesday, April 10, 2007 10:09 PM)
John, the bubble universe concept is interesting on a couple of counts.
It meshes with Hawking's "no-boundary" concept of time ... that the "beginning" of the universe is like any other point in the space-time continuum, just like the South Pole. To ask what happened before the universe began is like asking what's south of the South Pole. There is no sense of "before" before the beginning.
It also meshes with the idea that there are multiple universes out there, bubbles of different sizes and shapes. Some bubbles are a small blip, others are stable enough to allow for the emergence of stars, galaxies and eventually life.
The interesting thing is that if you wrap all this together, "time" is just the movement through a dimension on the surface of this extradimensional "globe." Continuing this metaphor, all moments in the universe's history exist as different latitudes on the globe, from the singularity at 90 degrees north to the singularity at 90 degrees south. Our brains are just constructed to move through the latitudes at a particular rate. That's what Hawking was referring to when he talked about the way human brains and computer brains w
Black Hole Caught in an Eclipse
By Ker Than
Staff Writer
posted: 12 April 2007
01:28 pm ET
A recently observed black hole eclipse is giving astronomers a chance to test key predictions about the swirling disk of material that surrounds it.
Astronomers spotted a cloud of interstellar gas as it passed directly in front of NGC 1365, a galaxy located 60 million light-years away that contains a supermassive black hole at its center.
Scientists think the supermassive black hole, also called an active galactic nucleus, or AGN, is fed by a steady stream of material swirling around it in the form of a so-called accretion disk.
Black holes can't be seen, because matter and light that enter them do not come out. Astronomers detect them by noting their gravitational effects on surrounding material. AGNs are even more difficult to study because they are enshrouded by thick shrouds of glowing gas and dust.
Even more challenging, the accretion disk of NGC 1365 is too small for astronomers to resolve directly with a telescope. But the eclipse allowed astronomers to estimate its size by measuring how long its X-ray radiation was blocked by the passing cloud.
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers (space.com))
By Ker Than
Staff Writer
posted: 12 April 2007
01:28 pm ET
A recently observed black hole eclipse is giving astronomers a chance to test key predictions about the swirling disk of material that surrounds it.
Astronomers spotted a cloud of interstellar gas as it passed directly in front of NGC 1365, a galaxy located 60 million light-years away that contains a supermassive black hole at its center.
Scientists think the supermassive black hole, also called an active galactic nucleus, or AGN, is fed by a steady stream of material swirling around it in the form of a so-called accretion disk.
Black holes can't be seen, because matter and light that enter them do not come out. Astronomers detect them by noting their gravitational effects on surrounding material. AGNs are even more difficult to study because they are enshrouded by thick shrouds of glowing gas and dust.
Even more challenging, the accretion disk of NGC 1365 is too small for astronomers to resolve directly with a telescope. But the eclipse allowed astronomers to estimate its size by measuring how long its X-ray radiation was blocked by the passing cloud.
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers (space.com))
It seems that all spiral galaxies are born with the cancer that will eventually kill them, a super-massive black hole at their centre.
A remarkable eclipse of a supermassive black hole and the hot gas disk around it has been observed with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This eclipse has allowed two key predictions about the effects of supermassive black holes to be tested.
Just as eclipses of the Sun and moon give astronomers rare opportunities to learn about those objects, an alignment in a nearby galaxy has provided a rare opportunity to investigate a supermassive black hole, according to this press release issued by EurekAlert.
The supermassive black hole is located in NGC 1365, a galaxy 60 million light years from Earth. It contains a so called active galactic nucleus, or AGN. Scientists believe that the black hole at the center of the AGN is fed by a steady stream of material, presumably in the form of a disk. Material just about to fall into a black hole should be heated to millions of degrees before passing over the event horizon, or point of no return.
The disk of gas around the central black hole in NGC 1365 produces copious X-rays but is much too small to resolve directly with a telescope. However, the disk was eclipsed by an intervening cloud, so observation of the time taken for the disk to go in and out of eclipse allowed scientists to estimate the size of the disk.
"For years we've been struggling to confirm the size of this X-ray structure," said Guido Risaliti of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass, and the Italian Institute of Astronomy (INAF). "This serendipitous eclipse enabled us to make this breakthrough."
The Chandra team directly measured the size of the X-ray source as about seven times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. That means the source of X-rays is about 2 billion times smaller than the host galaxy and only about 10 times larger than the estimated size of the black hole's event horizon, consistent with theoretical predictions.
"Thanks to this eclipse, we were able to probe much closer to the edge of this black hole than anyone has been able to before," said co-author Martin Elvis from CfA. "Material this close in will likely cross the event horizon and disappear from the universe in about a hundred years, a blink of an eye in cosmic terms."
In addition to measuring the size of this disk of material, Risaliti and his colleagues were also able to estimate the location of the dense gas cloud that eclipsed the X-ray source and central black hole. The Chandra data show that this cloud is one hundredth of a light year from the black hole's event horizon, or 300 times closer than generally thought.
"AGN include the brightest objects in the Universe and are powerful probes of the early universe. So, it's vital to understand their basic structure," said Risaliti. "It turns out that we still have work to
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200704150323.htm
Just as eclipses of the Sun and moon give astronomers rare opportunities to learn about those objects, an alignment in a nearby galaxy has provided a rare opportunity to investigate a supermassive black hole, according to this press release issued by EurekAlert.
The supermassive black hole is located in NGC 1365, a galaxy 60 million light years from Earth. It contains a so called active galactic nucleus, or AGN. Scientists believe that the black hole at the center of the AGN is fed by a steady stream of material, presumably in the form of a disk. Material just about to fall into a black hole should be heated to millions of degrees before passing over the event horizon, or point of no return.
The disk of gas around the central black hole in NGC 1365 produces copious X-rays but is much too small to resolve directly with a telescope. However, the disk was eclipsed by an intervening cloud, so observation of the time taken for the disk to go in and out of eclipse allowed scientists to estimate the size of the disk.
"For years we've been struggling to confirm the size of this X-ray structure," said Guido Risaliti of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass, and the Italian Institute of Astronomy (INAF). "This serendipitous eclipse enabled us to make this breakthrough."
The Chandra team directly measured the size of the X-ray source as about seven times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. That means the source of X-rays is about 2 billion times smaller than the host galaxy and only about 10 times larger than the estimated size of the black hole's event horizon, consistent with theoretical predictions.
"Thanks to this eclipse, we were able to probe much closer to the edge of this black hole than anyone has been able to before," said co-author Martin Elvis from CfA. "Material this close in will likely cross the event horizon and disappear from the universe in about a hundred years, a blink of an eye in cosmic terms."
In addition to measuring the size of this disk of material, Risaliti and his colleagues were also able to estimate the location of the dense gas cloud that eclipsed the X-ray source and central black hole. The Chandra data show that this cloud is one hundredth of a light year from the black hole's event horizon, or 300 times closer than generally thought.
"AGN include the brightest objects in the Universe and are powerful probes of the early universe. So, it's vital to understand their basic structure," said Risaliti. "It turns out that we still have work to
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200704150323.htm
Book Review: Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes
As Charles Seife reveals in this energetic new book, information theory, once the province of philosophers and linguists, has emerged as the crucial science of our time, shedding new light on the mysteries of physics, the nature of space and time and the creation and destruction of the universe itself. With his gift for making cutting-edge science accessible and entertaining, Seife explains how theorists came to understand that information is not a construct of the mind but a fundamental element of the physical world, something that sits inside every living cell and surrounds every black hole in the cosmos. It exists, like energy, even if there is no life to observe it. Starting with the breaking of the Enigma code during World War II and building momentum with the computer revolution, information theory has taken its place at the forefront of theoretical physics as scientists begin to use it to reconcile the paradoxes of relativity and quantum mechanics that have puzzled theorists since Einstein. Lucid and exhilarating, Decoding the Universe probes the mind-boggling advances that are taking us to the brink of a new understanding of the universe.
> read full review at Amazon.comhttp://www.sciencedaily.com/reviews/067003441X/
As Charles Seife reveals in this energetic new book, information theory, once the province of philosophers and linguists, has emerged as the crucial science of our time, shedding new light on the mysteries of physics, the nature of space and time and the creation and destruction of the universe itself. With his gift for making cutting-edge science accessible and entertaining, Seife explains how theorists came to understand that information is not a construct of the mind but a fundamental element of the physical world, something that sits inside every living cell and surrounds every black hole in the cosmos. It exists, like energy, even if there is no life to observe it. Starting with the breaking of the Enigma code during World War II and building momentum with the computer revolution, information theory has taken its place at the forefront of theoretical physics as scientists begin to use it to reconcile the paradoxes of relativity and quantum mechanics that have puzzled theorists since Einstein. Lucid and exhilarating, Decoding the Universe probes the mind-boggling advances that are taking us to the brink of a new understanding of the universe.
> read full review at Amazon.comhttp://www.sciencedaily.com/reviews/067003441X/
QUOTE (AlphaNumeric+Apr 8 2007, 12:08 AM)
The ejection of matter via particle jets is not extracting matter from the black hole but is the material falling into the black hole being swirled up into the jets due to powerful electromagnetic fields.
HOW DOES ONE KNOW THERE IS AN EVENT HORIZON PRESENT?
EVENT HORIZONS MAKE NONSENSE PREDICTIONS. THE FACT THAT BLACK HOLES EJECT OUT THEIR POLES AND NOT THEIR ACCRETION DISKS GOES TO SHOW THEY AINT SO BLACK AFTER ALL.
MITCH RAEMSCH -- LIGHT FELL --
HOW DOES ONE KNOW THERE IS AN EVENT HORIZON PRESENT?
EVENT HORIZONS MAKE NONSENSE PREDICTIONS. THE FACT THAT BLACK HOLES EJECT OUT THEIR POLES AND NOT THEIR ACCRETION DISKS GOES TO SHOW THEY AINT SO BLACK AFTER ALL.
MITCH RAEMSCH -- LIGHT FELL --
QUOTE (Nick+Apr 20 2007, 05:55 AM)
EVENT HORIZONS MAKE NONSENSE PREDICTIONS.
No, they make predictions you are unable to reconcile with your (rather poor) physical intuition and you don't take the time to learn any relativity to correct this problem.
No, they make predictions you are unable to reconcile with your (rather poor) physical intuition and you don't take the time to learn any relativity to correct this problem.
QUOTE (Nick+Apr 20 2007, 05:55 AM)
THE FACT THAT BLACK HOLES EJECT OUT THEIR POLES AND NOT THEIR ACCRETION DISKS GOES TO SHOW THEY AINT SO BLACK AFTER ALL.
Matter blasted away from the black holes via the jets never crossed the event horizon, so the 'blackness' of the black hole isn't altered by an accretion disk. The fact it's along the axis of rotation and not on the plane of the disk is more to do with complex dynamics of the system. I'm sure if you spent some time learning electrodynamics and the fluid mechanics behind accretion disks you'd learn a few mechanisms which give such behaviour but I'm also sure you'll never actually bother to try to learn.
Nick. Matter in a black hole is crushed to fundamental particles and is at a few trillion degrees centigrade. Matter in BH jets is things like protons (which cannot exist in a black hole) and is at a mere hundred million degrees centigrade. Explain the difference.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/blackhole.html
Jets may be originating five times closer to the black hole....
QUOTE
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, taking advantage of multiple unique views of black hole particle jets over the course of a year with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, have assembled a "picture" of the region that has revealed several key discoveries.
They have found that the jets may be originating five times closer to the black hole than previously thought; they see in better detail how these jets change with time and distance from the black hole; and they could use this information as a new technique to measure black hole mass.
They have found that the jets may be originating five times closer to the black hole than previously thought; they see in better detail how these jets change with time and distance from the black hole; and they could use this information as a new technique to measure black hole mass.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/blackhole.html
Jets may be originating five times closer to the black hole....
Paintball, when you put electomagnetic energie into a black hole it passes through the black hole and comes out as wave energy at the speed of light. There experiments conducted in the 80's to detect wave energy of that nature.
Guest soultech. No electromagnetic radiation can escape from a black hole.
The black hole at the center of the NGC 4051 galaxy emits a hot wind of chemical elements, including elements like carbon and oxygen that are critical for life. The hot wind originates very close to the black hole, at a distance about five times the size of Neptune's orbit. Although speedy, the wind is weaker than expected and ejects only 2 to 5 percent of accreting material. Credit: George Seitz/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF Googl;e alert.
The black hole at the center of the NGC 4051 galaxy emits a hot wind of chemical elements, including elements like carbon and oxygen that are critical for life. The hot wind originates very close to the black hole, at a distance about five times the size of Neptune's orbit. Although speedy, the wind is weaker than expected and ejects only 2 to 5 percent of accreting material. Credit: George Seitz/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF
New research shows that black holes are not the ultimate destroyers that are often portrayed in popular culture. Instead, warm gas escaping from the clutches of enormous black holes could be one source of the chemical elements that make life possible.
Immediately after the Big Bang, the universe contained only hydrogen and helium. Heavier chemical elements had to be cooked up inside the first stars, then scattered throughout space to be incorporated in next-generation stars and their planets. Black holes may have helped to distribute those elements across the cosmos.
Black holes are not all-consuming monsters. Until gas crosses the boundary known as the event horizon, it can still escape if it is heated sufficiently.
“One of the big questions in cosmology is how much influence massive black holes exert on their surroundings,” said co-author Martin Elvis of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). “This research helps answer that question.”
An international team of astronomers has found that hot winds from giant black holes in galactic centers may blow heavy elements like carbon and oxygen into the vast tracts of space between galaxies.
The team, led by Yair Krongold of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, studied the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 4051. They found that gas was escaping from much closer to the black hole than previously thought. The outflow source is located about 2,000 Schwarzschild radii from the black hole, or about five times the size of Neptune’s orbit. (The Schwarzschild radius is the black hole’s “point of no return” – about 4 million miles for the black hole in NGC 4051.)
The team could also determine the fraction of gas that was avoiding being swallowed. That fraction ended up being smaller than earlier studies suggested.
“We calculate that between 2 to 5 percent of the accreting material is flowing back out,” says team member Fabrizio Nicastro of the CfA.
Winds from black holes have been clocked at speeds of up to 4 million miles per hour. Over thousands of years, the chemical elements such as carbon and oxygen in those winds can travel immense distances, eventually becoming incorporated Google alert
New research shows that black holes are not the ultimate destroyers that are often portrayed in popular culture. Instead, warm gas escaping from the clutches of enormous black holes could be one source of the chemical elements that make life possible.
Immediately after the Big Bang, the universe contained only hydrogen and helium. Heavier chemical elements had to be cooked up inside the first stars, then scattered throughout space to be incorporated in next-generation stars and their planets. Black holes may have helped to distribute those elements across the cosmos.
Black holes are not all-consuming monsters. Until gas crosses the boundary known as the event horizon, it can still escape if it is heated sufficiently.
“One of the big questions in cosmology is how much influence massive black holes exert on their surroundings,” said co-author Martin Elvis of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). “This research helps answer that question.”
An international team of astronomers has found that hot winds from giant black holes in galactic centers may blow heavy elements like carbon and oxygen into the vast tracts of space between galaxies.
The team, led by Yair Krongold of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, studied the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 4051. They found that gas was escaping from much closer to the black hole than previously thought. The outflow source is located about 2,000 Schwarzschild radii from the black hole, or about five times the size of Neptune’s orbit. (The Schwarzschild radius is the black hole’s “point of no return” – about 4 million miles for the black hole in NGC 4051.)
The team could also determine the fraction of gas that was avoiding being swallowed. That fraction ended up being smaller than earlier studies suggested.
“We calculate that between 2 to 5 percent of the accreting material is flowing back out,” says team member Fabrizio Nicastro of the CfA.
Winds from black holes have been clocked at speeds of up to 4 million miles per hour. Over thousands of years, the chemical elements such as carbon and oxygen in those winds can travel immense distances, eventually becoming incorporated Google alert
HOW LIGHT FALLS IS THE UNIFICATION OF ELECTROMAGNETISM AND GRAVITY.
Kaneda you said electromagnetic energie, I was refering to wave energy, The sort that would rather than induct into a lightning rod would push the rod over! understand yet?
Guest soultech. Light speed is a maximum speed. No particle or wave can escape a black hole unless it can go faster than light which is impossible. Gravity is neither a particle nor a wave so is not affected by this restriction.
QUOTE (kaneda+Apr 21 2007, 02:39 PM)
Guest soultech. Light speed is a maximum speed. No particle or wave can escape a black hole unless it can go faster than light which is impossible. Gravity is neither a particle nor a wave so is not affected by this restriction.
WHAT IS PROPAGATING THEN?
WHAT IS PROPAGATING THEN?
Gravitational waves do propagate.It is called ripples of curvature.I never thought more than this.
Nick. Gravity is more of a hole than anything else with things falling in an unknown direction which appears as though falling towards the centre in a circular path, so causing large objects in space to rotate endlessly.
Just an idea but certainly as good as the idea of gravitons.
Just an idea but certainly as good as the idea of gravitons.
alokmohan. The curvature of space is caused by gravity but is not gravity. It is a uniform effect with no ripples. The fact that gravity travels at light speed means that gravity should not be able to propogate in any form beyond an event horizon but it does. Gravity continues to be felt no matter how much mass is added which makes the idea of gravity as some kind of hole more likely.
QUOTE (kaneda+Apr 22 2007, 11:44 AM)
Nick. Gravity is more of a hole than anything else with things falling in an unknown direction which appears as though falling towards the centre in a circular path, so causing large objects in space to rotate endlessly.
Just an idea but certainly as good as the idea of gravitons.
GRAVITY WELLS DON'T EXIST.
SPACE-TIME CURVATURE AROUND EARTH'S MASS INTERFERES WITH THE CURVATURE FROM THE SUN. ANY ORBIT WOULD BE DISTURBED BY THE LOCAL CURVATURE OF ANYTHING GOING AROUND THE SUN.
THE SUN'S CURVATURE IS INTERFEARED WITH BY THE EARTH'S. THEREFOR GR DOESN'T WORK BEYOND THE ONE BODY SYSTEM.
ONLY CHNAGES IN GRAVITY PROPAGATE AND AT LIGHT SPEED.
MITCH RAEMSCH -- LIGHT FELL --
Just an idea but certainly as good as the idea of gravitons.
GRAVITY WELLS DON'T EXIST.
SPACE-TIME CURVATURE AROUND EARTH'S MASS INTERFERES WITH THE CURVATURE FROM THE SUN. ANY ORBIT WOULD BE DISTURBED BY THE LOCAL CURVATURE OF ANYTHING GOING AROUND THE SUN.
THE SUN'S CURVATURE IS INTERFEARED WITH BY THE EARTH'S. THEREFOR GR DOESN'T WORK BEYOND THE ONE BODY SYSTEM.
ONLY CHNAGES IN GRAVITY PROPAGATE AND AT LIGHT SPEED.
MITCH RAEMSCH -- LIGHT FELL --
QUOTE (Nick+Apr 23 2007, 05:58 AM)
GRAVITY WELLS DON'T EXIST.
SPACE-TIME CURVATURE AROUND EARTH'S MASS INTERFERES WITH THE CURVATURE FROM THE SUN. ANY ORBIT WOULD BE DISTURBED BY THE LOCAL CURVATURE OF ANYTHING GOING AROUND THE SUN.
THE SUN'S CURVATURE IS INTERFEARED WITH BY THE EARTH'S. THEREFOR GR DOESN'T WORK BEYOND THE ONE BODY SYSTEM.
ONLY CHNAGES IN GRAVITY PROPAGATE AND AT LIGHT SPEED.
MITCH RAEMSCH -- LIGHT FELL --
Nick. While this is marginally better than yet another Einstein misquote it still has nothing to do with my post.
SPACE-TIME CURVATURE AROUND EARTH'S MASS INTERFERES WITH THE CURVATURE FROM THE SUN. ANY ORBIT WOULD BE DISTURBED BY THE LOCAL CURVATURE OF ANYTHING GOING AROUND THE SUN.
THE SUN'S CURVATURE IS INTERFEARED WITH BY THE EARTH'S. THEREFOR GR DOESN'T WORK BEYOND THE ONE BODY SYSTEM.
ONLY CHNAGES IN GRAVITY PROPAGATE AND AT LIGHT SPEED.
MITCH RAEMSCH -- LIGHT FELL --
Nick. While this is marginally better than yet another Einstein misquote it still has nothing to do with my post.
What happens when two black holes collide?
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