61–70 of 89 posts
From the article: "A search for the X-ray signatures of low-mass black hole binaries in the Chandra data turned up 12 within three light-years of Sgr A*." Three light years is not that big of a distance in the grand scheme of things. For reference, the nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light years away. Having 12 binaries within 3 ly sounds really dense. Having several hundred sounds crazy.
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One way to dispel the idea that everything has been invented is to imagine something small and mundane – but 100 years in the future. It seems unlikely that people will be writing code or picking out groceries the same way they do today, for example. Some aspects will be the same. But are you sure we won’t be picking out groceries in VR? Another thing that helps: technological progress seemed exponential over the las…
> One way to dispel the idea that everything has been invented is to imagine something small and mundane – but 100 years in the future... Hasn't people always thought there were living in the pinnacle of technology era? I mean, if you look at texts that are 50 or 100 years old, you can see people chest thumping about how they are in the modern world. Aren't we doing the same now?
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People have been saying "we might have invented everything" for hundreds of years. I like the "invention wavefront" analogy, but I unfortunately can't remember where I learnt it. Imagine the high-dimensional space of all possible things that can be invented. In the "centre" of the space is a hypersphere containing everything that has been invented to date. Every new invention is invented by "poking outwards" in one s…
> People have been saying "we might have invented everything" for hundreds of years. No, they really haven't. In fact for a good chunk of centuries (from 16th century onwards), the optimism for the eventual future developments was endless. At some point there was a few scholars saying that during the end of 19th century, but still not some widespread belief. That said, discovery probably also follows an 80/20 rule, a…
In that regard, the number of inventions (as subset of all sets of configured matter)- is similarly bound. We might argue that such a bounding is infinitely expanding along with the universe, as space is a important variable in the equation. Even so, my assumption is that space becomes irrelevant after a certain point of expansions. (If I have 2 atoms in a field of a billion of square miles, the number of configurations is only trivially changed by adding a few more square miles.
Once more, even if an infinitely expanding universe equates to an infinitely expanding art of inventions (configurations) - the fact remains that the set is fixed for any given time point.
From the article: "A search for the X-ray signatures of low-mass black hole binaries in the Chandra data turned up 12 within three light-years of Sgr A*." Three light years is not that big of a distance in the grand scheme of things. For reference, the nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light years away. Having 12 binaries within 3 ly sounds really dense. Having several hundred sounds crazy.
The night sky at the galactic Centre is white
Is it possible that black holes could account for a good portion of "dark matter"? They literally fit the term.
There’s a theory which accounts for that called MACHO, for MAssive Compact Halo Object. While it’s possible, over many years of observation it’s very unlikely. You can’t see a black hole directly, unless it’s “eating” of course, but you can see gravitational effects like lensing. If black holes and neutron stars made up most dark matter, we’d expect to see evidence of it, and we don’t. It is still possible, although…
Is it possible that black holes could account for a good portion of "dark matter"? They literally fit the term.
From the article: "A search for the X-ray signatures of low-mass black hole binaries in the Chandra data turned up 12 within three light-years of Sgr A*." Three light years is not that big of a distance in the grand scheme of things. For reference, the nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light years away. Having 12 binaries within 3 ly sounds really dense. Having several hundred sounds crazy.
The night sky at the galactic Centre is white
Is it possible that black holes could account for a good portion of "dark matter"? They literally fit the term.
the "missing matter" is not just at the galactic core but assumed distributed more thorough the galaxy. if it just were at the center, star rotational speed would follow keplerian predictions, instead they observed the same rotational speed across whole galaxy disks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve
I'm sure this is an oversimplified view, but doesn't it seem like, because black holes are more dense, they'd naturally tend to fall toward and gather around the center of the galaxy? Sort of like how more dense objects tend to be found at the bottom of a pond? So then perhaps it makes a lot of sense that the galactic center would contain a lot of black holes.