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Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

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Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#131

Post by denton-scratch »

darwinwhy wrote: post #49
andrewstuart wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so - in every direction we look things appear largely to be the same. It seems entirely reasonable that extends to life. The only limiting factor is we cannot see other planets to find out.

Is that a reasonable assumption to make? I don't think we have any evidence of other places we look being "largely the same" with respect to life conduciveness. It took billions of years for our own planet to achieve multicellular life, which is a significant fraction of our best estimate of the lifetime of the entire universe up to this point.

Our planet is only 4 billion years old; for the first billion years or so, it was sizzling-hot and under constant bombardment.

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#132

Post by skripp »

lmm wrote: post #72
mach1ne wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard that book(series?) pop up quite a lot recently. Is it worth a read?

No. It's a tedious slog, devoid of interest on any axis: characters, plot, worldbuilding and science are all paper-thin. Its popularity baffles me.

Did you read all three? The first one isn't great but as a trilogy I found it quite good. There are several places where the story building contradicts itself but if you are willing to look past those then it's solid science fiction. It's not on the level of Arthur C. Clarke or Asimov but they were obviosly big influences.

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#133

Post by basilgohar »

mike_hock wrote: post #117
nuccy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another cool places for habitable planets to be: - Active galaxy with a jet stretching perpendicularly to the galaxy plane for distances much bigger than the galaxy's size, shinning in all the wavelengths. - Planet around a double star one of which is a black hole or a neutron star.

> shinning in all the wavelengths Just a precaution so we don't get sued.

It took me a couple of passes to catch this subtle Simpsons reference. :-)

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#134

Post by foobar_______ »

lmm wrote: post #72
mach1ne wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard that book(series?) pop up quite a lot recently. Is it worth a read?

No. It's a tedious slog, devoid of interest on any axis: characters, plot, worldbuilding and science are all paper-thin. Its popularity baffles me.

It brings me sanity to hear others say this. I thought the story was convoluted and characters uninteresting.

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#135

Post by richardw »

colordrops wrote: post #89
lmm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's a tedious slog, devoid of interest on any axis: characters, plot, worldbuilding and science are all paper-thin. Its popularity baffles me.

It's popularity is pretty easy to understand. It was the first proper scifi novel written in the native tongue of over a billion people.

What is “proper” vs eg the others on this list? Honest question.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_science_fiction

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#136

Post by andrewflnr »

colordrops wrote: post #89
lmm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's a tedious slog, devoid of interest on any axis: characters, plot, worldbuilding and science are all paper-thin. Its popularity baffles me.

It's popularity is pretty easy to understand. It was the first proper scifi novel written in the native tongue of over a billion people.

I don't think that's true either. I think it was just the first such to get translated to English. I think it's popular because the premise is interesting. The Dark Forest is just part of the vocabulary now, and that's not an accident, it's genuinely worth thinking about and, if not technically new, at least newly popularized.

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#137

Post by denton-scratch »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #26

What I don’t understand is where the material for the stars is coming from? Is there that much dust in deep space? Or did it collect it from the galaxy?

I don't know what the black hole is moving through. That is, I don't know how much "metallic" stuff there is in the cloud. The article says the stars are blue, so presumably large and hot. The article also says the triggering event probably happened about 50 million years ago - so after the death of the dinosaurs on Earth.

The article doesn't say how far away this thing is. If it's very distant, and the Universe we're looking at is young, presumably the gas is mainly hydrogen and helium. Maybe, given another billion years or so, the newly-formed stars will coalesce into a new galaxy?

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#138

Post by joshuahedlund »

once_inc wrote: post #86

For those replying to this article with "imagine living there", please note that if life is a verdant, resilient and common as many of us hope it is, the universe might contain quite a number of insane places to live: - Near the center of a galaxy, where stars are so closely packed together that the night sky is filled with bright lights, perhaps illuminating their world to what we experience around twilight, or even…

> Near the center of a galaxy, where stars are so closely packed together that the night sky is filled with bright lights, perhaps illuminating their world to what we experience around twilight, or even brighter.

My understanding is this is unfavorable for life due to any planets being constantly sanitized by too many nearby stars going supernova

> Far removed from the center of a galaxy, or even on a rogue star that has escaped its galaxy early on. Very few stars visible in the sky.

My understanding is this is also unlikely since a total lack of nearby stars would deprive a star system of the heavier elements needed to make molecules out of anything more interesting than helium and hydrogen.

It’s possible that a happy medium between too many or few is needed for life (or at least highly favored along a bell curve along which our conditions are more likely to be near the top)

Re: Hubble sees possible runaway black hole creating a trail of stars

#139

Post by state_less »

Razengan wrote: post #71
unrealp wrote: post #22

I wonder if this is an opportunity to detect intelligent life. If the black hole is affecting any intelligent life on the way, they might do something to save themselves or their planet, which might be detectable?

What if this is CAUSED by intelligent life? Maybe this is part of a galactic-scale engineering project? Actual pic btw: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GWQ1FTQCCZS72F2GPD4QTJXK.png

Perhaps we could play some galactic billiards someday with a good gravitational model and plenty of computation.

Send a flair out lasting over a hundred millions years, letting others know, “hey, we lived here.”

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