It’s fascinating how things that were inverted seem to become corrected when I point this at the pre-existing black hole in my room.
Quite amazing when crossing the pre-existing blackhole and looking back to the room while using this app!
Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
71–80 of 204 posts
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, is there anyone alive who wouldn't be afraid of a black hole? It's a celestial body so gargantuan its gravity bends the light passing around it like a lens. Anyone who gets too close to one will literally never be seen again, ever.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe it depends on the type of the black hole, but if you were to fall directly into one, or even enter an orbit too close, you would still be seen - and seen for an extremely long time.
That's... That's even more terrifying.
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've also wondered the same thing about healthcare and other fields. All the complex sounding phrases are child-like in simplicity in their "native" tongue, yet completely indecipherable to most people in modern times. Quite a weird and undesirable path we ended up going down through inertia.
It’s arguable whether it’s weird or undesirable. There are benefits to using unusual words when they have precise scientific or other technical meaning. It helps identify them as terms of art, so that they’re not confused with their native tongue equivalent, which invariably has much looser meanings.
Sure, but I think there's some cause/effect to consider there. The same logic would have applied in Ancient Rome, but I expect that people would have likely been less casual with their usage of such terms when they also had specific technical meanings.
For example many food dishes we have retain basic naming conventions, yet have well understood meaning. In the US a customer ordering spaghetti is likely to be quite unhappy if they get a cream sauce, even though the order itself is literally just the name of the noodle.
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#74If anyone's interested in the accuracy, this is very 'visualisation grade' software. Its a bit of a pet peeve of mine that people present these sims as being very physically accurate, when they contain major inaccuracies, some of which are very obvious and/or deliberate. This one has some serious physical limitations I wouldn't mind at all if it didn't say that this was a *physically accurate* black hole specifically…
Some are fair – of course this is a simplified visualization! Observationally, we don't really know how fast a given black hole is rotating, and here I indeed assumed a non-rotating one. It's not an inaccuracy per se, more like a missing feature. The camera mode has a (half-hidden) toggle to enable Kerr metric and set spin, but even there it's not a default. I consider the colormap choice to be completely arbitrary t…
Great job. Please consider turning on rotation by default (for those who missed it, it's in the parameters). The overwhelming majority of astrophysical black holes are expected to be spinning (Ker) black holes.
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, is there anyone alive who wouldn't be afraid of a black hole? It's a celestial body so gargantuan its gravity bends the light passing around it like a lens. Anyone who gets too close to one will literally never be seen again, ever.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe it depends on the type of the black hole, but if you were to fall directly into one, or even enter an orbit too close, you would still be seen - and seen for an extremely long time.
Yes, altho "very long time" doesnt do it justice - while your light would be fading and redshifting, mathematically you could detect photons comming off you the whole remaining age of the universe.
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#76I remember like 10 years ago when Occulus first came out there was that space simulation demo where you could go around the solar system in VR. You could also "fast travel" by zooming in towards a planet, moon, blackhole. Yeah, that was the day I learned I have a deep, crippling phobia of large objects. And Melanoheliophobia, which is fear of black holes. The only other time I've felt that way was snorkeling once nea…
To be fair, is there anyone alive who wouldn't be afraid of a black hole? It's a celestial body so gargantuan its gravity bends the light passing around it like a lens. Anyone who gets too close to one will literally never be seen again, ever.
It really doesn’t take much to bend light.
Supernova and asteroids were always scarier to me because they’re potentially planet-ending scenarios. Whereas a black hole is benign as long as you don’t move into its orbit at too acute an angle.
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#77The distortion effects dont work for me on pixel 8 when using AR mode
I just get a flat floating image of a black hole. Am i holding it wrong?
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Helio- is actually "sun", not "hole", and it's Greek, not Latin, but I 100% agree with you: it's pointless technical vocabulary that only serves to obfuscate. I think in this particular case, it's just some internet neologism (which is a good word, since coinage can mean a couple different things), made based on analogies with older phobias. For those of us who know Latin and Greek, though, all we can really do is sh…
What would be the correct latin/greek word for it?
Melanotrypophobia, although the Greek term is "mayri trypa", literally "black hole".
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Helio- is actually "sun", not "hole", and it's Greek, not Latin, but I 100% agree with you: it's pointless technical vocabulary that only serves to obfuscate. I think in this particular case, it's just some internet neologism (which is a good word, since coinage can mean a couple different things), made based on analogies with older phobias. For those of us who know Latin and Greek, though, all we can really do is sh…
The translation of the name appears to be intended as “black star fear”.
With the "black star" being the name for "black hole" back when they were purely theoretical idea.
Re: Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s arguable whether it’s weird or undesirable. There are benefits to using unusual words when they have precise scientific or other technical meaning. It helps identify them as terms of art, so that they’re not confused with their native tongue equivalent, which invariably has much looser meanings.
Sure, but I think there's some cause/effect to consider there. The same logic would have applied in Ancient Rome, but I expect that people would have likely been less casual with their usage of such terms when they also had specific technical meanings. For example many food dishes we have retain basic naming conventions, yet have well understood meaning. In the US a customer ordering spaghetti is likely to be quite u…
"Spaghetti" is a great example - notice how you have specific expectations of food that happens to be named in a foreign (relative to where you live) language.