No no no ... they're Monoliths from 2001: A Space Odessy, remember when he became one and would go from star to star blowing them up for fun?
Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
91–100 of 105 posts
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#92Kind of chilling to think about these tiny black holes. If they have enough gravitational pull to destabilize a white dwarf, I don't want to know what they'd do to our solar system.
These supernova-generating black holes are atomic scale (Schwartzchild radius of 15pm to 15nm), yet they carry the momentum of a large asteroid. If one of these hit the earth, they would cause a life-ending apocalypse like the event that ended the dinosaurs. The fact that this has not happened yet is encouraging.
Not sure if I share the encouraging nature of this thought! I assume they are also impossible to detect for us before impact.
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
What flaws? Do they apply to variants such as Greg Bear's and related ideas such as berserkers?
"Dark forest" doesn't work from a game-theoretical standpoint. It assumes that it's cheap to destroy entire planets and solar systems. Yet no-one seems to be colonizing other systems. The optimal strategy in this case is to expand as quickly as possible, before others can grab or destroy resources.
"no-one seems to be colonizing other systems"
seems like an odd thing to claim, given that we have no idea what's going on on any planet outside of our solar system
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#94I didn't understand how a black hole could pass through a star when I read this. I think of black holes as large. Apparently a primordial black hole can have the mass of an asteroid compressed into a space smaller than a proton. I also thought very small black holes evaporated quickly via Hawking radiation. I was wrong on the scale there too. A PBH with the mass of an asteroid can easily live for longer than the universe has been around. Something about the very very early universe let matter collapse into these things without the normal processes that form stellar sized black holes.
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
All we can say is that the universe has been consistent so far, during the brief time we observed a small part of it given the instruments we have. We update our model(s) so that it keeps being consistent and predictable to us (that’s human nature), but no model can be probably correct and complete.
You are not grappling with the full consequences of the universe being inconsistent. If the universe is inconsistent, science is dead. Why the fuck on HN of all places do I need to defend the idea that science is possible? Back to philosophy class, all of you.
Because you're being too narrow minded. Hubble Tension exists, the universe is not consistent. We take cosmological homogeneity as an axiomatic assumption and we keep being proved wrong.
The only thing we can say with confidence is that the base laws of physics appear to be mostly consistent everywhere we've looked in the last hundred or two years. But also only across relatively recent history. The laws of physics were very different early on. The electic and magnetic field used to be separate things and now they aren't.
None of this is incompatible with science as a concept.
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one idea is that there aren't very many habitable planets. The Trisolarians are coming to Earth because it's their only option, not because they want to destroy humanity.
Then it's even weirder. Detecting planets around stars is trivial, yet nobody is running to get that prime real estate? Still makes no sense.
In the book, the trisolarans aren't coming to earth just because is the only habitable planet, it's because it's the closest one too. The don't have FTL and they spend the full resources of their dying civilization to build a fleet that will reach earth in ~400 years.
So yeah, a lot of prime real state but no way to reach it.
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are not grappling with the full consequences of the universe being inconsistent. If the universe is inconsistent, science is dead. Why the fuck on HN of all places do I need to defend the idea that science is possible? Back to philosophy class, all of you.
Because you're being too narrow minded. Hubble Tension exists, the universe is not consistent. We take cosmological homogeneity as an axiomatic assumption and we keep being proved wrong. The only thing we can say with confidence is that the base laws of physics appear to be mostly consistent everywhere we've looked in the last hundred or two years. But also only across relatively recent history. The laws of physics w…
In case it wasn't clear, I'm only talking about whether the universe is logically consistent.
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
These supernova-generating black holes are atomic scale (Schwartzchild radius of 15pm to 15nm), yet they carry the momentum of a large asteroid. If one of these hit the earth, they would cause a life-ending apocalypse like the event that ended the dinosaurs. The fact that this has not happened yet is encouraging.
Can one detect passage of small black hole through the Earth? - https://arxiv.org/abs/0710.3438v1 A physics stack exchange answer about it: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/55184 The most relevant part: > The total energy created by a PBH roughly equals the energy produced by the detonation of one tonne of TNT, but this energy is the total energy it deposits along its path through the Earths diameter, not the ener…
Always the bringer of facts to rain on my factless fun. Thank you.
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#99I didn't understand how a black hole could pass through a star when I read this. I think of black holes as large. Apparently a primordial black hole can have the mass of an asteroid compressed into a space smaller than a proton. I also thought very small black holes evaporated quickly via Hawking radiation. I was wrong on the scale there too. A PBH with the mass of an asteroid can easily live for longer than the univ…
The very early universe was quite dense, compared to today. Getting enough stuff in the same place to form an event horizon was relatively easier.
Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
What flaws? Do they apply to variants such as Greg Bear's and related ideas such as berserkers?
"Dark forest" doesn't work from a game-theoretical standpoint. It assumes that it's cheap to destroy entire planets and solar systems. Yet no-one seems to be colonizing other systems. The optimal strategy in this case is to expand as quickly as possible, before others can grab or destroy resources.
How do we know nobody is colonizing every system we can see? How would you detect if earth was colonized?