Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they are very smart. They just don't really understand the solar system. And i think it is difficult for them to do.
How can you tell? If ants were able to understand the solar system, would you expect them to behave differently?
The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
31–40 of 63 posts
Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they are very smart. They just don't really understand the solar system. And i think it is difficult for them to do.
"They just don't really understand the solar system. And i think it is difficult for them to do." You could say that about many humans too right now, and certainly all humans up until the last however many years.
Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#33Is this black hole pair likely to be two galactic cores that collided, and captured each other due to some sort of inelastic interaction (maybe ejecting stars out?) and their surrounding galactic matter got eaten up due to basically the three-body problem?
Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#34Here is the one thing that really keeps me awake at night: what if our science was the equivalent of a bunch of ants in a typical ant hill in anyone of our backyards, defining a mechanism or "method" through which they have explained for themselves the nature of the solar system? That's the one thing. And I can't shake it off.
Are we sure that Einstein's law of gravity is the really 'correct' one or the 'last' one we will discover? Nope. Indeed, that doubt is part of why the article got so excited about using one black hole orbiting another one to "test" Einstein's law of gravity. We keep testing that law because we will learn something, either (1) something doesn't fit and we have to ditch the law or (2) the law fits and we gain more 'confidence' in the law.
You can look at it this way: The stuff we 'accept' now is what we have dreamed up and that has passed some apparently 'significant' (don't mean statistics here) tests and so far never really failed a test. Net, stuff 'accepted' at present is what appears to work so far.
But, in physics and cosmology, we have some issues that, at least intuitively, appear to be potential biggies: (1) What happened before the big bang? Can we get some clues from the data we have on what might have happened before the big bang -- some physicists have tried to look. (2) What's with this stuff about dark energy and dark matter? (3) Why does it appear that there is much more matter than anti-matter? (4) What's with neutrinos and how they 'change'? (5) What can we dig out of 'spooky action at a distance', that is, Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox?
So, maybe more progress understanding one of these biggies will cause us to ditch some of our currently 'accepted' results, look for, and maybe find some new results.
Could everything we have seen so far be just some light show put on just for our amusement? We can't say. So far, it appears that somehow mathematics works shockingly well; why? We don't know.
That there is a law of gravity that works as well as even Newton's might be seen as surprising. That is, why doesn't the 'law of gravity' change each 10 minutes? Well, some things do change 'randomly', and for them the only laws we have are probabilistic. Newton's law is not probabilistic because so far it appears to work the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that is, doesn't change. Or our science is what we have found that in some important sense doesn't change, e.g., we can 'reproduce' results. Why are such results possible? Not at all clear.
Even if what we are seeing is just some light show for our amusement, still we get some utility, e.g., via applications to engineering, etc. So, the Internet works because Maxwell's equations of electro-magnetism continue to work as they have for 100+ years now.
> And I can't shake it off.
Relax and enjoy the light show or whatever the heck it is. There's a lot to be amazed about, curious about, etc. And we really do make progress, astounding progress. E.g., we've made a lot of progress since I studied physics i college. The math I studied has been more stable!
Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#35Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#36Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#37The animation blew my mind. Especially S0-16. What the heck was that thing's velocity at perihelion? A whole star moving that much, that fast, accelerating like that in only 16 years. An entire star, tossed about in space like a ragdoll.
"Given a recent estimate of 4.3 million solar masses for the
mass of Sagittarius A* and S2's close approach, this makes
S2 the fastest known ballistic orbit, reaching speeds
exceeding 5000 km/s (11,000,000 mph) or 1.67~% of the speed
of light and acceleration of about 1.5 m/s2 or almost
one-sixth of Earth's surface gravity.[7]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_%28star%29Edit: wait that's not it, that's S0-2, but you're talking about S14/S0-16:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*#Central_black_h...
From those parameters, its perihelion speed would be about 8,200 km/s (2.7% c), using the classical approximation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion#Mathematical_formul...
Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#38The reason that OJ 287 has to be so massive in this model is because the orbit of the secondary black hole precesses so rapidly. For GR to give you that precession rate, you need a very, very massive black hole.
An alternative model I would like to explore is a three-body model for OJ 287. If this black hole binary is orbited by a tertiary black hole, the tertiary can also induce precession in the inner binary, so OJ 287 would not need to be so massive, which would make the triple model more plausible. It's unclear yet whether the triple dynamics can reproduce the observed lightcurve of OJ 287, though, so this is just an idea that's been on my to-do list for a year now. Let me know if you have any questions!
Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#39It not the complete list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_black_hole... On a related note, I never understood how a black hole (or frozen stars like the Russians call them) could potentially orbit or be swallowed by another black hole. If they "infinitely" deform space-time, shouldn't they be unable to move at all? If time stands still past the event horizon as they say and they also rip the space-t…
But I greet the new legend about Russians that just born here!
Re: The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
#40The animation blew my mind. Especially S0-16. What the heck was that thing's velocity at perihelion? A whole star moving that much, that fast, accelerating like that in only 16 years. An entire star, tossed about in space like a ragdoll.
I looked it up! "Given a recent estimate of 4.3 million solar masses for the mass of Sagittarius A* and S2's close approach, this makes S2 the fastest known ballistic orbit, reaching speeds exceeding 5000 km/s (11,000,000 mph) or 1.67~% of the speed of light and acceleration of about 1.5 m/s2 or almost one-sixth of Earth's surface gravity.[7]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_%28star%29 Edit: wait that's not it, that…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics#Hyperveloci...