Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#41

Post by tarunupaday » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 10:13 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #10

I wonder how the progress of science and physics and religion would have changed if we had a sun and black hole pair, but otherwise the same earth.

I imagine things wont be much different except Greeks and Romans and Egyptians (and all other ancient civilizations) might have invented one more “God” for the black hole.

As a matter of fact, many ancient civilizations have “Gods” for the point where moon’s orbit intersects with Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_node

In Hindu mythology - we have two “shadow planets” and gods called Rahu and Ketu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahu these points are no real planets or moons - but are given the same status.

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#42

Post by Koshkin » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 11:09 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #11

billpg wrote: post #2

Exactly how terrified should I be at this news? Really super terrified, right?

I recently read "A Brief History of Black Holes" by Dr. Becky Smethurst and I recommend it if you're interested in these things. She wrote that the math indicates you have no reason to fear a black hole consuming you, or this solar system. Black holes are just massive objects, no different from any other "massive object" in the universe. It's pretty easy / common for stuff to orbit massive objects, rather than fall i…

Well, merely disturbing the Earth’s orbit would be deadly enough.

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#43

Post by klyrs » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 3:10 AM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #17

isaacg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reaction should be "astronomy fun fact, that will have no direct effects on anyone's life." This black hole is so dim and distant that it required a super powerful telescope to even notice it exists. It will have no effect on life on earth, except by adding to scientific understanding of the cosmos. Moreover, black holes aren't death machines or anything. This black hole puts out much less light and energy than…

A lot of people seem to have the impression that black holes are like vacuum cleaners, sucking up anything that comes near. If the Sun were replaced with a black hole of equal mass, apart from the heat and light going out, we wouldn't notice anything. All the planets would still orbit more-or-less the same.

The scary thing would be a rogue, massive black hole hurtling through our solar system at a fraction of c. Such an event could destabilize orbits enough to make the remaining time on Earth quite terrifying. But, good news: if such an event should ever occur, we would be utterly powerless to change a damned thing, so we can rest easy knowing that panic is a waste of energy better spent on hedonistic pursuit.

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#44

Post by executesorder66 » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 7:20 AM UTC

sebzim4500 wrote: post #28

executesorder66 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you should be terrified, you'd see it show up everywhere. At least as much news coverage as COVID got. If something happened that was likely to end the whole world, and it was detectable by many people, then you wouldn't only hear about it on one random internet forum. This is pure clickbait.

How is it clickbait? The headline is not in any way misleading.

The HN title has been changed.