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Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole

theguardian.com

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Re: Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole

#61

Post by floxy »

volkadav wrote: post #53
robin_reala wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A three solar mass black hole is still only ~13km across. Not full-stop-sized, but closer to that than the diameter of the sun.

I'm guessing the 13km diameter refers to the event horizon rather than the singularity itself, which I gather could be considered as zero-sized, or maybe one Planck length in size because we can't definitively measure anything smaller, or ... Admittedly, it gets a bit philosophical. The sphere of no return isn't the thing, but it might as well be for any outside observer, but it isn't, but it could be viewed as such,…

"Do Black Holes have Singularities?" by Roy Kerr (Yes, that Roy Kerr)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.00841

https://www.pbs.org/video/what-if-singularities-do-not-exist...

Re: Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole

#62

Post by Ar-Curunir »

sega_sai wrote: post #51
codeulike wrote: post #46

Article triggers critical mass of pedantry on HN, thread collapses in on itself

Yes. It is kinda amazing to observe (as a professional astrophysicist) how people manage to find small (mostly irrelevant) things to nitpick instead of discussing a really interesting discovery.

it unfortunately happens in every field, including more theoretical parts of computer science. the commenters usually don't understand the science, so choose to nitpick on the aesthetics.

Re: Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole

#63

Post by Etheryte »

konstantinua00 wrote: post #59
pxeger1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also “33 times more massive than the sun” means 34 times the mass of the sun.

would you say the same for "33 times longer"? that ut means "34 times the length"? for me "more X" and "Xer" are the same thing, so I don't get your system

Considering fractions might help you understand where he's coming from. If you say something is "0.5 times as long as a one meter thing" you would expect it to be 0.5 meters, but if it's "0.5 times longer than a one meter thing", you would expect it to be 1.5 meters. The same logic applies when you ditch fractions and use integers.

Re: Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole

#68

Post by pfdietz »

Astronomers have not discovered the Milky Way's biggest stellar black hole. They have found the largest stellar black hole of all the galactic stellar black holes they've found so far. Since the Milky Way likely has 100 million stellar black holes, finding the largest is going to be quite a task.

Bart: this is the biggest stellar black hole.

Homer: this is the biggest stellar black hole so far.

Re: Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole

#70

Post by xpe »

sega_sai wrote: post #51
codeulike wrote: post #46

Article triggers critical mass of pedantry on HN, thread collapses in on itself

Yes. It is kinda amazing to observe (as a professional astrophysicist) how people manage to find small (mostly irrelevant) things to nitpick instead of discussing a really interesting discovery.

People's contributions rise to the level of their expertise.
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