Pali Posted April 12, 2019 Report Share Posted April 12, 2019 For those who may have missed the news, the first ever picture of a black hole was released yesterday: Zoomed out picture: This black hole is at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55 million light-years away. It has an estimated mass 6.5 billion times that of our sun, with an event horizon - the boundary point that light can no longer escape from - larger than our entire solar system. The image was formed by compositing images from 8 radio observatories (each comprising multiple telescopes) spread around the world, which gathered 5 petabytes - 5,000 terabytes - of information in 10 days in 2017. This massive amount of data required two years' worth of collating and computing before the image we now have could finally be put together. Predicted by both accepted cosmological models and the theory of general relativity, scientists have been confident for decades that black holes exist throughout the universe, and supermassive black holes with masses millions or more times that of our sun are expected to exist at the center of nearly all galaxies - our own galaxy is centered around Saggitarius A*, a black hole of about 4 million solar masses - but observational evidence that would confirm their existence was not forthcoming... until now, as the result of international cooperation, investment in scientific research, and uncountable man-hours' worth of work. Like the discovery of the Higgs boson a couple years ago, this isn't something that will significantly alter our models of the universe so much as it helps to confirm and refine them, but it remains an historic achievement that will be long remembered in science textbooks read by future generations. edit: This video provides a good layman's baseline for understanding what you're seeing in the picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magick Posted April 12, 2019 Report Share Posted April 12, 2019 Courtesy of XKCD: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FatMike Posted April 12, 2019 Report Share Posted April 12, 2019 It's incredible and the size comparison is just plain crazy. Just shows how tiny our little corner of the universe is and how little we really know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rygothran Posted April 12, 2019 Report Share Posted April 12, 2019 That's pretty awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
'tarako Posted April 13, 2019 Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 Grasping the sheer size of galactic bodies hurts my head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyzarius Posted April 13, 2019 Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 18 minutes ago, 'tarako said: Grasping the sheer size of galactic bodies hurts my head. Totally. I had this fun little journey with my daughter the other day. We are spinning on the surface of a rock. Orbiting a star. Oribiting the galaxy. That is also hurtling through a void. In which things bigger than all we could imagine lurk. Big whoa moment lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magick Posted April 13, 2019 Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 4 minutes ago, Kyzarius said: 22 minutes ago, 'tarako said: Grasping the sheer size of galactic bodies hurts my head. Totally. I had this fun little journey with my daughter the other day. We are spinning on the surface of a rock. Orbiting a star. Oribiting the galaxy. That is also hurtling through a void. In which things bigger than all we could imagine lurk. Big whoa moment lol. This may or may not help. Likely a little of both. To scale solar system if the moon were one pixel. http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html Bottom right-hand corner has a "button" to press that'll scroll at the speed of light. Also to scale. You'll realize that for how fast light is, it's also incredibly slow at these mind-boggling distances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
'tarako Posted April 13, 2019 Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 I understand the concept, it's just fully wrapping my head around the actual scale of things is what's crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fool_Hardy Posted April 13, 2019 Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 Que Animaniacs. Its a great big universe and were all really puny, we're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted April 13, 2019 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 4 hours ago, 'tarako said: I understand the concept, it's just fully wrapping my head around the actual scale of things is what's crazy. Understandably so - our brains evolved to handle life on the African savanna, with fairly small numbers of things existing in fairly close proximity to each other. We are terrible with large numbers of things - try to imagine, oh, 87 pennies, and try to do so immediately as a whole image without first creating and combining smaller groupings... and don't feel bad that you can't do it. We are similarly bad with large distances (or extremely small distances), or time on a geological/cosmological scale, because our minds simply aren't equipped to handle that kind of work. Fortunately, our minds are equipped with a high degree of adaptability, inventiveness, and stubbornness, so we created math that we can use to address such things. Without the tool of math, human brains are simply incapable of processing the very big or the very small with any meaningful degree of accuracy. The next time you're outside at night, stretch your arm out and pinch your thumb and forefinger together so that there's about a centimeter between them, and imagine that you're holding a centimeter-wide square box. Here's what you are looking at through that box: Every distinct point of light is a galaxy. Every direction you point your little finger box will contain just as many other galaxies. Each of those galaxies, on average, contains hundreds of billions of stars. And all of those 2 trillion or so galaxies combined make up only about 5% of the universe's total energy/mass. That our tiny ape brains can't handle this shit on their own really shouldn't surprise us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magick Posted April 13, 2019 Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 1 hour ago, Pali said: We are terrible with large numbers of things... Without the tool of math, human brains are simply incapable of processing the very big or the very small with any meaningful degree of accuracy. I find it fascinating that after a point, your brain basically goes "Nope. I'm done." Billions to trillions. Trillions to quadrillions. 100 seconds is approximately a minute and a half. 1,000 seconds is about 16.5 minutes. 1,000,000 seconds is about 11.5 days. 1,000,000,000 seconds is about four months shy of 32 years. 1,000,000,000,000 seconds is over 32,000 years. Your brain quits looking at the larger numbers and focuses more on what it can handle in comparison. Lovely picture of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. 1 hour ago, Pali said: ..stretch your arm out and pinch your thumb and forefinger together so ... that you're holding a centimeter-wide square box. Here's what you are looking at through that box: Slight correction to that. It's closer to 1mm x 1mm at 1m away. Smaller than one one-hundredth of the size mentioned, which only compounds the scale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
'tarako Posted April 13, 2019 Report Share Posted April 13, 2019 I just mean the human brain has nothing to scale it on. I understand the distances, and the numbers, but translating that into a scale where I am in relation to the known portions of space isn't something most people can do Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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