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Pretty stupid question - black holes
I was watching the BBC program "Space" with Sam Neill this morning.
One of my least favourite programs because it seems to have been made to excite and tittilate the ignorant rather than inform the knowledge seeker. IMHO it's a curate's egg with lots of cruddy gee-whizz graphics interspersed with brief bits of genuine science. In episode 3 we are regaled with the breathless tale of "monsters" that could consume the earth - black holes. Including a scenario of what would happen to the solar system should one of these take it into its head to devour us. Having recently discussed black hole/earth encounters, I was wondering if anyone would care to comment on this particular depiction - and how close it would be to what scientific thought holds for such an encounter. Personally I think it sucks - but that is a complete tailbone feeling, having nothing to do with either scientific thought or logical analysis. Eugene L Griessel Art is what you can get away with. You didn't get away with it. It's not art. -- Squid |
#3
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Pretty stupid question - black holes
Black Holes do suck ;}
-- There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that they may yet be brothers of man, who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens. The Lone Sidewalk Astronomer of Rosamond Telescope Buyers FAQ http://home.inreach.com/starlord Sidewalk Astronomy www.sidewalkastronomy.info The Church of Eternity http://home.inreach.com/starlord/church/Eternity.html "Eugene Griessel" wrote in message ... I was watching the BBC program "Space" with Sam Neill this morning. One of my least favourite programs because it seems to have been made to excite and tittilate the ignorant rather than inform the knowledge seeker. IMHO it's a curate's egg with lots of cruddy gee-whizz graphics interspersed with brief bits of genuine science. In episode 3 we are regaled with the breathless tale of "monsters" that could consume the earth - black holes. Including a scenario of what would happen to the solar system should one of these take it into its head to devour us. Having recently discussed black hole/earth encounters, I was wondering if anyone would care to comment on this particular depiction - and how close it would be to what scientific thought holds for such an encounter. Personally I think it sucks - but that is a complete tailbone feeling, having nothing to do with either scientific thought or logical analysis. Eugene L Griessel Art is what you can get away with. You didn't get away with it. It's not art. -- Squid |
#4
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Pretty stupid question - black holes
On Feb 19, 12:13 pm, (Eugene Griessel) wrote:
I was watching the BBC program "Space" with Sam Neill this morning. One of my least favourite programs because it seems to have been made to excite and tittilate the ignorant rather than inform the knowledge seeker. IMHO it's a curate's egg with lots of cruddy gee-whizz graphics interspersed with brief bits of genuine science. Pure special effects Disneyfied science In episode 3 we are regaled with the breathless tale of "monsters" that could consume the earth - black holes. Including a scenario of what would happen to the solar system should one of these take it into its head to devour us. ISTR the one in the original "Space" series was about the size of a pea and behaved exactly like the "bad boy" demented cosmic vacuum cleaner of science fiction stories by going from planet to planet gobbling them up and finally off to eat the sun. The reality would be much different. Short of a direct hit on the Earth we would barely notice an asteroid mass BH passing through the solar system. And a solar mass BH (or solar mass anything) would be all too noticable as it perturbs first the comets and then the planets from their orbits and would be most disruptive. Having recently discussed black hole/earth encounters, I was wondering if anyone would care to comment on this particular depiction - and how close it would be to what scientific thought holds for such an encounter. Personally I think it sucks - but that is a complete tailbone feeling, having nothing to do with either scientific thought or logical analysis. A rough analysis was done in a thread on sci.physics.relativity when "Space" first came out. http://groups.google.com/group/sci.p...a7b39c4d0845e1 Is the start of the thread. Beware of the usual cranks and nutters posting into it. The only thing that proved impossible to get a decent handle on was whether or not an asteroid mass BH with Rs ~ 2um and a mass convertion explosive yield of about 100MT/s would experience sufficient drag in the minute or so it took to go through the Earth to lose most of it velocity and be captured. Eventually for a large enough and/or dense enough target it must be possible for a BH to be gravitationally captured, but that proved too hard to analyse. It was clear that a neutron star would stop a BH pretty easily, but ordinary matter looked on the face of it too weak. Regards, Martin Brown |
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