Subject:
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Re: Black Holes
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Fri, 15 Aug 2003 15:41:32 GMT
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Viewed:
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385 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Stefan Garcia wrote:
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A Black Hole is supposed to be a collapsed neutron (type?) star, right? So
then, why is a Black Hole always depicted as an infinite toilet-flush? I can
understand that the “matter disc” forms into a disc because of gravity, like
the rings of a planet, but shouldn’t the actual
whatever-is-at-the-heart-of-a-black-hole be an infinitely small pinpoint?
I’d attribute this to popular myth, except that even NASA seems to show the
“infinite toilet-flush” as the shape of a black hole.
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“infinite toilet flush” as you call it is using a three dimensional model to
describe 4 dimensional spacetime. In the typical diagram, the x and y axis
describe area, while the z axis (up and down) describes graviational warping of
spacetime.
like in this pic here:
since a black hole has super massive graviatational effect, the lines that
converge on it sink straight down. whereas in a ‘normal’ object, the
gravitational warping isn’t so severe, and wouldn’t decend infinitely, like
this:
a black hole is a point in space that is infinitely dense (meaning finite amount
of matter squeezed into zero space).
NASA shows the 3D map because it is the best analogy to help people understand
the super-complicated concept of 4 dimensional space-time.
I can’t find it at the moment, but I had this website that contained flash
movies that really helped drive home an understanding of warping spacetime. It
showed what the sky would look like while moving over surfaces of different mass
densities. It showed on earth, on the sun, and on a neutron star. On earth the
stars moved hardly at all. On the sun they moved in a slightly eratic pattern,
and on the neutron star they went crazy, moving up around and then over.
If you’re more interested, email me and I’ve got some cool websites that help
explain it better.
Of course, I also recommend Stephen Hawking’s books “Brief History of Time” and
“Universe in a Nutshell”
-Jr.Marshal Hoffman
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Black Holes
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| A Black Hole is supposed to be a collapsed neutron (type?) star, right? So then, why is a Black Hole always depicted as an infinite toilet-flush? I can understand that the "matter disc" forms into a disc because of gravity, like the rings of a (...) (21 years ago, 11-Aug-03, to lugnet.off-topic.geek, lugnet.space)
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