A quick search reveals that the universe already organises such events for us.
Black hole collisions appear to be common, and at least ten such events have been detected in the past three years.
Scientists can detect the ripples in spacetime caused by these events.
These gravitational waves are detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO. LSC - LIGO Scientific Collaboration
The rate of release of energy when black holes collide is huge and is measured in yottawatts!
A yottawatt is one million billion billion watts.
A black hole collision detected in 2015 released 36 septillion yottawatts - or 3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 yottawatts.
That a lotta yottawatts!
Note, there were no flashes or explosions, the energy was released in the form of gravitational waves.
About 5% of the total mass of two colliding black holes is converted into energy in the form of gravitational waves, in accordance with Einstein's E = mc².
A yottawatt is one million billion billion watts.
A black hole collision detected in 2015 released 36 septillion yottawatts - or 3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 yottawatts.
That a lotta yottawatts!
Note, there were no flashes or explosions, the energy was released in the form of gravitational waves.
About 5% of the total mass of two colliding black holes is converted into energy in the form of gravitational waves, in accordance with Einstein's E = mc².
The problem is time dilation.
If you travel to an arbitrarily distant point in the universe at or very close to the speed of light your travels will appear to you as very quick.
Not accounting for acceleration and deceleration it might appear to you as a number of hours or even instant if you do travel at SoL.
But if you travel to somewhere 10 million light years away to you it might take days, weeks or months but to us here on Earth it will take no less than 10 million years. When you return at least 20 million years will have passed here.
To explore the consequences of time dilation in an entertaining way, Poul Anderson's classic Sci-Fi novel Tau Zero comes highly recommended.
Tau Zero - Wikipedia
Our current view of cosmology may be different, but this book - published in 1970 - is still a terrific read!
Attachments
I understand that Anderson's use of Tau is a bit unorthodox, but it did serve him well for narrative purposes.
By tau, he actually refers to the reciprocal of the Lorentz factor.
In other words, tau equals the square root of 1 minus v squared divided by c squared, where v stands for velocity and c is the speed of light.
As the velocity v of the space ship approaches the speed of light c then tau approaches zero which, as you say, makes for a snappier book title!
Last edited:
Singularities are overrated and not strictly necessary.
Some 20 years ago I did some calculations and it appears you could create a viable black hole by starting off with a star about 3 times the mass of our sun by just simply removing the empty space in all its atoms and giving electrons and photons their allowable rest mass ie the maximum mass they could have which would not change any of their observed properties.
Although it does very much simplify calculations a lot if you assign electrons and photons no mass and black holes zero size.
BH I "think" is a collapsed star with a *very* high density. So not a hole but a body. It may appear in many ways as a hole but it is not. Singularity is defined as a point but a black hole seem to have a surface so I don't think singularity describes a BH. When two such things collide of course all h*ll break lose...
//
//
There's a lot of really cool stuff that goes into the math/theory of when you get a neutron start vs black holes in terms of solar masses (SM) post-supernova, as refined by astronomical observation.
In theory, although not known observationally (to my knowledge!), there's a window around the 2 SM for a quark star, which is super cool.
White holes exist, to date, on paper. All this stuff just teases the imagination and brings our existence into a state of wonder and humility. For me at least.
In theory, although not known observationally (to my knowledge!), there's a window around the 2 SM for a quark star, which is super cool.
White holes exist, to date, on paper. All this stuff just teases the imagination and brings our existence into a state of wonder and humility. For me at least.
I always thought that photons had zero rest mass, but some theories allow photons to have a non-zero rest mass, albeit a small one.
The upper limit for the mass of the photon is constrained to 10 to the power -54 kg according to experiments with electric and magnetic fields.
With this small mass, a photon could decay into lighter elementary particles that are currently unknown and beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.
A theory ? that predicts the photon has a mass of 10^ -54 kg ?
According to E= m c² , how much in Joule ?
Then how much that is in eV ?
The neutrino, for whitch there is evidence it has a mass, a recent experimental result tells, it is less than 1.1 eV.
About the photon, there is no evidence it has a mass, and I think it is clear we will never have the technology to measure it.
To me, scientific theories like black holes and the "big bang" (both of which I wholeheartedly agree are real) mean "we can explain phenomena up to here, but no further." We can't explain "before" the big bang. We can't explain what happens "inside" a black hole. We can readily observe quantum phenomena but the causes remain opaque and quantum phenomena remain downright enigmatic.
Some scientists devote whole careers to observing black holes. For the most part they don't see anything that gives a clue what's beyond the event horizon. But every so often there's an observable event, like a burst of gamma rays from the event horizon, that sends scientists scrambling to make sense of it.
I do hope that there are breakthroughs in our future. Until then, I remain very curious but agnostic.
Some scientists devote whole careers to observing black holes. For the most part they don't see anything that gives a clue what's beyond the event horizon. But every so often there's an observable event, like a burst of gamma rays from the event horizon, that sends scientists scrambling to make sense of it.
I do hope that there are breakthroughs in our future. Until then, I remain very curious but agnostic.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.