[Magdalen] Magdalen] neat comparisons

[Grace Cangialosi]

Mmmm...kind of. Thanks, Jim! I have trouble visualizing the idea of a star falling in upon itself, and the image I got is one of making cheese from yogurt. (Admittedly a loose analogy!)
You start out with a container of yogurt, put it in a strainer and put a weight on it to squeeze out the liquid. Eventually you end up with a lump of semisolid cheese. Of course, you've lost something in the liquid, so that's different--I gather the star doesn't 'lose' anything. But in a way the solids have fallen in on themselves...

At any rate, knowing that these aren't actually holes in the usual sense is very helpful--I did not know that.

So theoretically, at least, if there is a black hole at the center of the Milky Way, the entire galaxy could eventually be drawn into it?

> On Oct 14, 2014, at 7:53 PM, James Oppenheimer <oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It's a figure of speech.
> Stars are stars (huge hot masses of bright glowing gasses) because they
> have enough mass to make such source in their center that hydrogen fuses
> into helium. As it does this, it gives off a lot of energy, and this is
> what makes the sun hot, glowing, etc.
> When stars die, they go through a number of possible endings. One thing
> that is common to them all is that they die when their supply of fuel
> (hydrogen) runs out. Some stars have enough mass to go to the next level,
> that is, they start fusing the atoms of the wast product of that hydrogen
> -- helium. This isn't so well understood, but as the helium burns up, it
> fuses into higher order elements, which if memory serves are such things as
> carbon and oxygen.
> Well, as the helium runs out, the start can't keep generating the heat like
> it has; it has no fuel. As the heat drops, the ability of the star to hold
> its mass outwards also drops.
> As the heat drops further, the star collapses into itself, and can do
> several things very exciting such as going nova and blasting itself into
> the neighboring cosmos and generating yet higher order elements.
> If it is very massive, it falls in on itself and in this final state, it
> gives out no more heat, and simply draws any material around it into
> itself. It becomes very small, and yet its mass is that of the giant star.
> If it ends in this state, it may go through eternity as a brown dwarf -- a
> massive remains of a star that no longer has any great amount of light (all
> of these things happen over very long periods).
> If its mass is great enough, it goes to a further stage: it has so much
> mass that light itself cannot escape form it.  When it gets to this stage,
> the point where light cannot escape is called the event horizon, for there
> is nothing known that can ever escape from the area beneath that imaginary
> boundary.  Above it, some light can escape; below it, no light can get
> away, because the gravity of the mass is too great.
> It continues to draw material into it, but nothing, so far as we can
> detect, ever escapes.
> 
> This is what we refer to as a black hole.
> 
> It isn't a hole, but it acts sort of as if it were a hole, since if you get
> close to it, you get pulled in and can never get back out.
> 
> I recall there was a lot of speculation about this when I was growing up,
> and now it is a sort of given that we have a huge black hole in the center
> of the Milky Way Galaxy, and it's assumed one is in every galaxy.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> James W. Oppenheimer
> *“If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better
> for people coming behind you, and you don’t do it, you're wasting your time
> on this Earth.”  -- *Roberto Clemente
> 
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> What I don't understand is how black holes can be anything!! I thought
>> holes were nothing.....
>> 
>> On October 14, 2014, at 4:25AM, Roger Stokes wrote:
>> 
>> On 13/10/2014 18:36, Cantor03--- via Magdalen wrote:
>>> It's getting harder with such space discoveries to fit any  terrestrial
>>> religion
>>> into all this, not excluding Judeo-Christianity.   At least it is  for
>> me.
>> 
>> Isn't this looking at the issue from the wrong direction?  I have no
>> problem conceptualizing the possibility of a number of parallel
>> universes but the God I put my trust in is the source of this and any
>> other possible universes.  This means that, by definition, God is
>> outside of them all - and of the black holes.  As such we should not be
>> trying to fit our faith into the new discoveries but seeking to see how
>> they inform and enrich our understanding of God and the relationship
>> between the divine and humanity.
>> 
>> As for the black holes themselves from what little I have read it would
>> be theoretically possible to pass through one that is spinning but not
>> one that is not and simply absorbs all that comes its way, hence
>> increasing its gravitational attraction exponentially. Currently the
>> universe is expanding and that furthest away from us is moving away
>> fastest.
>> 
>> This leads to speculation as to what will happen in the future. Will it
>> continue to expand or might we get the Big Crash with everything
>> collapsing back into an infinitessimally small space? Scientists
>> theorize that the universe as we know it originated from just such a
>> singularity so we would all be back where we began after all the stars
>> have burnt out.  Might it all then start again?
>> 
>> Roger
>>