[Magdalen] Magdalen] neat comparisons

[James Oppenheimer]

Well, the way I understand it, the black hole itself is not observable, but
you can make hypotheses about if such a thing were there, how the nearby
stars not yet sucked in would behave.  And they have actually been able to
say that observations matched pretty well with expectations.  Stars at
quite a distance are whirling around the center of the galaxy at incredible
speeds, to the point where we can actually observe signs of those speeds.
However, this surrounding area is a very, very tiny part of our Milky Way.
We are not even supposed to fall into it in the distant future (billions of
years out).

It's really amazing. Each atom is composed mostly of space (over 99 per
cent), with tiny particles in more or less defined areas. The theory is
that as the mass of the star is so great, the atoms are actually forced in
on themselves. The result is material of immense mass.  A teaspoonful would
weigh more than the earth.

The more we learn about the Universe, the stranger it becomes.

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 Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> >>
>