What Would It Be Like To Travel Into A Black Hole?
Updated: 2012-06-30 17:48:44
Home Blog Articles Videos About Contact What Would It Be Like to Travel Into a Black Hole Download this video mov 1280x720 472.34MB Black holes are among the simplest objects in the universe . They are simpler than stars , much simpler than planets , and vastly simpler than human beings . Black holes are what is created when matter is compressed into a very small place . They are General Relativity's most extreme prediction . They are commonly created from the violent deaths of stars many times the size of our sun , usually forming from the collapsed core of a supergiant star after it explodes . At the heart of a black hole is a singularity . An infinitesimal point in space where the pull of gravity is infinitely strong and spacetime infinitely curved . At the singularity , space and time
There's a new contender for the title of fastest star in the universe: an apparent pulsar that's blazing away from the scene of a supernova at a velocity in the range of 6 million mph (10 million kilometers per hour). But as is the case with every superlative in nature, this titl amp;hellip;
Seems hard to believe but the Solar Maxima is coming. I’ll be on 6-meters very shortly, I have collected everything I need, so the maximum is going to be better than usual (and it’s usually pretty good) for us ham … Continue reading →
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Huge lenticular cloud near Mt . Fuji Boulder wildfire Cannonball star blasts away from the scene of the crime When I picture an exploding star in my head which I do unsurprisingly often the imaginary mental detonation I picture is symmetric . That is , it expands like a sphere , getting bigger in all directions equally . Supernovae are actually not like that though . Stars are messy affairs , and when massive ones explode they tend to have internal factors that distort that nice , smooth expansion . One big factor is that the actual point of explosion is off-center in the star 
Researchers at the University of Sheffield including applied mathematicians, are saying one of the mechanisms of transporting energy from the convection zone to the outer atmosphere is super tornado’s. The press release is below but I want to put … Continue reading →
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Singing the praises of Carl Sagan Privately and publicly looking for Earth-threatening asteroids Stellar tantrum blasts away part of its planet’s atmosphere Life must suck for HD . 189733b It’s a planet orbiting the star HD 189733, about 63 light years from Earth . It’s similar to Jupiter , being slightly more massive and slightly bigger . Unlike our own big brother , though , HD 189733b is far closer to its parent star , orbiting just about 4 million kilometers about 2.5 million miles above its surface That means the cloudtops of the planet are at a scorching 840°C 1500°F so
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Virtual Star Party featured at big Google+ meeting Stellar tantrum blasts away part of its planet’s atmosphere Singing the praises of Carl Sagan One of my favorite quotations of all time is by Carl Sagan : If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch , you must first invent the Universe . quot The poetry and lyrical nature of that line are wonderful , and the sentiment well . He was exactly right . Sagan was one of many people who influenced me , and of course so many of us who promote astronomy to the public owe our careers to . him That’s why I was so pleased when I found
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS A light bending exercise in space Teachers : help your kids detect cosmic rays The galaxy that shouldn’t be there It’s generally said that discoveries in science tend to be at the thin hairy edge of what you can do always at the faintest limits you can see , the furthest reaches , the lowest signals . That can be trivially true because stuff that’s easy to find has already been discovered . But many times , when you’re looking farther and fainter than you ever have , you find things that really are new and can maybe be a problem for existing models of how the Universe . behaves
Color views of Saturn are always nice, even the false colored ones. From the Cassini website: A particularly strong jet stream churns through Saturn’s northern hemisphere in this false-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Clouds associated with the jet … Continue reading →
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS In which I become SPACE JUDGE Landing on Mars : Seven minutes of terror SpaceX successfully tests new engine VIDEO SpaceX successfully launched the first privately owned rocket Falcon 9 and space capsule Dragon to the International Space Station in May . The engine that propelled them there is called the Merlin built by the company based on known technology and NASA heritage . Several generations of Merlin engines have been made , and the newest , the 1D , was recently test fired in May at the SpaceX facility in Texas . This video of it is pretty darn cool . Turn the volume up
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Bodies in space SpaceX successfully tests new engine VIDEO In which I become SPACE JUDGE Oh , I do love good news . A few days ago I wrote about a small group of aerospace experts who put up a Kickstarter project to launch a small satellite . The news It’s fully funded That means this satellite will get built and launched into space . Be aware that , as with most Kickstarter projects , reaching their goal doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t pitch in . More money pledged even after the goal is achieved means more and cooler stuff the project people can do with it And in this
What a nice picture! I’ve included the NASA press release below, but this makes a FANTASTIC desktop background! Here are some common sizes: 1280 1366 1680 1920 The NASA press release: Polar mesospheric clouds in the Northern Hemisphere are featured … Continue reading →
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS What to make of the Chinese space effort A mini star factory lost in the sky No words Astrophotographer Alan Friedman’s latest Just click it . Here’s an explanation of what you’re seeing Links to more of his soul-stirring photos are below . Image credit : Alan Friedman Related : Posts Towering transit of Venus Solar Cinco de Mayo The face of our star The boiling , erupting Sun Share June 21st , 2012 8:05 PM Tags : Alan Friedman Sun by Phil Plait in Astronomy Pretty pictures 14 comments RSS feed Trackback 14 Responses to No words” 1. quarksparrow Says : June 21st , 2012 at 8:27
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS No words Natural born scientist A mini star factory lost in the sky You’d think that with all our fancy equipment and technology , all the nearby galaxies in the Universe would’ve been spotted by now . But it turns out that’s not the case . Some galaxies are very faint small , with few stars making them tough to find even when relatively speaking they’re in our . neighborhood So say hello to our newly-discovered neighbor , UGC 4597 Click to galactinate . UGC 4597 is a dwarf galaxy . Galaxies like our Milky Way have billions or hundreds of billions of stars , but dwarf galaxies
: Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS An unusual view of the Death Star moon What to make of the Chinese space effort Science Getaways : Dark skies I got an email recently from BABloggee Mark Sunderland , pointing out this photo to me . It shows the Toronto skyline with the Milky Way and thousands of stars blazing behind . it I had to chuckle : the picture is obviously fake and now the caption at Flickr says as much , though it didn’t when I first saw it There’s no way you could see the Milky Way from a city like Toronto . The city lights flood the air with illumination , lighting up the sky and drowning out
The news earlier this week was that ESO announced the ELT was DEFINITELY MAYBE going ahead. There is just this kinda small money detail thing. Anyway, all systems standby-to-go ! When they give us the money ! Actually, it does exude a feeling of almost unstoppable momentum. And furthermore no more major re-designs seem likely. [...]
I had a lot of fun talking about astrophotography to Fiona Keating from Photography Monthly magazine a few weeks ago. The 4-page interview appears in the June issue of the magazine, which has just hit newsstands. In the interview I talk about some of the methods and equipment that can be used to take pictures [...]