Black Hole – Super Facts

Quasar TON 618

This is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday

Image by Kevin from The Beginning at Last

Kevin’s artistic picture above reminds me of a Quasar, a supermassive black hole emitting enormous amounts of energy.

What is a Quasar ?

A Quasar is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that is emitting enormous amounts of energy. The quasar is the supermassive black hole plus its accretion disk, the gas it is feeding on and the radiation it emits. The quasar is actively feeding on gas and stars and emitting enormous amounts of radiation in the process. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way, and millions of times greater than the largest and most luminous stars in the known universe.

Supermassive black hole at the center of a quasar. Singularity in space devouring matter and light. From Shutterstock Asset id: 2484018599 by Nazarii Neshcherenskyi.

TON 618

TON 618 is a hyper luminous Quasar known to house one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, with an estimated mass of around 40 to 60 billion solar masses. Its luminosity is estimated to be 140 trillion times that of the Sun. The diameter of TON 618 is 780 billion kilometers or 82.6 light-years. Keep in mind that the distance to the moon is 1.3 light seconds and 82.6 light years is more than two billion times larger than that. Our sun is gigantic with a diameter 109 times larger than the diameter of earth. 1.3 million earths could fit inside the volume of our sun. However, in comparison to TON 618, our sun is a lot less than tiny. The diameter of TON 618 is 561 million times larger than that of the sun’s diameter and 177 octillion (an octillion is 27 zeros) suns could fit inside the volume of TON 618. In other words, we are comparing a dust particle to planet earth size wise. I am pretty sure you are not going to be able to imagine this.

Quasar in deep space. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Asset id: 1758938918. by NASA images.

When TON 618 was discovered in 1957, quasars and supermassive black holes were not yet recognized and understood by astronomers. The word quasar inspired shock and awe in every nerd on the planet. The concept of quasars, or quasi-stellar radio sources, wasn’t fully recognized until 1963. When I was a kid in the 1970’s there was a lot of speculation as to what these gigantic ultra bright but far away objects could be. TON 618 is located 18.2 billion light years away. Considering that the reachable limit of the Universe is 16.5 billion light years even if you travel at the speed of light, you could never travel to TON 618 (barring the warp drive in Star Trek).

The Event Horizon

When we are talking about the diameter of a black hole we are not talking about a sphere with a solid surface. The black hole is a sphere, or an oval, wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not light, not anything. It’s truly black. As you approach the event horizon you become invisible, space deforms, and from the perspective of an outside observer, time appears to stop for someone reaching the event horizon of a black hole. Time will continue for someone falling in, well in some sense. You’ll be transported beyond our universe and time as we know it. We can guess but we can’t really know.

Black Holes

Black holes are invisible. They are truly black. However, we can see them if they are consuming matter. The matter close to black holes will heat up and glow. The closer to the event horizon the redder it is. It is called an accretion disk as in the depiction above. There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way is a super massive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies. The supermassive black holes are considered to play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies.

3D illustration of giant Black hole in deep space. High quality digital space art in 5K – realistic visualization. Stock Illustration ID: 2476711459 by Vadim Sadovski.

Black Hole Animation

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see. The video is about 4 minutes long.

TON 618 Animation

Below is an animation of TON 618, a quasar and the largest black hole known in the universe. This video is about 5 minutes.

To see my The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes Super Fact Click Here

To see the Super Facts click here

Note : Today March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday, the man who gave us the General Theory of Relativity, which mathematically describes black holes. It is also Pi Day (first 10 digits 3.1415926535), and there’s a rare moon eclipse tonight called a blood moon or a worm moon. Also, Dallas is under a fire warning. Be careful.

Important Note : I am going on a ski vacation tomorrow and I will take a one-week break from blogging as well as a break from reading other people’s blogs.

Black Holes Monsters in the Sky

“This”Black Holes Monsters in the Sky” is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday

Black holes, everyone has heard of them, no one understands them. They are inscrutable monsters in the sky. They are regions of spacetime wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not light, not anything. Some of them are small, only 15 kilometers across, and some have a diameter 27 billion times larger than that.

As you get close to a black hole your time will run slower. You won’t notice it, but others will see you move in slow motion. If you return from your close encounter an hour on your clock might correspond to years elsewhere. As you approach the event horizon, the boundary of no escape, you become invisible and time will stop, at least from an outside view.

There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way is a super massive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies. The supermassive black holes are considered to play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies.

I’ve looked up in the sky, and I’ve seen the spot where Sagittarius A-star is located. I’ve tried to look at it with my telescope, but I cannot see it. It is not possible to see it with a telescope, but it is there. The picture above may depict the view from a planet in the center of our galaxy. Three scientists received the Nobel prize in physics in 2020 for their research on black holes (Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez).

However, before them the tele evangelist Jack Van Impe won the 2001 Ig Nobel Prize in Astrophysics for his discovery that black holes meet all the technical requirements for Hell. The Ig Nobel prize is an alternative and less serious Nobel Prize. To find out more about Black Holes click here.

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see.

To see the Super Facts click here

The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes

Superfact 15: A black hole is a region of spacetime wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape it, not light, not anything. There are different kinds of black holes. We don’t fully understand black holes, which makes them very interesting to science. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. Black holes are invisible. They are truly black. However, we can see what they do to their environment as they consume surrounding matter. Below are some bizarre facts about black holes.

Time runs much slower closer to a black hole.
An object falling towards a black hole will become redder, faint, then infrared, then invisible and all its movements and clocks will freeze.
From the perspective of an outside observer, time appears to stop for someone reaching the event horizon of a black hole. Time will continue for someone falling in.
At the center of a black hole may lie a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite. However, since we cannot peer into a black hole we cannot know.
The largest known black hole (TON 618) is more than 287 million times more massive than the most massive known star (R136a1).
If our planet earth collapsed into a black hole, it’s diameter would be 1.75 centimeters or 0.69 inches in diameter. The diameter of the largest known black hole (TON 618) is 242 billion miles, which is more than one million times larger than the distance from the earth to moon.
There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies, including our Milky Way. The Milky Way’s black hole is about 4 million times the mass of the Sun.
Astronomers estimate that there are around 100 million black holes in our Milky Way.
When an object (maybe a spaceship, or a person) approaches or falls into a black hole the difference between the gravity on the parts closer to the black hole and those further away will be so large that the object is stretched and ripped apart. This is called spaghettification.
Stretching from the event horizon and out another half radius of the black hole is a region called the photon sphere. In the photon sphere light will travel in a non-stable circular orbit around the black hole. Light will go around and around for a while. If you are in the photon sphere you might be able to see the back of your head.
Above is just a small sample of weird black hole facts.

The understanding of black holes requires the General Theory of Relativity, and it is still a lot we don’t understand about them. Stock Photo ID: 2024419973 by Elena11

The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes

I chose the Bizarre Reality of Black Holes as a super-fact and included the ten facts above because these facts are shocking and yet not well known. Below is a photograph of a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 taken by the event horizon telescope in 2017. To create the picture below image processing was needed. It is the first photograph of a black hole. This supermassive black hole is an estimated 6.5 billion times as massive as our sun, and 28 million times as massive as the largest known star.

The photo of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 taken by the event horizon telescope in 2017. Uploader cropped and converted TIF to JPG – This file has been extracted from another file, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77925953.

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see.

The fact that from the perspective of an outside observer, time appears to stop for someone reaching the event horizon of a black hole seems to prevent anything from falling into a black hole from an outside perspective. How does anything ever get inside the black hole if it freezes up at the event horizon? Black holes grow, they collide and merge, so clearly things can get inside, right? But how? As I tried to find the answer to this question, I found that I was far from the only one asking this question.

Realistic spaceship approaching a black hole. This content was generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system. Stock AI-generated image ID: 2448481683 AI-generated image Contributor Shutterstock AI Generator.

I searched physics forums trying to find the answer to this question. There were a lot of discussions but no clear answers. Some said, nothing falls into a black hole. Everything accumulates on the event horizon from the outside perspective and that’s how the event horizon and the black hole grows. The observer crossing the horizon essentially jumps infinitely far into the future, or into a different universe, that’s how he can pass through the event horizon.

Others said that the black hole is not static, it grows, and it shrinks from Hawking radiation, and this complicates the equations so that objects can enter the black hole even from an outside perspective. I have a few physics books on black holes that I have not finished reading. If I learn something better, I will update this post.

AI-generated image Description : Space Black Hole Blue Illustration Gravity Geometry Vast Line. Stock AI-generated image ID: 2457551367 by AI-generated image Contributor Shutterstock.AI

In the image above the grid demonstrates how a black hole is distorting space-time. Other strange facts about black holes are that they are slowly evaporating through what is called Hawking radiation.

They come in different sizes. The smallest known black hole (XTE J1650-500) has a diameter of approximately 15 miles. Perhaps scariest of all, black holes are nearly undetectable unless they are feeding on star dust or tugging on nearby stars. That means one hungry black hole could be zipping right through our solar system without us knowing. Considering there are an estimated 100 million black holes in our Milky Way space travel might be scary.

Addressing a Good Question

After posting this post I received a question via email regarding this fact “If our planet earth collapsed into a black hole, its diameter would be 1.75 centimeters or 0.69 inches in diameter. The diameter of the largest known black hole (TON 618) is 242 billion miles, which is more than one million times larger than the distance from the earth to moon.” The person who asked thought that 1.75 centimeters was pretty tiny and was wondering how a black hole could be that small.

To create a black hole, you need extremely strong gravity and one way to increase the force of gravity at the surface of a planet is to compress all its mass into a smaller volume.

If you compressed all of earth’s gravity so its diameter was only half of what it is, it would be more compact, and the gravity would be four times stronger at earth’s surface. If you compressed it further so that the earth’s diameter would only be a fourth of its original diameter the gravity at the surface would now be 16 times stronger. If you keep compressing the earth until its diameter is only 1.75 centimeters the force of gravity at the surface would be 132,000 trillion times greater than it currently is according to Newtonian physics, and you would get a black hole.

I should say that it comes out differently with General Relativity and that number is different for different sized black holes. However, this calculation is for demonstrative purposes. For relatively small masses like a planet, you would have to compress so much that it becomes tiny before gravity becomes large enough to make a black hole.

To see the other Super Facts click here

If you were an astronaut on an interstellar journey, would you be afraid of falling into a black hole?

Some Things Cannot be Known

Superfact 2 : Some Things Cannot Be Known

Some things cannot be known. There are things in mathematics and about our physical world that we know can never be known. For example, we can’t simultaneously know both the exact speed and the exact position of small particles (Heisenberg uncertainty principle). This is not because of a limitation of our instruments. It is a fundamental property of the Universe. But there are more examples of unattainable knowledge. In mathematics there are true statements that can never be proven.

“This”Some Things Cannot be Known” is the third post on my super-factful blog. As mentioned, the goal of this blog is to create a long list of facts that are important and known to be true, yet either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many. They are facts that are so unnecessarily controversial or astounding that I refer to them as super-facts.

This post is about a fact that may be highly surprising to many. Science knows a lot. People without a solid education in science are often surprised when they find out about some of the amazing things we actually do know.

For example, just by studying the light from a distant star, we can determine what elements it is composed of. The star may be composed of 71% hydrogen, 27% helium, 1% Lithium, and 1% other elements, and we can know that just from its light. We can also determine its temperature, the distance to the star, how it is moving compared to us, where it will be 2.5 million years from now, roughly its age and longevity, and more. 150 years ago, we could not have dreamed of this capability.

We can know so much about a star from its light. Shutter Stock Illustration ID: 566774353 by Nostalgia for Infinity.

However, there are also many things we don’t know, and what may come as a big surprise, we know that there are things we can never know, no matter how advanced science becomes. Infinite experimentation, super intelligence, a quintillion super geniuses, infinite time, we simply cannot acquire some knowledge. The universe itself forbids some knowledge. It also means that the statement “nothing is impossible” is false.

At least my natural reaction to such a claim is, “come on you can’t say that with certainty”, and I expect many others will feel the same. However, the reason some knowledge will never be attainable is that physical laws as well as mathematics and logic forbid some knowledge. Some things are not meant to be known. I will give four examples in the four sections below: the event horizon, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, beyond the observable Universe, and Gödels incompleteness theorem.

The Event Horizon of a Black Hole

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light, can escape it. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. If you pass the event horizon you cannot come back out no matter how much energy, you expand. Nothing can escape, no matter, no radiation, not light or other electromagnetic radiation, and no information. Nothing at all can escape. The curvature of time and space itself forbids it.

I should add that right at the event horizon, there is so called Hawking radiation, but without complicating things it is not the same thing as escaping a black hole. You can guess from physical laws what might be inside, but you can never observe and report what is inside to planet Earth.

Black Hole Stock Photo ID: 2024419973 by Elena11

I would also like to add some basic information about black holes. Some black holes are formed when large stars die and collapse. These black holes are estimated to have a mass of five to several tens of solar masses. However, there are also super massive black holes that reside in the center of galaxies.

The super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is called Sagittarius A* and is estimated to have a mass of four million times the mass of our sun. The largest known supermassive black hole TON 618 is 66 billion times more massive than our sun. There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. One interesting fact is that celestial objects can orbit a black hole, just like planets orbit the sun, but as you get too close you will rush, at the speed of light, into the depths of the black hole.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it’s not possible to know the position and momentum of an object with perfect accuracy at the same time. Another way of saying that is that we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy. The formula is: dX * dP >= h/4pi , or uncertainty in position (dX) times uncertainty in momentum (dP) is larger than half of Planck’s constant. There is also an energy and time precision limit : dT * dE >= h/4pi.

These equations basically means that there are no perfectly exact measurements or knowledge. Everything is a bit fuzzy. Planck’s constant is very small, so Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not matter for everyday objects, but it matters when sizes are very small (positions, energies, etc.) Note, Heisenberg uncertainty principle is not because of a limitation of our equipment, but a limit set by a law of physics. It is a limitation set by the Universe if you will.

Heisenberg uncertainty principle Shutter Stock Vector ID: 2380436193 by Sasha701

Beyond the observable Universe

The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe consisting of all matter that currently can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes. The radius of the observable universe is 46.6 billion light-years. The size of the observable universe is growing. Unfortunately, at those distances, space itself is stretching/expanding faster than the speed of light. Since no signal or information can travel faster than the speed of light we are losing, not gaining, celestial objects from the observable universe.

In the past we’ve lost many galaxies this way. Since the expansion is accelerating, we will keep losing more galaxies beyond the boundary of the universe and some galaxies were always lost (with respect to observation). I can add that the universe may be infinite.

A view of a galaxy full of stars. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

If we are wrong about the fact that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, then perhaps we can observe more galaxies in the future. But if not, then there are galaxies that we have never observed, galaxies that we can never observe, and there are galaxies that will become unobservable in the future. Depending on the size of the universe we may never be able to observe more than an infinitesimally small portion of the universe. Again, the universe is stopping us from knowing something.

Gödels incompleteness theorem(s)

The theorem states that in any reasonable mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved. In other words, to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible. There are forever hidden truths in mathematics. For the case of natural numbers this means that there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable. I can add that there is also a second incompleteness theorem that states that a formal system cannot prove that the system itself is consistent. Basically, there are limits to mathematics set by logic. And some things cannot be known.

I have a book on Gödels incompleteness theorem, which I have not read, but I will read it before I make a post about it. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com