Posted on 01/18/2016 9:03:18 AM PST by Citizen Zed
Ooooo! Thanks for the ping.
The article is about a black hole. Not a black ahole. ;-)
“Yes, but we never see energy converted to matter that I can think of.”
I think photon absorption is an example of that, no? Not as flashy as matter converting to energy, but it happens all the time.
“The idea that a million stars worth of matter can be compressed out of existence and all that remains is a gravitational field bound by it’s own gravity just makes me want to say the matter is destroyed. It’s pretty much semantics.”
Well, I don’t really like the idea of black holes myself, since they are a theoretical concept, not experimentally verified phenomena. Still, you can’t say that the matter in a black hole was destroyed. If it was destroyed, it couldn’t have any effect on the universe, yet, the gravitational field you noted IS an effect the matter in the black hole is having on the outer universe.
“When he did the actual observation of light from a star bending around an object in between us and it, was he doing an experiment about space bending, or light having mass, or gravity, .........or what?”
All of the above, I suppose? He didn’t actually make that observation though, he just made the prediction. The observation came years later, that was one of the things that helped confirm his theory.
The light being deflected around a gravity source was supposed to show that spacetime is warped around a dense collection of matter. However, it is also true that a photon in motion has mass. I just think that the mass is far too small to account for the amount of deflection that is observed.
Can it be proved that light travels forever until it hits matter?
He's not, he's getting a worm removed.......
I can't conceptualize that..........I don't think humans are capable of understanding that or infinity....
I'm thinking that the matter has been converted into the pure energy of gravity just like nuclear reactions turn matter into heat. So the matter is actually gone. One is used to thinking matter is needed to produce a gravitational field, I certainly thought that. Some theorists seem to be saying that's not the case.
And how about that spagettification? And how about that thing where if you could see the black hole you'd see the whole sphere from one side due to space time warp. AND, how about that thing where matter falling into a whole explodes, accretion disk like, and the explosion is time dilated such that it lasts forever though ever more red shifted. Amazing physics there!
I agree but I've enjoyed trying since I was about 10 years old and someone gave me an old book called "The Universe".
I guess it depends on your definition of “proved”, but that is the nature of all waves, they propagate infinitely unless something deflects or absorbs them (or they run out of medium in which to propagate, but that is essentially the same as being reflected).
Yes, I think you are correct. I vaguely recall something about observers racing to a spot where the phenomenon might be observed............. But it was cloudy that night.
That was maybe one of the first attempts. Here’s a story about the successful observation, in 1919:
https://thethoughtstash.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/how-eddington-demonstrated-that-einstein-was-right/
Yes.
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