Posted on 01/06/2005 11:27:25 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
It's Bush's fault!
What's the speed of sound in a vacuum?
I thought that the string theory had been discredited.
How far away is this from us? Follow up questions. When did it happen? Is it still goin on?
About 2.6 billion light years away. So we're seeing it as it was 2.6 billion years ago. From out standpoint, it's still going on, but we're observing it as it was then. I suspect it's still there, but we'd have to guess what it looks like at this instant.
Interesting.
What's the speed of sound in a vacuum?
Sound doesn't propagate in a vacuum. By 'supersonic' in this context, I assume that it means faster than the speed of pressure waves propagating through the gaseous medium surrounding the black hole. Just as objects in our atmosphere can move faster than the sound they generate, so too can gas molecules exceed the speed of the pressure waves generated as they're pushed by the black hole's gravitational and magnetic slingshot effects.
(I'm not a physicist, but I play one on FR.)
L
I'm familiar with the string theory conjectures to which you refer, but I can't say whether your further conjecture has merit. I don't know enough to even guess.
Read "The Elegant Universe", black holes actually are capable of emissions.
See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5473323/
DUBLIN, Ireland - After 29 years of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was wrong about black holes.
The renowned Cambridge University physicist formally presented a paper Wednesday arguing that black holes, the celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of objects swallowed up and eventually could spit bits out “in a mangled form.” Last week, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., he revealed he had changed his long-held thinking on black holes.
Hawking’s radical new theory caps his three-decade struggle to explain a paradox in scientific thinking: How can objects really “disappear” inside a black hole and leave no trace, as he long believed, when subatomic theory says matter can be transformed but never fully destroyed?
Hawking had previously insisted that black holes destroy all molecular fingerprints of their contents and emit only a generic form of radiation.
But on Wednesday at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, Hawking presented mind-boggling new calculations that suggest black holes are able to cast out their contents — and that there’s only one way in and one way out.
You've got that right!
Can we stop talking about Gary Condit?
What, did Michael Moore break wind????
Yes, me either, since I know very little... it just seems to me that if the base concept is, we are on a membrane, and all (nearly all) of what we percieve is tied to that membrane, but Gravitons (gravity) for whatever reason is free to leave the membrane, and in further theory perhaps encounter other membranes which may or may not bind them...
Our universe (membrane) would have gravitons leaving or flowing throught it potentially all the time with narry a notice or care.
But say something happened, and for some reason a point on the membrane suddenly changed in some way, causing gravitons not to so easily float away, but to become stuck, like say, plaque in an artery... then a singular stuck graviton would exert more gravitational force that we normally experience.... then that same graviton or event attracted more gravitons, tying them as well to the membrane... the gravitational force would rapidly expand from that point, and would appear to us as a black hole or singularity event... and the "critical mass" point for the devastating impact on our reality when it occurred would be monsterous in its effects.
The idea of "speed of sound" as presented in this article is silly. By its definition the velocity of the air coming coming out of the air vent above me could be considered supersonic once you add its velocity vector relative to me to its velocity vector relative to the sun.
Speed of sound has everything to do with the velocity of a fluid relative to a secondary mass it's capable of communicating pressure info with none of which is implied by the article.
"The Black Cloud"...reality, not the book..coming soon to a Planet near you !
You've probably already seen them, but I'll mention last year's February, May and September issues of Scientific American. Some excellent articles relevant to these issues.
Maybe my little improvised explanation is close to being right. But maybe the authors meant something more mundane, using 'supersonic' to mean what we'd expect it to mean, i.e., 'faster than the speed of sound in Earth's atmosphere'.
Oh, whew, I misread the title. I though it said "erection".
A Redneck's reaction to this discovery: Hey Bubba, it kinda reminds me of a Big Gulp from the 7-11....that's it, we'll call this here black hol'..."BIG GULP!"
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