this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca 85 points 3 months ago (26 children)

Astrophysicist here. Yes, space is crazy, but interesting things to keep in mind:

  1. The size of a star is determined by something called the photosphere. With those extremely massive stars, you can be hundreds of millions of kilometres "inside" and not yet know it.
  2. Similar story with supermassive black holes, from the perspective of an astronaut falling in, they wouldn't really be able to tell when they cross the horizon because the tidal forces there are very small (they will inevitably fall towards the centre and get spaghettified at some point)
[–] unknown@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Hi Astrophysics,

I always wondered why they draw black holes like they do in that the accretion looks like it's drawn in two planes. I would have thought it would have looked a bit more like a saturns rings? Or is it exactly like saturns rings but we see the whole ring bent round the top because a black hole bends the light around so we can see it? Or is it something else entirely that they are trying to depict here?

[–] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The second one. The image is simulated as how an external observer would see it. It was firstly done for the Interstellar movie.

[–] unknown@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Cool, thought for a long time there it was just an artistic liberty; but this is much cooler.

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