Woot!

[pasithea]

Uh. Hey dude... ya'know like.... You dropped 99% of your universe back there... See?

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/17

Cool! They just finished building a massive super collider to attempt to generate some dark matter and other weird particles but slamming two galaxies together is a WAY more massive super collision. :)

Of course, I'm also presently listening to a story about a microscopic black hole so the timing is kind of neat and cool too. :)

Comments

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Is not "Microscopic black hole" a bit of a misnomer, since a black hole is a singularity and hence doesn't have the dimentions to be viewed even with a microscope?

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Heh! I've had this arguement before! New Trek once had a line like 'A singularity only a few centimeters in diameter' and I was like 'Butbutbut a singularity has no size!'

So... Anyhow, the way the debate went, we eventually agreed that you could specify a size for a black hole since you're talking about the size of the event horizon. While singularity is indeed sizeless.

Wikipedia doesn't directly agree with my definitions. It says that the singularity and event horizon are both parts of a black hole, which I would infer to mean that the breadth of the larger is counted but I could be wrong.

Also, it interesting states that singularities aren't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole#Singularity_at_a_single_point

Soooo. Short answer: I dunno. I'm no astrophysicist. :)

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

:) I thought just after I posted that that it was probably totally fair to be referring to the size of the uh... you know, lightless hole in space caused by the event horizon, when you refer to a black hole, since that is where it got it's name anyway.

What would crossing a microscopic, or at least tiny event horizon be like anyway. Imagine a black hole the size of a pea maybe. What if you touched it with the tip of your finger? I guess the gravitational force around it would be so great that you couldn't pull your hand back out, but then you can't actually cross the event horizon of a black hole in real time, so it would just seem like a black point in space that your finger was stuck to.

[centauress.livejournal.com]

It doesn't need to be infinitely massive to work like a black hole. Just nearly infinitely massive.

Measuring them is usually done by mass which relates to the event horizon ('visible' size) because the more massive they are, the broader the area known as the event horizon is.

But what it means... Well, gravity is a two-way force. A microscopic black hole would put out microgravity. You put out nanonano gravity. Someone might not even notice it.