Milky Way from the ISS, Poking a Black Hole, Sun Bringing The Moon Closer | Q&A 278

[@webjunkienl]

Thank you Patrons (and Fraser & crew)

[@BabyMakR]

I've never been in the military but I have read a lot of military books and had friends in the military, and "I don't know" is always an acceptable answer as long as it is followed by "I will find out"

[@4nidr3s1]

Just came after seen your vid from 10y ago about which part of the Milky Way we see , and right after this one, but with an out of space view, nice continuation

[@MCsCreations]

Thanks for all the info, Fraser! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@ericsmith6394]

Imagine being an ancient explorer and you cross an ocean or mountain range and suddenly there's a whole other planet in the sky that you never knew about because both are tidally locked.

[@eamonia]

Dude, that's an awesome idea. Good usin' the old noggin, bud. Yeah, that would be a total trip.

[@ericsmith6394]

Another way to think about the event horizon is that the speed of light is the max speed of cause and effect. Forces and fields move at the speed of light, so once the magic pole crosses the horizon there's no way for the outside part to know the inside part still exists. There's no particle, field, or force that can influence the outer pole from inside. It is literally a horizon after which we can never see events.

[@eamonia]

For now...

[@davidguy209]

Silly question: Do galaxies with no Dark Matter/ Dark Energy still have a super-massive black hole in their centres? Love the show! 😁

[@LordSlag]

Prediction: They DO!

[@keyscook]

Not a silly question but a Dark One, hypothetically speaking, of course! The hypothetical "Dark Matter/Energy" does not have anything to do with black holes, btw.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

1) The existence of black holes has little to nothing to do with the existence of dark matter / dark energy, as far as we know. 2) Galaxies without dark energy don't exist - dark energy has the _same_ density everywhere.

[@icaleinns6233]

Thanks for that errata Fraser. I, too, was left scratching my head after your response to Scott's question.

[@MrJPI]

The astronauts don't have as good telescopes on ISS as the amateur astronomers on Earth. Particularly they don't have equipment for precisely pointing their cameras for extended periods of time to get longish exposures.

[@Teslo_In_FinalFantasy]

Yo! My man! I never took you for a gamer! I never really got into PoE, but I’ve played off and on for a couple years. With the announcement of PoE2 I’ve gotten into it and I’m really loving it! I want to finish the Settlers league then I’ll dive into 2! Ah the mystery of the universe. The coldest case in existence. And it only gets colder the longer it exists… I think the hardest part about this problem is that we’re contemplating the existence of an object, and we only have a limited viewpoint of that object from within that object. It would be like if you were some kind of sentient microscopic lava worm at the center of the earth contemplating how and why the earth came to be. 🤣

[@Bjarky]

Yeah PoE2 is awesome, so happy how far they've come with the game. Full release will be epic!

[@SavannahMurphy]

Thank you so much for another amazing Question Show!

[@mrxmry3264]

11:35 i guess the black hole would use the stick to pull you in and eat you.

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

I don't think that Fraser is correct about that. For very large black holes, the event horizon exerts very little tidal force to anything nearby. I think that something can escape, but the pole (or rope) needs to be longer than you might think.

[@jamesmnguyen]

But Why? made a video on why it's physically impossible to send a rope or a stick past the event horizon. It's got cool animations to help too. "Why time 'stops' in a black hole"

[@TomSnyder--theJaz]

Fraser, Regarding the ISS, what's a 'Cup-Ah-La'? 🤔

[@frasercain]

www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/cupola/

[@ashsilverwizard3275]

The stick will shear off at the event horizon, all force carriers obey the speed of light rule. Any particle that enters the event horizon will no longer be able to be bound to particles outside.

[@ncdave4life]

11:30 Larry Niven wrote a very nice short story entitled _Neutron Star,_ in which those tidal forces are key to the plot. If you've read it, then you'll also recognize that the unobtanium from which Kyle Steadward's pole is constructed must be akin to General Products hull material.

[@SomeMadRandomPerson]

I fukin love these Q&As Frasier, thanks for all you do 😎🙌🏻🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[@mattwuk]

Why don't comets run out of tail? They do and will.

[@Leafbinder]

Thats awesome Fraser that your playing PoE2 ive got to lvl 29 have got about 5 hours sleep in the last 48 hours lol its a lot of fun but kills my back sitting for that long. Cyas ingame mate

[@maughan3061]

One question I've been thinking about for many years is how was the water in the universe created. I'm not asking how it came to Earth, I want to know how it formed. What was the mechanism of its creation in the first place. I'm thinking maybe water originates in stars. Put decades of puzzling to an end for me Fraser. Paul in London.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

No, water does not originate in stars, it's way to hot in there. It forms in outer space, whenever hydrogen and oxygen atoms come together.

[@maughan3061]

@bjornfeuerbacher5514 Do you know the actual process and how it might occur? Does hydrogen and oxygen just kind of float together? How do they bond?

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@@maughan3061 I'm not sure what you mean with "float together". Atoms fly around in outer space freely, and occasionally, they meet. (Obviously that happens more often on the surface of already existing bodies like asteroids etc.) They bond together exactly like they do on Earth, it's a chemical reaction. Probably you have even seen that reaction already, it's commonly shown in many schools, often with the nickname "Knallgas reaction".

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

(Ok, I simplified a bit, for a Knallgas reaction you need molecular hydrogen, not single hydrogen atoms. Probably in outer space, first one hydrogen atom will reaction with one oxygen atom to form an OH radical, and that will later react with another H atom to form water.)

[@maughan3061]

@@bjornfeuerbacher5514 I've read how stars make elements as they go through different states forged in their furnace. Different pressures and temperatures acting on different elements in a fairly well understood process. The creation of water I imagined would also be well understood like they could say yes most water comes from these circumstances in this way. But your answer says to me water is not so simple and creates more questions for me. Thanks buddy appreciate your reply.

[@davidgould9431]

Poking a black hole. Let's say you could arrange things so that you were orbiting a black hole¹ near the event horizon and had a "sufficiently robust" stick¹. Wouldn't you see that the clock at the end of the stick² slows down until - at the point it is on the event horizon - it stops? So the stick, from your point of view, would never progress beyond the event horizon. Presumably there is also some length contraction going on so, if you keep pushing, it justs gets shorter to compensate. Or something. I think that's the "things falling into an event horizon freeze on the horizon from the viewpoint of external observers" thing. But my maths isn't up to working it out and my brain has exploded. Almost certainly: someone studying physics now and not, as in my case, 40 years ago will be able to point out my misconception. ¹ good luck with all that, by the way. ² all sticks near event horizons have clocks - hadn't you heard?

[@arnelilleseter4755]

From my limited understanding of the phenomenon I think you got it just about right.

[@johnbennett1465]

What you would see when you are near the event horizon is different from what you see from a distance. I am sure of this. I have some educated guesses of what you would see which differ from your guesses. But understanding my limitations and knowing how mind bending the situation is, I will leave it to experts to try to explain what would actually happen.

[@goyya888]

I love that you are a gamer and around my age.

[@slo3337]

Really big black holes have small tidal forces. The event horizon moves. as you approach, it moves away from you. The horizon is where spacetime is curved compared to the curvature of where you are, so as you travel along the curve toward the horizon you are constantly updating how far the horizon curve relative to you is. Like an ant walking down a funnel, as it goes down, it can see deeper into the funnel and the horizon is always further than it can see. The ant will always see a little bit of the funnel in front of it.

[@babyoda1973]

Capillary action has to come in there somewhere😮

[@ainternet239]

Comet Tail Question Surely the compounds on a comet‘s surface are volatized by solar radiation, not the solar wind? They are then „blown downwind“ by the solar wind?

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

Actually, lots of comets have _two_ tails; one of them is formed by the solar radiation, the other by the solar wind.

[@Kamil_O]

EU here, It was strange to come back from work and seeing Fraser Live :D

[@user-pf5xq3lq8i]

Ewwww

[@giubl5763]

Regarding Black Holes' accretion disks: does the matter closer to the black hole spins faster than the matter thats more "distant" from the center? Does dark matter plays that role here to, like in galaxies? (Where everything spins more or less at the same speeds?)

[@guitaresp13]

Question: Andromeda and the Milky Way are set to collide. Is Andromeda moving towards the Milky Way, based on it's natural path, or is there a shared gravity between the two galaxies? If it is gravity, does the Milky Way have something like a collective gravity from all the stars and such within it?

[@TyczH]

Everyone asking 'why is the tail?' But no one asks 'how is the tail?'

[@Dan-Simms]

Wow, we have so much in common, all the same shows and every video game you have mentioned. Birds of a feather. I'm also an SSF enjoyer, one who does not copy guides, trying to figure out builds on my own. I've yet to play 2 but have over 2k hours in the original.

[@frasercain]

It's still in early access, so extremely rough around the edges. But it's fun to play a new game that hasn't already been completely discovered.

[@Dan-Simms]

@@frasercain exactly, so nice that it is new, and that there is so many new ways for us players to "break" it ;)

[@LassieDog999]

I think you are wrong about the pole in the black hole pulling the rest in. I would expect that the two halfs would be quantum separated and not affect eachother. So from the perspective of the pole bearer it would be like a quantum eraser, deleting the parts as he puts it in.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

What do you mean with "quantum separated"? I suspect you misunderstood the quantum eraser, I see no connection of that experiment to the situation here.

[@LassieDog999]

@bjornfeuerbacher5514 quantum eraser is just something I came up with as how it would seem to the observer putting the pole into the black hole. He would not feel anything as what happened to the other side of the pole since at a quantum level, the atoms of the outside and inside of the black hole would not be able to share information

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@@LassieDog999 This has little to do with "quantum level". You don't need quantum theory for explaining that the atoms on the outside and the atoms on the inside can't share any information.

[@LassieDog999]

@@bjornfeuerbacher5514 you know nothing bro. Have a nice day

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@@LassieDog999 :D :D :D You gave no argument at all proving that I actually know nothing. Classical Dunning Kruger effect. (Hint: I have a PhD in physics.)

[@tracymason7393]

Quick question Mr Cain, what is your reaction to this question. What if 99942 Apophis collided with the Moon?

[@Lindharin]

For a potential "comets lose their tail part 3": if comets lose the bulk of the material that comprise the tail over the course of "just" a few thousand years, why are there still comet tails after billions of years since the formation of the solar system? The obvious answer is that the currently "active" comet tails come from comets that only started coming into the inner solar system relatively recently. Is that the only / best explanation, or are there other explanations? If that is the most likely answer, then would it be possible to calculate the past trajectory of a comet (like Haley's comet) backwards through a few dozen prior orbits and figure out what caused it to alter its orbit to bring it into the inner solar system? Would it be caused by the passage of an extrasolar object? An interaction with the hypothetical planet 9? In that later case, could backtracking the trajectories of various modern comets help us find that planet 9?

[@arnelilleseter4755]

They change trajectory because of interactions with each other. Of course other bodies such as planet 9 can also change their orbit but you don't need a big object. A small nudge to send it into a lower orbit is enough, and then the other planets, especially Jupiter, will start to affect it's orbit. Backtracking the path of the comet, even for a few orbits, is extremely difficult. There are so many variables that it very quickly will have huge errors.

[@josephsmith809]

If we were able to slingshot enough satellites around mars to increase it's rotation, would this potentially enable the planet develop a magnetic field? And if so would that be enough for mars to develop an atmosphere?

[@marknovak6498]

The problem I have in thinking about the universe expansion why and the nature of the Big Bang is that infinities seem to make all things possible that are probable and that includes the many seed events. I just wish there was something we could see that at least limits testing the options to a particular path. We can observe a Higg Bosn but that is a measure in our universe.

[@jack504]

'poking a black hole' answer would a bit different for a very large BH, SMBH. The tidal forces are way less extreme. I've heard that for a large enough black hole you could pass through the event horizon without realising.

[@ericsmith6394]

No, you can fall into it without being turned into elementary particles *before* reaching the horizon. Anything that touches the event horizon is gone no matter how big the black hole. Being able to know part of you is inside and intact contradicts the premise of the event horizon. Information would be exiting the hole. This would allow you to make a chain of intact objects all the way out of the hole to send pictures from inside.

[@steverafferty4114]

Question for Fraser: Why don’t we use Asteroids like Tarzan uses vines to traverse the solar system? Got to be an energy efficient way to get around.

[@rayfighter]

these, are small. those, are far away.

[@ericsmith6394]

Two reasons: 1. They're massively far apart 2. No material has been invented that can survive impact at the typical speeds you'd be going if you're not stopping at this asteroid. We do something similar already with gravity assists/slingshots. We just can't with asteroids. Not enough gravity.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@Steve: Do you mean that we do swing-by maneuvers around asteroids, similar to the ones around planets? That doesn't work, due to the reasons already pointed out by others here. Or do you mean that we use the asteroids as a kind of "bus", i. e. like a spaceship itself? That idea has been around for a long time already (IIRC, Fraser even made a video on that already); so far, we have not managed to make it work.

[@patrickgriffiths889]

At the edge of a SMBH the tidal forces are not an issue.

[@MacM545]

Knowing what came before the beginning of the universe seems to be about as hard as accelerating a particle to the speed of light. You can accelerate a particle to about 99.99999% the speed of light, but giving more energy will not make it reach light speed. Similarly, the singularity at the start of the universe is something like that.

[@robertanderson5092]

According to relatively, space contraction and time dilation are two sides of the same coin (Actually a triangle in special relativity). What you perceive is dependent on your reference frame. There should exist a reference frame where space is static and time contracts in the past.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@@robertanderson5092 "Actually a triangle in special relativity" What do you mean here? "There should exist a reference frame where space is static and time contracts in the past." What does it mean for space to be "static"? What does it mean for time to "contract in the past"?

[@frankyboy4409]

So i have heard people say that a black hole the size of the observable universe would equal the density of the observable universe. How does that fit in with the expansion of the universe and especially the nonlinear nature of this expansion? Would that mean the universe gained weight over its life or am I missing something? Or is this simply an "interesting coincidence"?

[@jamesleatherwood5125]

If the expansion keeps speeding up over time, then wouldn't the spacetime expansion of this universe eventually reach the speed of inflation at some point?

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

Inflation had no one single specific speed. During inflation, the expansion _also_ speeded up all the time.

[@ElliottCallum]

Why does a red giant inflate when it starts to fuse metals in its core (heavier than helium)?

[@Ken-rq9xr]

As a child the world of scientific research is a stick.😅🤓😸🦜🖖

[@Hackanhacker]

Of Unoptainium xD

[@DannyJoh]

I'm not sure you're right about the pole in the black hole. It's a misconception that nothing can escape beyond the event horizon. The escape velocity is the speed of light, but with an applied force (for example propulsion) you can escape by accelerating. Escape velocity only means that you will fall back to the black hole if you don't continue accelerating away. Well at least this is what I have understood. Can you shed some light on this?

[@arnelilleseter4755]

You can't accelerate beyond the speed of light.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

"The escape velocity is the speed of light, but with an applied force (for example propulsion) you can escape by accelerating." Err - no? If you are beyond the event horizon, you can accelerate as hard as you want, you won't get out of the black hole.

[@Electronic424]

Hey Frasier I know there's no supporting evidence for this but can super habitable planets theoretically exist? Like for example a planet not too dissimilar to Earth but with twice the biomass?

[@logiticalresponse9574]

Is there a way to add a charge to neutrinos and would a blackhole have a gravitational effect on them ?

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

No. Charges (and masses) are fundamental properties of particles (or actually of the fields of which the particles are excitation states), therefore you can't change these things. Yes. Neutrinos obviously move in spacetime, and a black hole simply is a special case of curved spacetime.

[@TheDarkFalcon]

When is the Australasia show? And can you please give time in UTC, or at least UTC offset, it's always so annoying just being told some acronym for a timezone that I don't know so have to Google the UTC offset to figure out local time 😭

[@ashstar42]

Our observable universe grows as the time from the big-bang increases, but the universe is expanding faster than that growth, so at what time was there the most "stuff" to observe in our observable universe? Also, assuming we cannot travel faster than the speed of light, we will never be able to journey out to observe outside our observable universe, but could we bump into another light speed alien coming the other way and from their historic data see outside our observable universe?

[@GadZookz]

Some people believe they can bring universes into existence with a single thought but if that is really true then who fills in all the rest of the details? 🤔

[@JQourydxyz]

Hi Fraser, great insights as always! I've got a question, hopefully it's not too long: Currently it seems that NASA is sharing all of its findings publically. Loads of images from all missions are shared. However, I expect some friction to arise here when NASA is going to scout for zones on the moon with lots of potential for (Artemis) landings and even bases. If NASA finds loads of ice in some shadowed crater or a massive lava tube it is probably strategic to keep this a public secret, especially for competitors like China. Should we expect NASA to become less willing to share its findings when scouting the Moon for such places? Has NASA talked about this, some kind if protocol maybe?

[@arnelilleseter4755]

Data from the Moon are shared and analyzed by scientists all over the world so keeping it secret would be very difficult. If there were only one desirable location for a base, a more likely outcome would be some sort of collaboration like with the ISS.

[@dropshot1967]

Now that was a cool suggestion, I just will wait 7 bln years so I can check if the Earth falls into the sun in its giant phase. I wonder why I did not think of that option 😅🤣😂😆

[@DanielVerberne]

Inflation seems so ad hoc to me. Like a fix

[@MelindaGreen]

I'm not sure you gave a full answer to the poking-a-black-hole question in that you haven't considered the size of the black hole. For a small black hole, yes, terrible things happen. But for a sufficiently large one, nothing interesting will be happening near the event horizon. Attempts to poke it with a stick will be the same as poking empty space. The only interesting question then becomes whether or not you will be able to return from your experiment, and the answer should probably be "No", because either you will have drifted past the horizon in the experiment, or it would take near infinite time and energy to return whether you performed the experiment or not.

[@frasercain]

You need to accelerate faster than the speed of light to pull the pole back out again

[@MelindaGreen]

@@frasercain Let me try another way: Event horizons are also created by acceleration, complete with Hawking radiation and everything. If you trail a very long, infinitely strong and stretchable line behind your spaceship and accelerated fast enough, the event horizon you create behind yourself will eventually include your tail and you won't be able to see it. Slow back down and you will be able to see it again just fine.

[@quetzalflight5790]

?? 🤔 WHY WHY IS THERE NEVER A CAMERA FACING FORWARD AS A ROCKET , SPACESHIP ETC. TRAVELING AWAY FROM EARTH ? ? WHY THE TRUTH OF SUCH NOT RESPONDED TO????

[@coleisman]

Literally playing poe2 while watching this video.

[@civicbadass]

Are there any micro black holes and have we found any? also if planets are made up of dust over billions of years are there any fluffy planets which have not had enough time to get dense? same with asteroids? they are sometimes heavy metal objects, is this only caused by colliding larger objects? Thank you for the great videos. It is exhausting weeding out the fake stories/ click bait sites that KZbin seems to make the first one to been seen.

[@mazzoh2454]

Thousands of years to be continuously losing material seems like a lot of material. So how big are these objects that they can lose that much for so long?

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

They don't lose material during all of those thousands of years, only for the few years when they are close to the sun. And they actually don't lose that much of material even during these few years. At each encounter with the sun, they lose far less than 1% of their total mass.

[@mazzoh2454]

@@bjornfeuerbacher5514 Oh, okay. That makes sense. It's relatively small amounts in short bursts.

[@Hackanhacker]

Unoptainium Ahahah I love this xD

[@agxryt]

The answer about inflation / "other universes" just confused me. The inflation you describe - is that not identical to the big bang. And is that inflation not identical to the inflation we have today? Like a theoretical cake, inflating from a theoretically minimal batter, into a larger 3d space. As for temperature differences - theres galaxies/nebulae that are colder than we understand too - if anomalies like this exist NOW, is it not probable they wouldve existed in the early universe - and had profound implications much later in terms of what we observe? As for the flatness question, im not entirely sure we've actually managed (or will ever manage) to accurately measure or grasp this, in the way that the 3d analogies they give do

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

"The inflation you describe - is that not identical to the big bang." No. "Big Bang" usually refers to the beginning of the universe; inflation came afterwards. "And is that inflation not identical to the inflation we have today?" In some ways similar, but not identical. Inflation in the early universe was an _exponential_ growth with _very_ high growth rate. The expansion we have nowadays is not exponential (although it probably again will be in the far future) and has a much smaller growth rate. "theres galaxies/nebulae that are colder than we understand too" What do you mean? "As for the flatness question, im not entirely sure we've actually managed (or will ever manage) to accurately measure or grasp this, in the way that the 3d analogies they give do" Again, I do not understand what you mean.

[@jonnylightbody301]

Your saying Hayles coment it's halleys comet . It wasnt a female. Pronounce Ha-lees not hay-lays

[@jonnylightbody301]

Pet peeve

[@bernhardjordan9200]

Extreme spaghettification on the event horizon only happens in small black holes, if its big enough the gravitational gradient is not that significant

[@georgespalding7640]

Doesn't matter. Once you put the stick through the event horizon, you cannot pull it out again.

[@bernhardjordan9200]

@georgespalding7640 that's for sure

[@jack504]

There is something weird about the Schwarzschild Radius for black holes, it's directly proportional to the mass (r=2GM/c^2). This is objectively correct, if the mass of an object doubles then it's gravitational effect doubles. However, it means that as the mass of a black hole doubles the volume encapsulated by the event horizon increases by a factor of 8 (cubic power of the radius), this feels intuitively wrong, to me at any rate. If you assume that the mass inside a black hole is evenly distributed inside the event horizon (we don't know what's really going on in there anyway) then the average density bounded by the SR drops as the black hole get larger. For instance a 10^10 solar mass BH would have an average density less than water, 0.18g/cm^3. Even weirder, if you plug in the mass of the observable universe into the schwarzchild equation you get a radius value very close to the size of the obervable universe. Not sure if this is a coincidence or if it actually means anything. Does the expansion of the universe effect the size of the event horizon for a black hole? Especially for SMBH, does the expansion help light excape from a little farther in?

[@Hackanhacker]

Coool !!!

[@dannypope1860]

This week’s questions are clearly from a 3rd grade classroom…

[@Jon_EK3]

How are tou able to see part of the big bang if everything was formed billions of years after it happened? Meaning that the light that came out at the beggining was emitted way before we occupied this place in the universe.

[@hive_indicator318]

For one, no one has seen part of the big bang. And no reputable journal would publish anything that claimed seeing anything that early. Secondly, it didn't take billions of years for stars etc to form

[@RaeSimpson]

Why deorbit ISS and other expired satellites? Instead create a junkyard in the sky which would become a source of building materials for future space endeavors. Wouldn't this save huge amounts of energy in terms of getting new materials out of the planetary gravity well.

[@j7ndominica051]

Maybe future civilizations will figure out how to mine black holes as increasingly more space material gets concentrated within them. Or they will make a Hyperpole made of Vibranium for poking.

[@damanybrown5036]

The universe came from YHWH

[@alimohamed8728]

I have a proof in the book from more than 1446 years that the sun will be added with the moon the book is the Kuran from the creator Allah as revealed by prophet Muhamad peace be upon him.

[@arnelilleseter4755]

Religious texts are not proof.

[@cwhitt860]

@@arnelilleseter4755neither is speculation that scientist are pushing. You seriously think this universe just appeared from nothing?? There is a supreme being that created everything!

[@arnelilleseter4755]

@@cwhitt860 Excactly what speculations is science pushing? Who said anything about the universe appearing out of nothing? How do you know that a supreme being created everything?

[@cwhitt860]

⁠​⁠@@arnelilleseter4755it’s my belief that God created everything, just like it’s your belief everything just appeared from nothing. I’m entitled to my opinion just like you are entitled to yours.

[@arnelilleseter4755]

@@cwhitt860 You did not say it was your opinion. You stated it as if it were facts. And again, I never said that the universe appeared from nothing. Why do you think I believe that? And you avoided my first question, or is that just an opinion too?