Who Will Get to Mars First, Black Hole Through Earth, Dinosaurs in Space | Q&A 185

[@laurachapple6795]

This episode gets 5/5 because it made me imagine a frozen Triceratops just floating by the ISS and I almost choked.

[@frasercain]

Hah. 😀

[@andreask.2675]

I just imagine the headline "Man hit by frozen Triceratops from space!" 🤣

[@veggiet2009]

@@andreask.2675 *florida man 🤣🤣

[@andreask.2675]

@@veggiet2009 Yeah, this can only happen in Florida... on a golf course... 🤣

[@billallen275]

Littlefoot in Space! Wow it could be a series! 😂

[@Pacer...]

Back to the channel. After a year away.🇨🇦

[@frasercain]

You missed a bunch.

[@Pacer...]

@@frasercain yes Webb launched

[@12345.......]

? You posted 3 months ago and 11 days ago.

[@poletooke4691]

@@12345....... I think they meant back to watching this channel

[@PereBouSabria]

Best Q: Geonosis Question: when you mention spin of a black hole, do you mean spin of the accretion disk, or the black hole itself? They could be totally independent right? How would we know how a black hole rotates, if we can't see past the event horizon? Or does the event horizon deform itself due to the rotation? Have we observed the "shape" of the EH of the black holes we have taken pictures of with enough resolution to determine its actual rotation?

[@MarinCipollina]

You must realize there's simply no way to answer that question with any presumption of accuracy. What happens inside a black hole is unknown outside the event horizon.

[@toowheela2111]

Love the interviews. Love the news. But the questions are my favourite. Best seen live.

[@jengleheimerschmitt7941]

I'm glad someone is finally asking the question everyone else is afraid to ask... Are there dinosaurs in Space.

[@President_Mario]

Hoth was a super unique question and gets my view.

Hoth. Question: What is the best way a middle income person could contribute to our future in space? Getting into research? Working in related fields? Investing?

[@butterfacemcgillicutty]

Get a telescope and start observing. Record and publish your observations online. Its a big sky.

[@PaulPaulPaulson]

Naboo Because I did not know that starting fusion in a star takes that long. Learned something new and interesting.

[@Prof.Megamind.thinks.about.it.]

Mr. Caine , Loved that comment ; "...it's flipped over on it's side..." . It is fairly obvious that it wasn't some collision that "knocked it on it's side", eh ? Random turbulence , combined with massive gas inflows from a multitude of directions , generated the overall angular-momentum observed at Sag.A billions of years later . The similarity to planet Neptune is quite apparent ; an extreme axial-tilt created not by some miracle-strike , but simply by the chance characteristics of the gas-cloud/formation-disk involved in the initial formation event ! 🤓

[@Nk36745]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge

[@mrtommypickles8635]

I love the Star Wars references in the chapter titles! I'm sure you have more for us. May I recommend Futurama planets for a future video. Edit: Oh, that's the code you reference in the beginning. 🤦 Edit: Dagobah Edit: You made a Futurama reference! Woot woot!

[@baarni]

Hi Fraser, I have a hypothesis that the observations that indicate the accelerating expansion of the universe may be able to be explained by assuming light loses energy to the electric or quantum field as it travels through space causing it to redshift over vast distances. This would be analogous to surface waves travelling in a liquid, over time the waves become longer due to losing energy back to the medium in which they are travelling... Has this idea ever been considered and or experimented on? This question has nagged me for over 20 years and I've never had anyone refute or confirm this idea....

[@caesaraugustus8281]

sound possible, after all they use the doppler shift to currently measure it. a method that was meant to be used on sound.

[@saumyacow4435]

You're not alone in wondering if there is an effect like this. I've always found certain theories in cosmology a little hard to swallow. Its certainly a useful though experiment that might end up discovering new things about physics.

[@churchdiscography]

Congratulations on reaching 300K subscribers! Well earned. Do you have a web page anywhere with all the questions you've answered so far, organized by topic with links to the answers? That would be very useful.

[@frasercain]

No, we've thought about it. They're all in a database so it's something we could eventually do.

[@deangelojuan4337]

Hello Mr Cain, I came across your channel n I'm hooked. My Question is...Why dont NASA tells us about our 2nd Sun, because aren't we a binary solar system?

[@paulwalsh2344]

Well It's not NASA's job to tell us about EVERYTHING to do with space. It's job is to launch missions to build satellite infrastructure in orbit or spacecraft to investigate astronomic phenomena primarily for US interests. Candidates for siblings of our Sun, having coalesced out of the same nebula around the same time and having the the same elemental makeup, have been found, but it doesn't take NASA to do that. The first was discovered by Texan and Chilean ground based telescopes, other candidates have been detected by Gaia, the European Space Agency space telescope. The Sun is about 5 BILLION years old so it and it's siblings have travelled around our galaxy like 20 times, but the gravitational interactions of those siblings when they were very close mean that they have wandered in different directions and different speeds out of that nursery nebula so can be strewn all over our galaxy by now. But that Gaia telescope has taken extremely accurate measurements of the paths and velocities of millions of stars and using thousands of hours of computer projections have identified several great candidates of stars with the same elemental makeup and ages and likely originated from the same nursery nebula.

[@iVardensphere]

Hi Frasier. Love your vids. I see you and Matt (PBS Spacetime) have somewhat different views on what would happen if a tiny black hole impacted/passed through the earth. I'll direct you to watch his video but the TLDR is... it won't cause much damage with its passage through but the areas around the entrance and exit would be places you don't want to me.

[@paulwalsh2344]

Hoth Regarding the possibility of dinosaur remains achieving escape velocity... it's was an intriguing question, but wouldn't organic material be incinerated in the blast of a giant meteor impact ? The material that ejects would have been molten rock, no ?

[@frasercain]

I didn't say whole dinosaurs. That said, organisms inside Earth could theoretically be protected inside rocks as they're hurled into space and even make the journey to other planets and repopulate them again.

[@Rob_Mike_Litterst]

Whoa i'm the 999th like, great occasion to let you know I discovered and rapidly fell in love with your content, 🙏 You are factual, well-spoken, journalistic quality overall and never use "SHOCKING" titles 😜

[@Matthew-by6vl]

Frasier, how can you tell the difference between a distant red giant and a red shifted star? Thank you and love you work!

[@charleslivingston2256]

It's not just the blackbody radiation spectrum being redshifted. There are discrete emission lines for different elements and the relative ratios of their wavelengths are unchanged by redshift. These can be identified and then see what redshift factor has been applied to them. Those same emission lines also act as absorption lines when the light passes through gas. Light of that particular wavelength is absorbed, exciting an election to a higher state where the energy difference is exactly the same as that wavelength. When the electron drops back, another photon corresponding to that energy difference is emitted, but I'm a random direction, rather than continuing in the same direction as the original one. The result is a joke in the spectrum. If there is hydrogen in small quantities all along the path, that hole becomes a trough as wavelengths just above the hole get redshifted into the hole and the hole gets redshifted to longer wavelengths. These redshifted emission lines, absorption lines, and where the trough edges are all allow differentiating redshifted white light from original red light

[@serbannicolau3489]

Question: Is the orientation of the Sagittarius A* black hole due to a previous merger with another black hole at the core of an engulfed galaxy?

[@seanhumphrey3167]

Hoth. What a great idea. Wouldn't it be nice to find T.Rex bits on Mars.

[@montylc2001]

Excellent video, Mr Cain, you have a new fan and subscriber. Concise and informative and bring it down to the level of the common layman, though I'm not exactly. Your question/answer considering a quantum black hole hitting Earth reminded me of a book I read decades ago called "The Krone Experiment", about a molecule size black hole a scientist created that got away from him. Good read, I suggest it if you have not read it already.

[@frasercain]

I did read it, in that version the black hole was dropped into the Earth and ate it up from within

[@montylc2001]

@@frasercain yes, and if I recall the ending was a bit of a cliffhanger, where they were attempting to destroy it using powerful lasers to evaporate it a bit at a time. Have to reread it.

[@veggiet2009]

I wish that JWST could read into the radio spectrum, and could be added into the EHT

[@frasercain]

That would be amazing.

[@paulwalsh2344]

@@frasercain I'm still hoping that the far side of the Moon is utilized in Very Long Baseline Interferometry in radio AND visual, IR and UV wavelengths. The Moon is relatively inert geologically so would be ideal for collecting very stable high resolution images this way ! And because it is the Moon it is accessible for repairs even teleroboticly via lunar orbit relay. Also, if there were imaging or radio receiver spacecraft in Highly Elliptical Earth Orbit , like apoapsis of 200,000 km then we could have an interferometer of about 500,000 to 600,000 km diameter.

[@generaldvw]

Hey Fraser, following up on Coruscant question...what would we expect to see of Sag A star, if we were exactly opposite our current position in the Milky Way. ie. see the Black Hole from the reverse angle. Would the image be the same? Would the angle be ~60 degrees? (90-30)?😁

[@idodekkers9165]

Hey Fraser talking about asteroids, when starship flies, is it "strong" enough to give a 10K asteroid a big enough boost to move it?

[@akers189]

If the laws of physics break down with Blackholes, why can’t we travel faster than the speed of light. Should it be phrased as, the speed of light is the fastest thing as we know it (kind of like the phrase “life as we know it”)

[@Laura-S196]

The biggest radiation concern with nuclear rocket propulsion is the risk that the rocket might explode during launch or the rocket might crash, spreading enriched uranium in the environment..

[@milansterkens4319]

Hi Fraser, Question: If two objects were flying in opposite directions, but at half the speed of light, would this mean they fly the speed of light relative to each other? Would they appear to be stationary to each other?

[@frasercain]

Both would see the other object going close to the speed of light. Time dilation makes it a little weird though.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Hoth. Looking forward to finding a dinosaur bone on the Moon 🙂

[@frasercain]

I’ll let you know if one turns up

[@Jgiko]

South Park launched a whale on the Moon 🌝 🐋

[@frasercain]

We snuck a whale on the Moon into one of our videos. Nobody has ever noticed it.

[@mikeegan]

A black hole does not have an escape velocity faster than the speed of lght. It is not the gravity of a black hole that stops light escaping from the black hole. A Black hole is an anomaly in spacetime where a mass is concentrated so much that it has deformed the geodesic to the extent that it breaks off from normal space and turns back on itself. Some images show this as a deep pit in the diagram with the singularity at the bottom but if this were the case light would escape from the black hole since light which is massless is unaffected by gravity. However as a black hole has broken off from normal space and is now wrapped around to form a sphere and light follows the curvature of space, as show by Einstein, then the light remains inside the black hole. It is he curvature of space that prevents lightescaping not the gravity. The gravity curves the space.

[@eugen10min]

Hi Fraser, wouldnt dinosaurs be burned in Earth's atmosphere on their way up to space as they would if they had to free fall 50 miles?

[@wnrr2696]

I think it’s cos of the speed the space objects can pick up and the burning is where the atmosphere is slowing it down, not sure how that works with something going up as also it depends on speed I believe

[@Yora21]

It probably would be pieces of dinosaur fossils rather than pieces of exploded dionosaurs.

[@eugen10min]

@@wnrr2696 if you don't have constant acceleration, you need a hell of iniatial speed to break earth's gravity

[@wnrr2696]

@@eugen10min I’m happy with moon dinosaurs

[@wnrr2696]

Frasier Cain out of context kzbin.infoUgkxnMmbyJRN2rPTQaRkwKJANGxJOGmYZXa6

[@Yora21]

When they made the Event Horizon Telescope images, it was much faster to have people get on planes with bags full of hard drives and fly halfway around the world than trying to send all the data over the internet.

[@frasercain]

Yeah, it was a LOT of data

[@Yora21]

During the 2017 observation they had 3.5 petabytes of data, and in 2018 another 5.5 petabyte. We're talking about several million of gigabytes. Not surprising, given that each telecope produces 64 gigabyte per second.

[@akers189]

How are space agencies planning on dealing with the dust issues on Mars with the rovers running out of power? Can they add small air tanks to blow the dust off the solar panels? Jason

[@frasercain]

They're working on a few technologies that could help deal with it in the future. The dust is electrostatically charged, so you have to coat your surfaces with a layer that can repel the dust. And then it can be shaken off.

[@jackd1582]

One thing with octopus thou ..they have such short lifespans

[@dave4882]

Could we add the jwst to the event horizon telescope? Get even better resolution?

[@ronaldvankuyk908]

What do you think About these tachyions That wistl trough the earth yunis

[@ChrisShelton024]

Fraser, I’ve heard plenty of information about black holes, but I never hear anything about white holes. Is that just a neutron star, or is it something else? If something else can you explain the differences?

[@illustriouschin]

That's a good easy question.

[@paulwalsh2344]

Yeah they are two totally different things. Neutron stars are pulsars and are the exposed core of a star after it has exploded off its atmosphere in a supernova, the core material being so incredibly dense that it's basically a ball of neutrons in complex strange configurations. Light can escape from a neutron star although it is so hot that the majority of the photons are in the extreme UV light to hard X-ray light and radio waves as electrons are constrained by the immense magnetic field of a neutron star. Black holes are so massive that they have gone beyond the nature of neutron stars and their gravity absorbs all light of all wavelengths, i.e. the escape velocity is higher than the speed of light for a black hole.They were described as rips in spacetime, but that's not really true. They are really regions in spacetime where the mathematics and physics that we understand break down and because of the event horizon preventing any information from escaping there is no way to examine within such a region. White holes are pure conjecture. It was postulated that what goes INTO a black hole has to go somewhere and come OUT a white hole somewhere else. That the rip in spacetime created a well or wormhole to another region of space that the matter and radiation infalling into a black hole reemerges into the universe, like the whirlpool surrounding the drain of your tub funnels water through a pipe to the wastewater outflow pipe from you home. But that idea quite rapidly and easily breaks down. If black holes funnelled matter to some other place then black holes wouldn't grow because all that matter is going somewhere else. Also what is the mechanism of creating a white hole ? It is a region of space where matter and radiation spews without any normal source i.e. violate the second law of thermodynamics, conservation of matter and energy. But what could CREATE such a region ? If it takes an unbelievable amount of matter, then what you have again is a black hole which is entry only not an exit.

[@ChrisShelton024]

@@paulwalsh2344 thank you for the detailed answer. That makes a lot more sense to me now.

[@AvyScottandFlower]

Sag'A obviously posed for the photo! 🤳

[@dave4882]

If a blackhole evaporates due to antimatter interaction from hawking radiation, doesn't that produce neutrinos? How do they get out of the blackholes?

[@siogyumolcs]

Question. IF we could have an EARTH size 'telescope' to image a black hole, will it be possible in the near future to have a 2 AU size 'telescope', for example by 'depositing' a bunch of telescopes from a Starship behind and in front of the Earth around the orbit of the Sun? Or is that not how things work haha.

[@frasercain]

Yes, there will be space telescopes in the future that'll participate in future versions of the Event Horizon Telescope.

[@scrambles1944]

Fraser u teach me good things and are great at what u do I hope I get to see many more night skies and dyson sphrese with ur teachings

[@donsample1002]

Any primordial black hole which hasn’t evaporated yet is going to have a mass on the order of 200 million tonnes. While the event horizon might be the size of an atom, it’s gravitational influence will extend out quite a bit farther. If one ever did pass through the earth, we’d notice.

[@Yora21]

I was thinking that as well. But it really depends on how massive the black hole is. If you had a black hole with the mass of the Moon, it would seriously scramble up everything around its path for perhaps even hundreds of kilometers. If it's the mass of Mount Everest, the gravitational effect might not even be felt a few meters away. But I imagine there could be a significant gamma ray burst all along the path of the black hole travelling through the Earth. While it wouldn't touch many atoms, for a very short moment as it passes by, lots of atoms will be pulled towards it and collide with each other very energetically.

[@cronus8371]

It’s been stated that everything in the universe is gravitationally connected. But if gravity moves at the speed of light, any matter crossing the observable universe line, would no longer have any gravitational interaction with us. But, gravity would have a pull on matter just at the edge of the observable universe based on its relative location. Can we extrapolate what objects are beyond our visible universe based on the pull they have on objects we can still see?

[@Raz.C]

Hang on... Re - Black hole plane o' rotation Black holes are supposed to have phenomenal magnetic fields, aren't they? I don't really know, but I remember that Neutron stars do, so I expect that black holes do too, especially a super-massive one, like Sag-A. Magnetic field lines always run tangential to any current passing through/ nearby. Usually, the tangent is represented by what we clumsily call "The Right Hand Rule," which I don't particularly feel like explaining right now, except to say that Fraser's gesturing while answering this question (~ 6:40) put me in mind of this. Anyway, could it be possible that the galactic plane exudes enough charged particles so as to act as a current, thus causing the magnetic fields of the black hole (Sag-A) to align to this current, tangentially, according to this Right Hand Rule? I'd be sceptical of the notion of ANY current being sufficient to cause an alignment shift of a fully formed black hole of any size, however, if the current pre-dated the black hole and thus was able to influence the alignment of the black hole as it was forming (or affect the alignment of the pre-cursor of the black hole, such as a neutron star, or whatever), then it would seem- at least theoretically- that this notion could be feasible...

[@michaelwjames2092]

Fantastic

[@brick6347]

Yavin. Makes me wonder how much it costs to store and process all that data! And with energy prices through the roof and supply lines a bit wonky what impact that'll have on future science.

[@TerriYoung-n3n]

I am interested in this but I have music I got to get to. Very interested and I'm going to look up some bologna

[@TheCosmicGuy0111]

My man Fraser

[@wanderingfool6312]

Coruscant I was under the impression that the light surrounding the top half of the Sag A* image is not really there, but the light has been bent around the top from behind event horizon. I imagine it’s probably not 90° but it would mean the alignment towards us is largely this effect?

[@mralekito]

Good questions. I put my vote in for the best,

[@charjl96]

*Question* If blackholes eventually dissipate, does that prove that the singularity is not a solid object? Thanks.

[@paulwalsh2344]

That's a good question. Singularities are singularities because they are places where our current understanding of physics and mathematics break down so we cannot model what they are like. In that way the singularity at the Big Bang and naked singularities at the centers of black holes when Hawking radiation has dissipated enough of the mass of the black hole, are alike.

[@charjl96]

@@paulwalsh2344 Glad someone thinks it's a good question. How are the two senarios you mentioned alike, though? After giving it some thought, I'm still not seeing the link.

[@paulwalsh2344]

@@charjl96 The similarities are that they are both places that are invisible to our current physics and the current understanding of physics break down. But You're right that there aren't any similarities that count... as far as I know at least.

[@UrbanPorcupine]

Fraser, would it be possible to create a large telescope like the Overwhelmingly large Telescope by using a collection of small mirrors and focusing them onto a single mirror as opposed to one single large mirror?

[@frasercain]

Yes, if you had 2500 telescopes with the area of a square meter they could act together to match the power of the OWL... if they were in space. Without adaptive optics, though, the atmosphere would limit their capabilities.

[@xiphactinusaudax1045]

They really named the telescope "Overwhelmingly large." Astronomers just can't get enough for these names, can they?

[@UrbanPorcupine]

@@frasercain I see. Thank you!

[@frasercain]

XKCD even made a comic about that: xkcd.com/1294/

[@echo1271]

Question... (and a little bit of a back story) I'm a data analyst working in Astronomy in the UK. The one thing I struggle to explain to the Layman the most is how we age stars. I normally use Humans as a reference point, saying you can look at a toddler and put them in the 2-3 bracket and a pensioner and put them in the 80-90 bracket, but you yourself haven't experienced 90 years of life. How would I best explain this? Thanks. 👍🏻

[@paulwalsh2344]

@ Echo That's a pretty decent analogy, but it's also not just about how stars or humans LOOK, but how they BEHAVE. It's not just size, but tantrums, daily commute to work, wrinkle and wealth accumulation and retirement activities that define the various stages of human life, all of which helps define the intermediate stages of development of humans. Pretty much the same goes for stars, with solar flares, enrichment of fusion products in stellar atmospheres, main sequence and expansion of the outer shell of stellar atmospheres.

[@wnrr2696]

Also with the ‘dark’ energy etc outnumbering the light and normal matter, could it be similar to how a street lamp lights a small area but the darkness around it covers more area? Still high

[@frankdalla]

From looking at the photographs of Mars... It appears that building materials are pretty much limited to sand and rocks. Therefore those who get there first should be Egyptians. They have the background to build with rocks better than any other population. Maybe mix in a few Mayans as well... Since the gravity on Mars is much less than on Earth, we can expect grand pyramids in short order.

[@crucifixgym]

I feel like I need to watch the 80s movie The Black Hole

[@frasercain]

That movie freaked me out as a kid.

[@crucifixgym]

@@frasercain I had the dolls

[@blissfulspirits6620]

I want to be the first woman to enter a black hole -portal. I can help with science for humanity's future. I asked you 'Has anyone ever been through a black hole' on a recent Q&A. I did hope you'd use my question. I'll ask a new Q next time. Thanks

[@zippyt.libertine3787]

Octopi are very short lived, they generally average two to five years depending on the species.

[@poletooke4691]

Wdym "if hawking radiation is a thing"? We've observed it already. .... I think. I'm pretty sure I saw that somewhere

[@frasercain]

Not that I’m aware of, but definitely give me a link if you find it

[@EdMcStinko]

Im pretty sure a black hole colliding with Earth wouldn't look like the thumbnail (which is too bad because it looks really cool)

[@veggiet2009]

❓If a primordial blackhole did bump into a particle on it's way through, wouldn't that potentially start a chain reaction, where another particle is drawn towards that particle via the strong force, and so if it absorbs one particle it will absorbs 2 and then 4, and then pretty soon it's a growing primordial black hole?

[@johndoeofficial4357]

how the black hole influence the shape of it's galaxy?

[@peterdavies5358]

If the further away we look the faster galaxies move apart and the further away we look the further back in time we look then why do we think the expansion is increasing?

[@jamesscanlon5733]

What would or would not we perceive if gravity waves from two separate black hole interaction events cancelled each other?

[@Yora21]

Probably interference patterns.

[@illustriouschin]

We need to corner the market on freeze dried dinosaur jerky from the moon so we can get some of that oligarch Money.

[@xtevetyler5332]

If instant time imaging isn't a problem you can use observations in summer then winter of the Earth's orbit position to create an effective telescope with diameter of twice the Earth' to sun size, or 186 million miles that creates a very big resolution capability but then images are 6 months apart so limits observations to very distant ones where parallax is irrelevant!. But We need to leave 2 telescopes orbiting the sun at Earth's distance at the summer and at winter positions constantly available, ie in summer leave one behind the do same in winter and then they orbit at the90 and 270 degree position in our orbit with us taken as 0 degrees then the delay is just 17 minutes between them or 8.5mins each so that can be synchronized ( due to light speed) maybe??

[@joaodecarvalho7012]

That was so cool! “I have no direct connection with the Frontiers of Science, but it is famous in academia. Its core goal is a response to the following: Since the second half of the twentieth century, physics has gradually lost the concision and simplicity of its classical theories. Modern theoretical models have become more and more complex, vague, and uncertain. Experimental verification has become more difficult as well. This is a sign that the forefront of physics research seems to be hitting a wall. “Members of the Frontiers of Science want to attempt a new way of thinking. To put it simply, they want to use the methods of science to discover the limits of science, to try to find out if there is a limit to how deeply and precisely science can know nature-a boundary beyond which science cannot go. The development of modern physics seems to suggest that such a line has been touched.” Also, that note: "All the evidence points to a single conclusion: Physics has never existed, and will never exist. I know what I’m doing is irresponsible. But I have no choice." Then we saw that we were getting into deep shit.

[@RyanMPierson]

Love these shows!

[@HPA97]

Corellia. Could our star system grow a lot in terms of mass by gathering interstellar dust clouds over large time scales?

[@jari2018]

if universe came from nothing and now the event horizon churns out something just like when universe was born -must be a connection there (for me)

[@jackd1582]

Not nothing. Just very very small

[@billsugden3734]

❓ I have a problem with primordial black holes. I can understand the earliest universe having the energy and density to form them, but surely that same energy and density regime would cause the black hole to grow extremely fast into maybe a supermassive black hole.

[@poletooke4691]

Maybe that's what caused the opacity?

[@frasercain]

Maybe that’s how we got supermassive black holes.

[@billsugden3734]

@@frasercain Thanks for the reply love ALL your shows.

[@userXt]

Mandalore. Not a very Sci-fi question, but an interesting one indeed. I guess the opposable-thumb hypothesis would suggest the apes or maybe even the octopus. But then again, if it takes too long, maybe dolphins will become land-bound and develop some sort of hand.

[@Yora21]

Birds do kind of have a thumb already.

[@edwardleonard7829]

Seeing anti matter is reported being the most expensive matter on earth, and has exponential energy, when will civilization succeed harvesting the van Allen belt with magnetic containers for advanced propulsion and energy applications?

[@Lazmanarus]

Assume 2 black holes of similar size colliding, one made of normal matter, the other of antimatter. Would they merge peacefully or would they annihilate each other?

[@BrettCaton]

Black holes aren't made of matter, they are just regions of intensely curved spacetime. No matter what you dump into it, it only retains charge and spin. The exception would be if antimatter had an antigravity effect, but as far as I am aware, that has not been observed. My understanding is that antimatter has the same mass property as the matter equivalent. Some exotic matter with antigravity is hypothetically possible, but no one has managed to detect it or find a path to producing it.

[@sunny_ua]

How do we know that Hawking Radiation is even real? Also, what if the information can be destroyed? What would the implications of this be?

[@frasercain]

We don’t know if it’s real. It’s just theorized based on the physics that can be tested.

[@derivious2012]

hey fraser, honest opinion, do you think we will realistically see any human visit mars in our lifetime?

[@frasercain]

Absolutely, I think we’ll see humans on Mars by the 2030s

[@Sally4th_]

So what I'm hearing is we need a second JWT at L4 so we can do interferometry on a 257,800,000km baseline :)

[@frasercain]

That would be awesome. Another at L5 too

[@h.dejong2531]

We can't do interferometry at IR wavelengths yet. Interferometry gets harder for shorter wavelengths: your timing requirement gets tighter. We haven't gotten to the point where we can store IR observations as data in small enough timeslices to do interferometry.

[@paulwalsh2344]

@@frasercain LOL but who's gonna fly and collect all those hard drives then ?

[@frasercain]

The Very Large Telescope is an infrared interferometer. It just has to be done in real time. But in theory, a space telescope can maneuver closely enough to maintain a functioning interferometer, even in the visible.

[@h.dejong2531]

@@frasercain AIUI, an optical interferometer has to maintain the distance between components to less than 1/10 the wavelength it's observing at. I don't think we can do that yet.

[@vdiitd]

Hi Fraser, do you think searching for life signatures on planets around Red Dwarfs is useful? From whatever I hear about Red Dwarfs, it seems like those are really bad places to look for life. But people still keep asking whether we can find life on planets around them.

[@frasercain]

They’re the only planets we can search right now, so we might as well until the tech improves

[@vdiitd]

@@frasercain hmm, that's understandable.

[@Yora21]

A while back, one study indicated that a considerable amount of the dangerous radiation blast might come from the poles of a red dwarf, with the region around the equator being much calmer. Which would considerably reduce the amount of radiation that hits planets in the equatorial plane. So it might not be quite as bad as it first seems.

[@markgrayson7514]

Could SpaceX quickly develop a fission rocket engine and, in order to eliminate risk, deliver it to orbit with Falcon 9 and a modified Dragon capsule with an abort system , then attach it to a fully fueled Starship in orbit for more distant unmanned missions?

[@daos3300]

follow up Q to the 'first to mars' Q - should billionaire privateer operators be allowed to do what they like on mars and other planets? since they generally don't exhibit a particularly high degree of responsibility, or moral or ethical standards, can they be trusted to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner in a pristine environment?

[@MyLittleMagneton]

When starts form, do they ignite spontaneously or gradually?

[@montylc2001]

When at the correct conditions the reactions occur spontaneously and cause a chain reaction, which settles down during the process of outward pressure vs inward pressure.

[@ronaldvankuyk908]

Your are a walking star cheers yunis

[@suthunrath1220]

Is it possible that Uranus has a natural stable Event Horizon in its core?

[@bmwolgas]

Question: Do nearby objects affect escape velocity? For instance, does the earth's escape velocity vary depending on where the moon is in the sky? Reason I'm asking is becuase if it does, could 2 black holes be positioned near each other in such a way you have a big black hole exerting gravity on a smaller one, thereby canceling out enough of the gravity at the event horizon to bring the escape velocity of the smaller black hole back below the speed of light, effectively destroying the event horizon?

[@geoffreyburdett]

What's with the Star Wars planet names at the top?

[@frasercain]

That's a way to vote for your favourite question and answer.

[@juliamaxfalcon5483]

Hoth all the way

[@mralekito]

Hoth

[@LordBitememan]

What's the viability of using black holes to dispose of Nickelback?

[@frasercain]

They'd be gone without a trace.

[@Yora21]

The same as for everything else. Gone forever-

[@Wildblood]

Can James Webb be used as part of the Event Horizon Telescope network to get even better photo of supermassive black holes? Would that give us a telescope with a 1.5m km diameter (bigger than even the sun!)? If not, how many Webbs would we need to have to do that?

[@charleslivingston2256]

No. The event horizon telescope is detecting radio waves. Those are longer wavelengths than JWST has detectors.

[@Jenab7]

Your answers are better than acceptable. Do you know what you should think about book, sold on Amazon, whose condition is described as "acceptable"? Acceptable really means not acceptable. Good means it'll do in a pinch. Very good means acceptable.

[@davidguy209]

Hoth 😀

[@Raz.C]

So you're saying "James Webb will return such fantastic images, you'll shit someone else's pants!!!"

[@sierravortec2494]

Hoth, I will be very disappointed if space dinosaurs doesn’t win

[@frasercain]

Chunks of space dinosaurs anyway

[@RedVynil]

"Uncrewed"? How about, unmanned?

[@wnrr2696]

Did the other planet where the asteroid belt was once hit us and result in the current earth plus moon? If so could that result in what appears to be parts of earth material on the moon, pretty much is the moon part old-earth or what’s leftover from the planet that hit us at an angle but we ended up larger so it orbits us rather than flying off when it hits us? Or would it be more like a coalescence or the remains became the moon, contaminated with earth rock? Could we have been bigger before? Sorry for the question barrage, high, for once lol

[@paulwalsh2344]

Well one thing to remember is that the mass of the asteroid belt is not anywhere near planetary... like it's only about 5% the mass of Earth's Moon. The gravitational interplay between the Sun and Jupiter, constantly revolving around the Sun churned up the material of the region of the asteroid belt preventing conglomeration of primordial dust and rocks to achieve anything much larger than existing Ceres, Vesta and Pallas. However the rest of your comment is the actual current and most plausible theory of how the Moon was created. That a smaller super young Earth and another Mars sized object dubbed Theia obliquely collided, the cores of both planets coalescing into our Earth's core and a lot of the mixture of both planet's mantles spraying into orbit of this core, some falling back to Earth and some coalescing into the Moon.

[@dnblegend280]

Question: I know this is silly, but everywhere the sun is seen as a orange/yellow colour. Isn’t the true colour of the sun actually White?

[@frasercain]

Yes, it’s actually white. We see it through the atmosphere, which changes its color.

[@dnblegend280]

@@frasercain i feel like this needs to pushed more. In schools when they show us the sun it’s orange and most people think it’s that colour and it’s just false

[@cosmoscarl4332]

Sorry Fraser. Didn't mean to sound rude when I corrected you.

[@johndoeofficial4357]

how is a galactic super massive black hole is formed?

[@tellusmars7770]

Crait

[@harbifm766766]

first to Mars?! chaiiiiina

[@YousufAhmad0]

According to the Internet, the heaviest star found is 265x the mass of our sun.

[@frasercain]

You can get heavier stars through collisions between less massive stars.

[@RedVynil]

When are we finally gonna start using mag-lev instead of fuel-wasting rockets? We've HAD mag-lev since at least the early `60's!

[@joaodecarvalho7012]

Yavin.