Black Hole question
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For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
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For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
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Should have asked uncle google..... http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoleHowSee.html[^]
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Cool, thanks. I thought my questions as those that lead you to a domino of answers, where you have to know concepts piled on top of one another. So I went to the lounge for a hopefully straightforward one from a resident sme.
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For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
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The simple answer is, you don't see them. You see the stuff around them and what that stuff is doing and infer the existance of the black hole from that.
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Dave Kreskowiak -
For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
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My lay answer, being far from a physics major1 (although I think I've gotten a good grip on it, being able to move and all): Besides the distortions in the remaining light close to a black hole, black holes are not seen by telescopes, but they are observed by people to exist because of their lack of radiated light. It is much the same as 'seeing' that one room in a series of rooms is dark, despite not being able to see the dark room for easily inferred reasons. So yes, it is just inferred from behaviour around the black hole, until it become the Black Whole. ;P 1 As far away as I can statistically be given a non zero probability of having a neighbour that is a physical major.
modified on Saturday, July 30, 2011 10:01 AM
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For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
---------------------------------------------------------- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
swjam wrote:
how are they seen by telescopes?
You don't. You typically infer them by the orbit of a nearby star and/or the radiation being emitted by an accretion disk outside the event horizon. Marc
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For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
---------------------------------------------------------- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
They cause a disturbance in the Force.
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For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
---------------------------------------------------------- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
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For the physics majors out there, if black holes have extremely powerful gravity that even light gets sucked in, how are they seen by telescopes? Where are the light collected by these telescopes coming from? Is it just inferred from the behavior of matter in the vicinity of the black hole?
---------------------------------------------------------- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
There are a lot of really mind bending effects with black holes and light. The event horizon traps light, but there is a photosphere outside the event horizon where light is trapped in an orbit around the black hole. Near that, there are light orbits that circle the black hole and return to the point of orgin, so if you are close to a black hole you will see an infinite number of distorted copies of yourself. It's all on the wikipedia page for black holes including computer renderings of the effect.
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