Welcome to the Black Hole

No, this is not a story about Congress. A new program shows what scientists believe it would look like to approach a black hole. Now, you can experience the light show without the inconvenience of being crushed to the size of a pea by the gravity.

Thomas Müller and colleague Daniel Weiskopf of the University of Stuttgart in Germany are the creators of the new site below.

At the start of each tour, you see a black circle that marks the hole’s event horizon – the boundary from which nothing, not even light, can escape.

Here is another trip through a black hole (the inner horizon point is pretty cool):

Here is NASA’s version with a really cool soundtrack:

For the new German site and video, click here.

13 thoughts on “Welcome to the Black Hole”

  1. This is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog, especially its discussion. 19-1-2011_19_20_6

  2. The NASA compilation was nice. If you liked the collisions here’s a link to a simulator for making your own galactic crashes. Very easy to use. The Applet opens in another window and the control settings are all explained in a nother window.

    Also thanks Mike Maskell for the information. The view from the outside is familiar to me but the inside view is new and fascinating.

    http://burro.cwru.edu/JavaLab/GalCrashWeb/main.html

  3. Other perspectives of a black hole approach are interesting to think about, as well…

    If you were watching someone else approach a black hole, you would see time begin to slow for them as they neared the singularity (the center of the black hole). From your perspective, they would literally take forever to reach the center. You wouldn’t see time actually stop for them, but it would get to the point where it seems like they were frozen (including anything going on inside the spaceship if you could see through the windows), since there would come a point where a second for them takes a million years for you.

    If you were approaching a black hole and looked backwards to watch the rest of the universe, you would see time speed up, and just before reaching the center of the black hole you would witness the end of time (if such a concept has meaning).

    These phenomena come from the time dilation effect of special relativity… There is also a length contraction effect that I’ll leave out for now. The concepts behind special relativity are actually fairly easy to understand, and you can find simple tutorials by googling “special relativity.” The dynamics behind the black hole itself are governed by general relativity, which explains gravity and involves far more complicated math.

    MS in Physics before I decided to be a lawyer…

  4. Science actually showed us this back in 1979.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzUJJKDa558&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

  5. New for Spring!

    The M/AY Bus Company is now taking reservations to Black Hole Country!

    This package available only to Republicans and Democrats currently in office.

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