I’m not an astrophysicist, but that ends up being the weird perception thing about them, right? Mostly they’re like a star of the same mass, and then a few will get really big and be at the center of a galaxy, but the perception is that of a natural disaster.
Big ball of plasma in the center of the solar system that will definitely eventually explode and wipe out anything left alive on any surrounding planet? NBD. An object of the same mass but it’s smaller so it doesn’t shine? People picture it as being more immediately violent for some reason because the “light can’t escape” thing sounds so wild.
Yeah, black holes in media where they are depicted as a giant space vacuum cleaner is a big pet peave of mine. Unless you get really close, nothing is remarkable about the orbital mechanics of a black hole. The equivalent mass star would have burned you up at a much further distance than the gravity starts to become noticeably wonky.
It’s a shame that writers focus so much on the gravity and neglect accretion disks and astrophysical jets which do extend large distances and are visually stunning as well.
Big ball of plasma in the center of the solar system that will definitely eventually explode and wipe out anything left alive on any surrounding planet?
The sun isn’t heavy enough to go supernova. (Unless it has a companion, but there’s no evidence of one so far.)
Pop sci-fi seems to be fond of intermediate-mass black holes (EG Interstellar, Star Trek StrangeNew Worlds), and for something kinda the size of a star, they are “scary.”
In other instances (like in TV Foundation), a close orbit to the accretion disk is a source of suspense.
And then there’s the “stealth” aspect. Stellar-mass ones and below are very small and (potentially) quiet for something with the mass of a star, eg easy to stumble upon.
And in some very advanced universes (eg the online Orion’s Arm), even with “hard” sci fi, swimming through a star’s nuclear plasma is totally doable. But a black hole is an impossible boundry of physics, and an particularly extreme object useful for astroengineering.
They are like stars in the sense of orbital mechanics.
But a star can be completely understood by the laws of physics we know. While a black hole breaks our understanding and we have no idea what’s going on in there.
I’m not an astrophysicist, but that ends up being the weird perception thing about them, right? Mostly they’re like a star of the same mass, and then a few will get really big and be at the center of a galaxy, but the perception is that of a natural disaster.
Big ball of plasma in the center of the solar system that will definitely eventually explode and wipe out anything left alive on any surrounding planet? NBD. An object of the same mass but it’s smaller so it doesn’t shine? People picture it as being more immediately violent for some reason because the “light can’t escape” thing sounds so wild.
Yeah, black holes in media where they are depicted as a giant space vacuum cleaner is a big pet peave of mine. Unless you get really close, nothing is remarkable about the orbital mechanics of a black hole. The equivalent mass star would have burned you up at a much further distance than the gravity starts to become noticeably wonky.
It’s a shame that writers focus so much on the gravity and neglect accretion disks and astrophysical jets which do extend large distances and are visually stunning as well.
If we ever invent FTL someone is gonna make a black hole bomb.
It’s already invented, just put enough mass in too little space. Don’t need a star like mass, any will do if you can compress it enough.
You don’t need much mass to simulate a black hole
The sun isn’t heavy enough to go supernova. (Unless it has a companion, but there’s no evidence of one so far.)
It will still expand and shed enough stuff to effectively blanch whatever part of the solar system it doesn’t actually engulf, though.
It doesn’t even have to go supernova to kill everything, which is kind of the point.
Pop sci-fi seems to be fond of intermediate-mass black holes (EG Interstellar, Star Trek StrangeNew Worlds), and for something kinda the size of a star, they are “scary.”
In other instances (like in TV Foundation), a close orbit to the accretion disk is a source of suspense.
And then there’s the “stealth” aspect. Stellar-mass ones and below are very small and (potentially) quiet for something with the mass of a star, eg easy to stumble upon.
And in some very advanced universes (eg the online Orion’s Arm), even with “hard” sci fi, swimming through a star’s nuclear plasma is totally doable. But a black hole is an impossible boundry of physics, and an particularly extreme object useful for astroengineering.
They are like stars in the sense of orbital mechanics.
But a star can be completely understood by the laws of physics we know. While a black hole breaks our understanding and we have no idea what’s going on in there.
It’s the fear of the unknown.