Vacation Time! pt2

[Sling]

Um, no.

The world wont be killed by pollution, ever.
It will howered be rendered uninhabitable by humans, but not destroyed. It'll still be intact, all resources still there only, I dunno, tainted.

Oh... so I guess the sun is going to win after all.

[Teenr0cker]

Oh... so I guess the sun is going to win after all.

It usually wins in staring contests too.

[Sling]

Oh... so I guess the sun is going to win after all.

It usually wins in staring contests too.

Unless, of course, it was up against a Black Hole.

[EmperorJeramyu]

Uhuh. Considering you can't see black holes, I doubt there would even be a staring contest.

[Sling]

Yes you can, well, at least indirectly you can.

[Telephalsion]

Yes you can, well, at least indirectly you can.

You can't see it, you can see the effects of it, but not the hole itself, seeing is picking up reflected (or projected) photons within the wavelenght that we can perseive, from an object or otherwise, black holes don't project no visible photons. X-rays, sure, but no light.

[Teenr0cker]

The accretion disk is the swirling, high-mass entity around the hole. There's a whole damn lot of it, so it has a high vicosity, aka resistance to move. This resistance creates heat energy. This accumulates to such a great degree that x-rays and UV-rays are emitted as it is converted into energy. Supposedly the energy converted from mass is about 50% efficient while nuclear fusion is only a few percentages. This might also contribute to the detection. All that activity is bound to get noticed eventually.

Plus, like Tele said, it's light that allows you to see things. x-rays are higher up on the Electromagnetic spectrum, so they have a greater ability to try and force itself away from the black hole.

[Strayed Wanderer]

The fact that anyone knows what an accretion disk is would impress me more if it wasn't on Stargate last night.

[Teenr0cker]

Got a friend who is taking a class on Astronomy this summer. She'd mentioned a few buzz-words, including that one, so I asked for her to elaborate.

Plus, I have another friend that is interning at JPL, the jet propulsion lab in our city, and he's the guy who has to deal with all that crap about the data from the accretion disks from decade-old photos. All he ever does is look at wavelengths and try and determine their specs.