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Not thinking relativistically
Posted by Greenknight_z
16th Aug
Just
In
In
It may not mean anything to you but
Edited by wingnut1024
Updated - 17th Aug
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It might have screamed, but it is not screaming.
Anthropomorphized it might be, but if the star screamed as it fell into the black hole, it did it a very, very long time ago. It is interesting how the article (and lots of discussion on similar galactic topics) are discussed as if they are current. The wave just got here, but the event is calculated to have happened 3.9 billion years ago. Or am I missing something?
Posted by paulminett
15th Aug
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Who cares when it happened?
I think the point is that it made a "screaming" sound, correctly noted as "moaning" by the author, when it got sucked into the black hole. When it happened is not what the article is about.
Posted by Jeffp77
16th Aug
0
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Good point
Thanks for pointing that out -- all of this happened a very long time ago. To us on Earth, it only _seems_ to be happening now.
Laura
Laura
Posted by laurashin
15th Aug
+2
Votes
Not thinking relativistically
It's an event that's separated from us in space-time by 3.9 billion light-years, before the radiation from it reached us it hadn't happened for us. Not meaningful to talk about how long ago it happened as something apart from how far away it is, space and time are one thing. Hard to wrap your mind around, which is why they say few people really understand relativity - our language is really not equipped to talk about events over relativistic distances.
On Earth, we can talk about two things happening simultaneously in different places and it has meaning because we have a fixed frame of reference - the planet itself. Over interstellar distances it's not meaningful - there is no fixed frame of reference, since space-time bends. Thus it means nothing to talk about when something light-years away really happened.
On Earth, we can talk about two things happening simultaneously in different places and it has meaning because we have a fixed frame of reference - the planet itself. Over interstellar distances it's not meaningful - there is no fixed frame of reference, since space-time bends. Thus it means nothing to talk about when something light-years away really happened.
Posted by Greenknight_z
16th Aug
0
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It may not mean anything to you but
it's a way to look into the past in the universe without a physical time machine.
Without a time reference it would be like how UA had misplaced that unoccompanied child. She was misplaced. Done. Nothing about how long she waited, how many connecting flights were missed or how many days she went without her toothbrush, clean clothes, etc.
Here's something to wrap your head around. In a billion or so years Earth will be burnt to a crisp as our Sun enters its red giant phase. Eventually Earth will become part of the Sun as will Mecury and Venus. Until then carry on.
Without a time reference it would be like how UA had misplaced that unoccompanied child. She was misplaced. Done. Nothing about how long she waited, how many connecting flights were missed or how many days she went without her toothbrush, clean clothes, etc.
Here's something to wrap your head around. In a billion or so years Earth will be burnt to a crisp as our Sun enters its red giant phase. Eventually Earth will become part of the Sun as will Mecury and Venus. Until then carry on.
Posted by wingnut1024
Updated - 17th Aug