We're all doomed !

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OFSO
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We're all doomed !

#1 Post by OFSO » Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:18 pm

Forget our trivial, local problems. I read that the large black hole at the centre of our galaxy is exhibiting 'anomalous behaviour', becoming increasingly rapacious and gobbling up stars and gas clouds at ever faster rates.

The possibility of a galactic core collapse, domino-style, is one with which all sci-fi fans will be familiar, as is the fact that Older Races, nearer the core, will be the first to leave.

Out on the Rim, as we are, we should be keeping our eye open for signs of fleeing Optimiae. Possibly a Klemperer Rosette hurtling past, or a General Contact Vehicle. Astrophysicists will be the last people to tell us.

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Re: We're all doomed !

#2 Post by Undried Plum » Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:29 pm

Has it got a name?

HMRC, perhaps?

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Re: We're all doomed !

#3 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:35 pm

Given that the black hole is some 26 27000 light years away we will have to backdate our concern!
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Re: We're all doomed !

#4 Post by Stoneboat » Sat Sep 14, 2019 1:24 pm

...as is the fact that Older Races, nearer the core, will be the first to leave.
The Pierson's Puppeteers will be the first to leave, taking the secrets of their General Products hulls with them. Come to think of it, has anyone seen a Puppeteer recently?

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Re: We're all doomed !

#5 Post by 4mastacker » Sat Sep 14, 2019 1:37 pm

Earlier today someone on BBC Radio was on about a near-Earth miss today by some asteroid that will pass about 3 million miles from this planet. The speaker was voicing all the doom and gloom of the catastrophe that could occur if this object hit our planet - mass extinctions, a nuclear winter lasting many years, complete continents wiped out -it would give the little Swedish lass apoplexy.

Apparently there is a new scale of measurement at the BBC - 'the Shard' - this thing is twice the size of the Shard. Tennis courts, Olympic swimming pools and London buses are so last century.

As I'm still writing this, I guess it must have mi
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Re: We're all doomed !

#6 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 14, 2019 1:47 pm

The Elongelongs of Universe Sector Magnus, know for their great size, usually in the order of ten's of thousands of light years are reporting one of their number might have got his toe caught in the bath's plughole!
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Re: We're all doomed !

#7 Post by Sisemen » Sat Sep 14, 2019 2:16 pm

Fer gawds sake don’t let the global warmist mob get hold of this.

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Re: We're all doomed !

#8 Post by OFSO » Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:48 pm

Didn't some kind of long tubular object which they named Oumuamua pass through our solar system in September 2017 heading out from the core....it was said "couldn't possibly be an alien spacecraft as it remained radio silent" but if you were escaping a core meltdown and passing the Earth, would you want a load of pathetic refuges demanding to be taken on board ? Far better to stay schtum. Unless you are Vogons, of course, intending to give a poetry reading and needing an audience for the sub-lightspeed transit to the Lesser Magellanic Clouds...

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Re: We're all doomed !

#9 Post by Magnus » Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:52 pm

Wait! It wisnae me! I only designed the instruments . . . .

OFSO, if you're from the bottom half of the planet, you'll know how fekn magnificent the Magellanic Clouds are. Haven't been dunnunda for years to see them.

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Re: We're all doomed !

#10 Post by Magnus » Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:54 pm

On re-reading this, Sisemen, surely we should alert the warmistas to the fact that the black hole will take all that nasty energy stuff from planet Earth. Along with the planet, of course, but you can't have everything......

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Re: We're all doomed !

#11 Post by Magnus » Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:58 pm

I'm on a roll. The (by then) supermassive black hole will, of course, be drawn to the France/Switzerland border where the white coats have been messing about with the LHC where they shouldn't've been messing. I KNEW the French were to blame.

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Re: We're all doomed !

#12 Post by OFSO » Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:09 pm

......all those Toblerones will be sucked towards CERN, but will interlock and block the entrance to the LHC, thus saving the planet....their surface profile was designed to fulfill precisely that function. That, and breaking pensioner's dental plates in Worthing-on-Sea.

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Re: We're all doomed !

#13 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:38 pm

Magnus wrote:
Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:54 pm
On re-reading this, Sisemen, surely we should alert the warmistas to the fact that the black hole will take all that nasty energy stuff from planet Earth. Along with the planet, of course, but you can't have everything......
Living near the accretion disk spinning around a black hole, like the one noted, presumably pulling in gas or other material some +-27 thousand years ago, was likely to have been somewhat toasty at many wavelengths/frequencies but predominantly x-rays, in the immediate area at the time and this is presumably why our dark galactic attractor is looking a lot lighter here in our neighborhood at the moment all these years later!

And let's not get onto the subject of Hawking radiation either lest we spoil a fun thread with too much science.
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Re: We're all doomed !

#14 Post by Undried Plum » Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:57 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:38 pm

Living near the accretion disk spinning around a black hole, like the one noted, presumably pulling in gas or other material some +-27 thousand years ago, was likely to have been somewhat toasty at many wavelengths in the immediate area area at the time and this is presumably why our dark neighbour is looking a lot lighter here in our neighborhood at the moment all these years later!
I 'ate when that 'appens.

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Re: We're all doomed !

#15 Post by jimtherev » Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:18 pm

I'm looking away and pretending it won't happen

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Re: We're all doomed !

#16 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:53 pm

Nah we will be all right! Events like this are best observed from far away across space time. A bit like watching a distant camp fire from a vantage across a valley at night where a log falls and the brief flare is seen but not felt by us whereas those sitting immediately around the fire at the time might get their whiskers singed!
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Re: We're all doomed !

#17 Post by ribrash » Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:14 pm

Is it time to get out the tin foil hats and the peanut butter ?

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Re: We're all doomed !

#18 Post by Slasher » Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:03 am

Don't forget Older Races's planets would have to be real close to Black Holery before they're instantaneously spaghettified and singularitied. Even if our next door Proxima was a black bastard (supermassive or not) we'd have nothing to worry about.

I think the worstest fate would be watching the Sun being slowly sucked away by a neutron star. Neuts kill by stealth, but by then the resulting radiation would've slowly fried everyone before said sun disappeared. Sh!t of a way to go. At least with a BH it's over and done relatively quickly once the Bulls Roar has been reached.

I hope though the BH in question has vacuumed up the Vogons by now. I hear Milliways is calculated to be 93 trillion years in the future, give or take a month. That's a long time for a depressed robot to be a car park attendant.

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Re: We're all doomed !

#19 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:03 am

Slasher wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:03 am
Don't forget Older Races's planets would have to be real close to Black Holery before they're instantaneously spaghettified and singularitied. Even if our next door Proxima was a black bastard (supermassive or not) we'd have nothing to worry about.
Captain Slasher's point is well made.
Inhabited planets could exist near the supermassive black holes that lie at the cores of most galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, harbors a black hole whose mass is as great as four million stars put together. Known as Sgr A* (Sgr stands for Sagittarius), its innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) has roughly the size of the orbit of Mercury around our sun.
Living near a Supermassive Black hole

The article makes some amusing/tongue in cheek points about how living near a supermassive black hole like the one under discussion might even be beneficial.

Ted Talk on this fascinating subject

NB - This chap talks about "sucking". A black hole doesn't suck, its immense gravity simply transforms/warps all the know the dimensions of space/time after the event horizon to point towards the singularity. Crudely, all dimensions would be orientated in one direction that would result in an infinitely accelerated fall to a point where all know laws of physics both classical and quantum would break down at a point of infinite gravitational/force or compression.

Sgr A* is no threat to us here in the galactic suburbs and as Slasher and the article note, you would have to be proportionately very, very close indeed to be affected by the distortion of space time. If our sun, which is far too small to ever collapse into a black hole, was big enough to do so. a planet with an earth like orbit would continue to orbit safely around the black beast. Obviously if one crossed the event horizon all bets would be off but even before you got there you would have noticed all sorts of strange effects in the area between the event horizon and the photon sphere, where light would effectively be traveling in a path around the outermost area of the black hole and the event horizon. If one were to encounter this strange area in the context of a small black hole you could look at yourself from behind while looking forward and the time dilation effects would result in all sorts of strange phenomena and paradoxes.

The biggest risk to a planet near a black hole would being bathed in x-ray radiation or literally baked or vaporised by an accretion disk that might result if the hole was to encounter gas and other matter, for example if two galaxies were to collide as ours will in the future. Clearly Sgr A* encountered something, maybe an errant gas cloud, some +- 26000 years ago and we are safely seeing the results today across the vast reaches of space and time.

Photon Sphere

As I begin to perceive that Captain Slasher is a fan of astronomy, cosmology and Douglas Adams I am heartened to think that I may be able to discuss these things with him in the pub after our flight (having being offered the second officer's seat in his crew). I promise never to recite Vogon poetry out loud as is my wont when I am flying solo. I appreciate that while black holes don't suck, Vogon poetry definitely does.
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Your destination remains
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Re: We're all doomed !

#20 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:20 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:03 am

Ted Talk on this fascinating subject

NB - This chap talks about "sucking". A black hole doesn't suck, its immense gravity simply transforms/warps the dimensions of space/time after the event horizon to point towards the singularity. Crudely, all dimensions would be warped/orientated in one direction that would result in an infinitely accelerated fall to a point where all known laws of physics both classical and quantum would break down at a point of infinite gravitational/force or compression.
Typo free now! Gravity abhors a typo as any fule kno!
Though you remain
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"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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