What you’re looking at is a computer-generated image, posted by NASA today, that shows the visual distortions that take place as light bends towards the immensely strong gravitational forces:
Every star in the normal frame has at least two bright images—one on each side of the black hole. Near the black hole, you can see the whole sky – light from every direction is bent around and comes back to you.
So that’s what it’s like to stare a black hole dead in the eye. It’s sure less scary than falling into one.
ice
Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 8:00 PMIt’s like the butt hole of the universe.
Steve
Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 11:05 PMAnyone else thinking of ‘that scene’ from Event Horizon?
Daniel
Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:22 AMI think the pitch black centre is the most scary part. Screw the outsides, and the way light bends – that’s nothing you’re staring at! That is something from science fiction here on earth. To actually be face to face with nothing or a portal in real life is mind blowing.
I’m not saying it’s “fiction”, i’m just saying, as far as we know here on earth, we’ve never seen black holes. As much as we know of their existence – they are still extremely foreign to us earth people.
Reminds me a lot of the doctor who special when they went into why the master keeps hearing those “drums” – from staring into a time portal for too long
Frogztar
Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 9:19 AMYou aren’t coming face-to-face with “nothing” or a “portal”. It’s simply a body of mass whose k-radius (radius of a body where escape velocity is greater than the speed of light) exceeds its physical radius. To put it in perspective, the k-radius of the earth is 1cm from the core and the sun’s is about a metre. The truly mind-blowing fact is that approaching teh event horizon, the laws of physics break down; reality no longer applies and because time is relative, eternity and zero-time time exist simultaneously.
Daniel
Friday, December 10, 2010 at 10:16 PMPhysics wasn’t a strongpoint in school, therefore i found your concept a bit hard to interpret. However, the last parts of your comment were rather intriguing! It’s pretty heavy stuff.