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Very cool, and very mind bending. Very faithful to the Event Horizon Telescope rendering. A decade ago I got really into black holes for like a few months, and

by aizk 2mo ago

Very cool, and very mind bending. Very faithful to the Event Horizon Telescope rendering. A decade ago I got really into black holes for like a few months, and I read Kip Thorne's book called "The Science of Interstellar", talking all about black hole simulations. Have you read it? I wonder how the simulation tech has evolved, as 10 years is a lot. I do wonder if you do like, size estimates of a black hole in my room. Suppose I have a black hole in my room, I'd be curious to know what the mass of that is, like a fun fact, tidbit somewhere.

aplavin 2mo ago
The technology has come a long way indeed! The first simulations of how a black hole would look like are from 1979, by Jean-Pierre Luminet – take some time to find and look at them, it's super impressive what they achieved using that era tech! Now, we can get much higher-resolution ones in real time on any smartphone. I work in the Event Horizon Telescope, studying jets accelerated by black holes, and immediate black hole surroundings as well. I do ray tracing / radiative transfer simulations, and this app is an adaptation of those simulations – with the primary focus on being physically accurate under reasonable assumptions. And totally, I enjoyed listening to Kip Thorne's lectures and talking to him, he gives them in a very approachable style while remaining honest!
aplavin 1mo ago
> I do wonder if you do like, size estimates of a black hole in my room. Suppose I have a black hole in my room, I'd be curious to know what the mass of that is, like a fun fact, tidbit somewhere. Forgot to answer this first! Basically, ~1 cm radius black hole has the mass of the Earth – really, Earth would need to get this small to become a black hole. I've made a very simple demo for a kids lecture I gave recently, https://plav.in/outreach_demos/squeeze-earth-v2.html https://plav.in/outreach_demos/squeeze-earth-v2.html. Also see https://xkcd.com/1680/ https://xkcd.com/1680/ of course :)

by aizk 2mo ago

aplavin 2mo ago

The technology has come a long way indeed! The first simulations of how a black hole would look like are from 1979, by Jean-Pierre Luminet – take some time to find and look at them, it's super impressive what they achieved using that era tech! Now, we can get much higher-resolution ones in real time on any smartphone. I work in the Event Horizon Telescope, studying jets accelerated by black holes, and immediate black hole surroundings as well. I do ray tracing / radiative transfer simulations, and this app is an adaptation of those simulations – with the primary focus on being physically accurate under reasonable assumptions. And totally, I enjoyed listening to Kip Thorne's lectures and talking to him, he gives them in a very approachable style while remaining honest!

aplavin 1mo ago

> I do wonder if you do like, size estimates of a black hole in my room. Suppose I have a black hole in my room, I'd be curious to know what the mass of that is, like a fun fact, tidbit somewhere. Forgot to answer this first! Basically, ~1 cm radius black hole has the mass of the Earth – really, Earth would need to get this small to become a black hole. I've made a very simple demo for a kids lecture I gave recently, https://plav.in/outreach_demos/squeeze-earth-v2.html https://plav.in/outreach_demos/squeeze-earth-v2.html. Also see https://xkcd.com/1680/ https://xkcd.com/1680/ of course :)