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BLACK HOLES Philip Freeman Roberta Tevlin A relatively general introduction to BLACK HOLES Curiouser and Curiouser What are black holes? Can you get there from here? Do black holes really form? How? Seeing is believing (maybe) Observing Black Holes FIRST… (NO, NOT A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS) What do we already know about Black Holes? UNIVERSITY OF HOLLYWOOD: In which we realise that sometimes movies and TV are not to be trusted! EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PHYSICS I LEARNED FROM MOVIES…. There is a video that goes here, but I have taken it from the slide show for fear of crashing things. You can find the youtube clip. <play video in player> Try searching “Planet Vulcan owned by Black Hole” WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE SUN BECAME A BLACK HOLE? The sun could not become a black hole due to any known process, but suppose some special effect turns the sun into a black hole RIGHT NOW. What would happen? Looking at that answer can help us understand our existing understanding of black holes. Concept Test Whiteboard Exercise Concept Test Which path would the earth follow right after the sun was turned into a black hole? A B C D Before What would happen: The sun’s mass is the same, so there is no change in gravity. Therefore there is no change in the earth’s orbit! A Many of our students have the idea that black holes have special/extra forces that “suck in” everything. Help! The gravitational pull of something with 1/10th the mass of a hemoglobin molecule is destroying the planet! The fears some people had about the LHC are rooted in the same idea. SO… WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE REALLY? And what are they like? THE BIG IDEA: A HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT In which we see how a perfectly logical idea can, when carried to its logical conclusion, make everybody’s head hurt! a)Classical Black Holes (dark stars) b)Outlandish Results from Relativity (Why are black holes so impossibly weird, and three impossible ways to think about them!) NEWTON’S GRAVITATION If light is made out of ‘corpuscles’ (little bits) Then gravity should affect light And since light has a finite speed… If a star is big enough light will not be able to escape! A DARK STAR! IF MASS IS LARGE ENOUGH, AND R IS SMALL ENOUGH, THEN LIGHT CAN’T ESCAPE! LIGHT CAN’T ESCAPE IF R IS SMALL ENOUGH Notice how light particles slow down and fall back into the star? Does that seem a bit odd? AT FIRST THE IDEA THAT LIGHT WAS A WAVE SEEMED TO MAKE ALL THIS IRRELEVANT Michell (1783), Laplace (1796): “Look! Particles of light can’t escape from a really big star!” Young (1803) “But light’s a wave.” Everybody: “Oh, never mind!” Einstein (1916): “But light’s still affected by gravity!” Everybody: Woah… weird!! EINSTEIN SHOWED THAT GRAVITATION CAUSES (OR MORE PRECISELY GRAVITY IS) A ‘SLOWING DOWN’ OF TIME. If the field is strong enough (well, actually if the potential is ‘deep’ enough) then time stops! (and if that wasn’t bad enough, past that point gravity is so strong that nothing can stop things from collapsing to a mathematical point… which seems a bit small, even in times when there’s so much downsizing!) Extra: Brief into to General Relativity INSIDE A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD TIME IS SLOWED Compared to this clock This clock is slower Equations BEING DEEPER IN A GRAVITATIONAL “WELL” SLOWS DOWN TIME! With a strong enough field time is STOPPED Stronger still and… what?? SINGULARITIES? The GR equations ‘blow up’ for strong fields! – At a certain radius (the “Event Horizon”) time as seen from the outside STOPS. This radius is the most fundamental description of the black hole. – Deep inside everything goes to infinity, and nothing makes any sense! “Black Holes are Where God Divided by Zero” FALLING INTO A BLACK HOLE (DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME) The closer you get the slower time goes Help! I’ve fallen And I c a n ’ t Ge t Ouu… At least as seen from OUTSIDE BUT THIS IS NOT THE WHOLE PICTURE The way in which objects seem to freeze (and fade out) as we watch from outside lead to an early misunderstanding about black holes, and an earlier name for them: the “Frozen Star”. Collasing star slows and “freezes” at the event horizon: ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: One of the things than changed this view was the discovery of a description that followed the infalling star, rather than standing back and watching from outside. From this point of view things look very different, and the ‘freezing’ does not mean things stop! AN ANALOGY Note: No actual fish were harmed in the production of this example! And the observers suffered only briefly! GOING OVER NIAGARA FALLS WITH NO BARREL: Imagine you are going over a waterfall. You send messages out by attaching them to fish (like homing pigeons… just go with it!)and sending them upstream to your friends: FROM OUTSIDE: You will send out the fish at a regular frequency (Tweets? Blubs?): From outside the fish arrive one after the other, but as the water flows faster they are slowed down going upstream so they start to be spaced further apart. A MESSAGE HORIZON: Eventually the water is flowing as fast as the fish can swim, so it no longer gets anywhere, it just swims as fast as it can in one place: The message horizon… Last message to arrive (very late) This fish swims in one place Any further messages go down the falls with you… WHAT HAPPENS AS YOU GO OVER THE FALL IS DEPENDENT ON WHO IS OBSERVING IT! What do your friends upriver observe on the basis of your fish signals as you go over the falls? What do you observe yourself as you go over the falls? This could be a bit subtle, let’s try a “think, pair, share” The fish-signals from so the observer going over the onfalls this one! arrive with lower and lower frequency, until • Think about it for a minute they stop altogether. But this does not mean that • the Thenobserver we’ll signal you to at pairthe up message with another is for stopped horizon, participant andlast see if you agreeis. only that the message • Then we’ll discuss it together briefly. WHAT HAPPENS AT THE EVENT HORIZON IS DEPENDENT ON WHO IS OBSERVING IT! Just like the fish-signals you sent as you went over a waterfall, the frequency of light signals is decreased as you fall in. The difference here is that the fishes swim more slowly, but light always travels at the same speed… it loses energy instead (the gravitational red-shift). Also… those light signals are tied to the nature of time, while the fish-signals are not. (People who fish may feel differently about that last) But the analogy is pretty good despite that. There is a full mathematical treatment, called the GullstrandPainlevé metric, which describes black holes in exactly this way! HOW IS IT THAT YOUR MESSAGES SLOW DOWN AND STOP… BUT TIME DOESN’T STOP FOR YOU AS YOU FALL IN? Time axis 1 As you fall into a black hole your time as seen by you and your time as seen by an outside (nonfalling) observer seem to be really different! Well, remember from Special What’s with that? Relativity that differences in time were due to two observers’ time axes pointing in different directions. NO ESCAPE: As you cross the event horizon your time axis is tipped so much that it now points AT THE CENTRE OF THE BLACK HOLE You can no more point your ship away from the singularity than you can drive your car away from tomorrow! FROZEN STAR VS BLACK HOLE Static Dynamic (and kinda boring) (but doomed) AT THE CENTRE: THE SINGULARITY The event horizon is a critical and extreme place, but inside is stranger yet. At the centre of the black hole is the point where time is directed and where time ends. A single mathematical point which sooner or later (whatever that means in this context) contains everything that has ever fallen across the horizon. This is the SINGULARITY “Black Holes are Where God Divided by Zero” THREE WAYS TO THINK ABOUT THE BLACK HOLE’S EVENT HORIZON • Warped spacetime (time axis switches to “inward”) • Point of no return (escape velocity > c) Extra: Why is • Infalling spacetime (homing fish) this everybody’s picture of a black hole? MORE WAYS TO THINK ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE In which we remind ourselves that we have described the event horizon in multiple ways, all of them bizarre! We’ve already looked briefly at a black hole as an extreme of warped spacetime… but this is pretty tricky if we aren’t comfortable with general relativity (ok, it’s pretty tricky even if you are… )! Multiple models can help us to understand by giving different angles on the issues, so let’s briefly review two other models we looked at for event horizons. There are more! THREE WAYS TO THINK ABOUT BLACK HOLE EVENT HORIZONS Model Strengths Weaknesses Warped Spacetime Good to understand the extreme nature of event horizon and singularity Allows us to calculate the size of event horizon, very close to classical Good to understand what happens if you fall into horizon Hard to understand what happens as you fall past horizon Tipped lightcone, extreme curvature Point of No Return No escape from horizon Infalling spacetime Waterfall analogy TOO close to classical, risks being confused with the “dark star” idea. Can lead to some misconceptions, doesn’t convey the horizon from outside. See More See More MODELS HELP US THINK, BUT THEY ALSO SHAPE OUR THINKING! SO… WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE? Form when enough mass-energy is within a small enough radius (Schwarzschild radius) Contain singularities (places where spacetime stops existing -- whatever that means!) Are surrounded by event horizons, so that these singularies can’t be seen (cosmic censorship) ANATOMY OF A VERY SIMPLE BLACK HOLE: Now that we understand the importance of the event horizon, let’s look at a very simple black hole and its anatomy. A black hole with no charge or spin is called a Schwarzschild black hole. It is totally describable by its Schwarzschild radius. A CAUTIONARY NOTE: We call the Schwarzschild radius the “radius of the black hole” all the time, but this is clearly not right. What would happen if you tried to measure the radius of a black hole’s event horizon? Even this is fanciful… you couldn’t really even push it in. When lowered from the outside the ruler is ‘piling up in time’ near the horizon! ANATOMY OF A VERY SIMPLE BLACK HOLE: Photon sphere Well Outside : : Inside photon Here light would Gravity is more-or-less sphere : orbit the black hole! normal. There are no stable Inside : YourFire time Event horizon : orbits here. axis isengines now pointed no return past this your like at the singularity. point the dickens to get out! Singularity: where spacetime ends… Here be dragons! SCHWARZSCHILD BLACK HOLE SUMMARY: ANATOMY OF A VERY SIMPLE BLACK HOLE: Event horizon: Photon sphere: no return past this point Here light would orbit the black hole! Inside: strong and erratic tidal effects (mixmaster physics) SCHWARZSCHILD BLACK HOLE Singularity: where spacetime ends… Here be not yet Here Be understood DRAGONS quantum effects HOW MUCH MORE COMPLEX CAN A BLACK HOLE GET? Answer: not a lot. Black holes have no detailed structure, only mass, charge, and spin. All other details are ‘radiated away’, leaving a uniform event horizon with no detail, summed up by the statement that: “BLACK HOLES HAVE NO HAIR!”. SPINNING AND/OR CHARGED BLACK HOLES If a black hole is spinning and/or has charge then the picture is a little (but only a little) more complex. Event horizon(s) (one outer, one inner) Besides… Ergosphere: There is no ‘standing in have to draw the line Butstill’we Extra: More on effects near a this region, black hole ` everything must somewhere or this presentation will rotate with the hole Singularity never end! There are a LOT of dragons! Extra: A VERY short mention of deeper results THERE IS MORE WE COULD LOOK AT, BUT FOR NOW IT IS TIME TO GO ON… Extra: Some black hole connections Continue to: Do black holes really form, and how? MAKING A BLACK HOLE In which we see that there is probably no escape from black holes in more ways than one! Black holes are very outlandish things! You well might ask yourself whether they could really exist. ARE THERE REALLY SUCH THINGS AS BLACK HOLES? None of this would matter if black holes never actually formed… and for a long time that’s what people thought… ‘Maybe the equations describe that, but in reality something will keep it from happening.’ (this is what physicists currently think about white holes and some other concepts, so it isn’t a trivial point) WE NOW KNOW THAT BLACK HOLES WILL INDEED FORM, EVEN UNDER REAL ‘IMPERFECT’ CONDITIONS. CONCEPT TEST Which of the following will create a black hole (you may indicate more than one) A. B. C. D. A star like the sun A star that starts off 4 times as massive as the sun A star that starts off 40 times as massive as the sun The large hadron collider THIS IS ACTUALLY A VERY COMPLICATED QUESTION! The fate of a star depends on the mass left when it reaches its final end and cools down enough for collapse Our best understanding of this is that: Starting Mass Ends by Final Mass Becomes <8 solar masses quietly settling down <1.4 solar masses White dwarf 8 – 20 solar masses Type II supernova 1.4 – 2.6? solar masses neutron star 20 – 50 solar masses Type II supernova 2.6 – 20 solar masses black hole 50ish – 100ish solar masses Type I a/b supernova <2.6 solar masses neutron star / white dwarf VERY big stars may not supernova >10 solar masses black hole This isn’t a great table because what happens to stars depends a lot on what mix of elements goes into them in their formation, so all ranges are suspect! Extra: See some pretty graphs MASSIVE STARS Inside a star there is a balance between gravitational pull and the outward pressure caused by heat. AT THE END OF ITS LIFE THE STAR (AFTER CONSIDERABLE DRAMA) COOLS AND PRESSURE DROPS Drama Queen THE END RESULT DEPENDS ON THE MASS OF THE STAR. Cygnus X-1, a black hole of about 15 solar masses with a visible companion Smaller masses don’t form a black hole. Really big stars supernova and loose enough mass that they aren’t so big anymore (though still probably enough to make black holes). These are called “stellar mass” black holes, and there are some likely suspects out there. OTHER THINGS THAT COULD (PERHAPS) CREATE BLACK HOLES. In the early universe (high densities allow random clumps to make mini-black holes). High energy collisions could create teeny tiny black holes, briefly. (Note: If our current ideas are correct the LHC has only 0.0000000000001% of the energy needed for this) As yet unknown processes? CAN NEW PHYSICS SAVE THE WORLD FROM BLACK HOLES? We know that we DON’T know how gravity works when quantum effects start to matter. Could these effects (or other new physics) mean there are no black holes after all? Quantum Gravity BUT THE CONDITIONS FOR BLACK HOLES OCCUR IN REALMS WHERE CLASSICAL PHYSICS ONLY NEED APPLY… For large black holes there is nothing extreme about the conditions they would have to form under. We know that there are things with masses large enough that they would have to become black holes eventually. It seems there is no escaping the dragons! LOCATING BLACK HOLES Be vewy vewy quiet, We’re hunting Black Holes! So, if black holes DO exist... How do we find them? Let’s start with what they look like. WHITEBOARD EXERCISE What would you see, looking up at noon, if the sun really did implode into a black hole? Describe or sketch on your white board. THE SKY AT NOON (POST BLACK HOLE) Regular night sky (except for season) WHY DON’T WE SEE ANYTHING? Black holes are black The sun would be a small black hole Effects from intensity are significant only very close to event horizon (around 3km!) FROM A DISTANCE We already know that from the outside the black hole is no different than any other mass. But because it is so much more compact things can get a lot more intense And that makes for some more intense effects But only up close. SO HOW DO WE SPOT THEM FROM FAR AWAY? 1) BLACK HOLES ARE MESSY EATERS! So, how can we identify a black hole if they are different only up close? We look for stuff falling in! INFALLING MATERIAL HEATED BY FRICTION AND ACCELERATED BY TWISTED MAGNETIC FIELDS Jet Accretion Disk 2) LOOK FOR SOMETHING VERY VERY SMALL AND MASSIVE! Binary systems like Cygnus X-1 are strong candidates. GALAXIES: MAY ALL HAVE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AT THEIR CENTRES! year This is real data showing the positions of stars in the centre of our galaxy over 16 years of observation A LOT OF MASS IN NOT MUCH SPACE Fitted curves for this stellar motion near our galactic centre (SGR A*) More than 4 million solar masses In a space definitely smaller than the distance from the earth to the sun SO WE KNOW WHERE TO LOOK FOR A REALLY BIG BLACK HOLE VERY CLOSE BY! We should be able to directly image Sgr A* within 10 years WHERE CAN YOU USE / INTRODUCE THESE IDEAS IN YOUR TEACHING? “It’s black and it looks like a hole. I’d say it’s a black hole.” END (NOTE THAT ONLY A FRACTION OF THE SLIDES WILL HAVE BEEN PRESENTED… DO CHECK OUT THE RESOURCE WHEN IT IS POSTED!)