this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Black holes keep 'burping up' stars they destroyed years earlier, and astronomers don't know why::Years after ripping stars to shreds, 24 black holes suddenly flared up with radio waves in inexplicable 'burping' bouts. Half of all star-killing black holes may experience the same.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It sounds like the matter isn't coming out of the black hole, but actually the accretion disc that is in the process of being sucked into the black hole so we aren't breaking the event horizon threshold as title suggests

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

we aren’t breaking the event horizon threshold as title suggests

It wouldn't be pop-sci if it didn't have a misleading clickbait title!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It couldn't be the actual black hole past the event horizon, right? It would logically seem that inescapable precludes burping or farting matter

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

scientist quoted as saying black holes were "shitting [their] guts out" and "blowing megachunks all over the proverbial tile floor of space"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is my assumption. Clearly the accretion disk isn't the point of no return, or maybe stuff on the inside = past point of no return, stuff on the outside can get flung off?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I remember correctly the point of no return is called the Event Horizon.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok so black holes are just teleporters to other dimensions right?!

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (18 children)

It's a one way teleporter to a single dimension, because you're entire mass will be a single imperceptible point.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

But it's not a single point though, because blackholes with a different mass have different sizes, so it's more like a "maximum density" that can exist in this universe...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's an oversimplification, but something with the mass of say, a human, will be crushed into a very very very very tiny space. A much smaller space than 0.1mm radius, which would hold Earth's moon's mass of 7.342×10^22 kg.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes... And something with the mass of the universe will crush into a significantly larger (yet comparatively tiny) volume of space... Thus, a black hole is basically the maximum density we can currently comprehend and theorize.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Size and density have non-standard definitions in this context.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As far as i know the Mass of the black Hole is concentrated in the Center (singularity). But it is surouded by its schwarzschild Radius. Anything that enters it cant escape.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well, unless it burps

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

That's what the current understanding of physics says. But given that there are singularities that come out of the math, all that really means is we don't actually know what happens inside a black hole.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Kind of like the lump that forms in my chest when I get a phone call

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It'll teleport you from the third dimension to the first dimension.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No indication that any of the returning matter ever made it beyond the event horizon but how wild would it be if matter can come back from that somehow, would shatter current understand of the phenom.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So would it be appropriate to say they are passing gas?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Based on that username, I feel like you'd be a subject matter expert.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

What if we're currently travelling through one right now and we forgot to turn the oven off

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wonder if it could be caused by other celestial bodies captured in the black hole's orbit. Some new mass approaches the accretion disk and the gravitational pull slingshots some of the disk's matter out.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Maybe black holes sometimes momentarily change into white holes? 🤔

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Galactic indigestion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Like whole stars or?

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