this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
658 points (98.4% liked)

Science Memes

12469 readers
2332 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] LaunchesKayaks 62 points 11 hours ago (6 children)

If you can't grow your own black holes, store-bought is fine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

i prefer wild-generated blackholes, sources from a star.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

The problem is, nobody can find out if they actually are

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

i prefer mines, organic, pasture and gard raised, not with artificial ingredients. must use actual STAR, none of the "collider-made particles"

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

It's not that hard, all you needs a little Scots turf builder black hole edition.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

I keep hearing commericals for them advertising to kill clover. Always annoys me. If clover grows in your yard, your yard likely needs the nutrients (nitrogen likely). Also, it helps bee populations, which helps well... Life.

Clover was never a weed until weed killer came around out and killed it with everything else in the grass. So they started an ad campaign that told people it was a weed and convinced people that white flowers in your yard look bad.

So now everytime I hear an advertisement that mentions killing clover I remind myself not to buy products by the brand who says it. Also, clover honey is delicious.

[–] Lemminary 3 points 5 hours ago

No wonder. They're such a pretty plant, why would anyone kill it off their lawns?

[–] untorquer 3 points 5 hours ago

I love clover! So much softer than grass. I like Moss more, looks the nicest!

Clover is better at retaining moisture too. So yards with lots of clover tend to stay green longer in dry periods, which also helps life. Keep things cooler too.

Grass is really just awful ground cover.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

That's fair, and my old house I didn't mind having clover all over my yard, some people just want straight grass though, then they want to cut cross hatches in it. Everybody's got to have a hobby and grass cutting is less annoying the older you get.

[–] RampantParanoia2365 12 points 11 hours ago

I really prefer wild Atlantic black holes.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot 2 points 8 hours ago

But it's not an authentic black hole unless it's mined with slave labour!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

Well, yeah.

If you wish to build a black hole from scratch, you must first build the universe.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

pokes black hole C’mon, devour Earth.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 hours ago

It's wild that there is so much space between atoms (and inside them, between the elctron orbitals and the nucleus), and black holes are so incredibly dense, that a small black hole can fall all the way through the Earth and not hit enough matter to gain appreciable mass.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Don't buy lab-grown black holes, it's not quite the same if it's not mined by a child in South Africa. And it should cost at least three times your salary, otherwise your spouse will be ashamed.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

It's only a black hole if it comes from the black region of space. Otherwise it's just a sparkling dense mass.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

A not-sparkling stellar mass

[–] [email protected] 92 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (5 children)

Maybe not the actual referenced article, but its close:

https://www.livescience.com/black-hole-analog-confirms-hawking.html

While the study was testing for a specific kind of energy radiated by an artificial micro black hole...

What's being glossed over is the broad concept and implications of Hawking Radiation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

Simply put, a tiny micro black hole will evaporate itself out of existence quite rapidly.

There is no danger of such a thing growing and consuming everything like an expanding katamari damacy ball.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

What is the minimum size until it will grow faster than it evaporates? And can we make one if we try really hard?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator

Indeed, any black hole with a mass greater than about 0.75% of the Earth's mass is colder than the cosmic background, and thus its mass increases for now. As the universe expands and cools, however, eventually the black hole may begin to lose mass-energy through Hawking radiation.

Size isn't actually the main factor, mass is.

A teaspoon of what neutron stars are made of weighs as much as Mt. Everest.

Its the mass thats important, and apparently the threshold for an actually stable black hole is 0.75% the mass of Earth, 4.48 x 10²² kg .... or, roughly 2/3 the mass of the Moon.

(The Moon's mass is roughly 1/81th that of Earth's. It ks far, far less dense.)

So... basically 0 chance in our natural life times we'll figure out how to convert the Moon into a blackhole, lol.

EDIT:

There... could theoretically be a wandering black hole of aporoximately that mass... but even if it entered our solar system, chances are it would just get thrown out, deflected by Jupiter and the Sun, and it would only maybe eat some ice in the Kuiper belt, dust and maybe very small asteroids in the asteroid belt if it somehow made it past Jupiter.

Black holes don't have infinite gravitational vaccuum power that extends infinitely, because they do not have infinite mass.

if they did, the occurence of one would instantly eat the entire universe at the speed of gravity, which is the speed of light.

They have as much gravity as their mass says they should, and they obey the same orbital dynamics as every other massive celestial body.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 hours ago

We're fucked if a black hole hits us, but we're fucked if anything with the same mass hits us

[–] Maggoty 3 points 7 hours ago

That is fascinating. Thank you.

[–] DogWater 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I know a little bit but I'm not an expert.

My understanding is hawking radiation will produce a rate of mass evaporating that's fairly consistent over galactic time scales, so you just need to make sure the black hole is big enough to "suck" more mass in via gravitational attraction per given time period than evaporates through hawking radiation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I think the bigger they are faster tge evaporate. They lose mass at some ratio between their surface and mass.

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

Exactly the opposite. The bigger one is, the less it evaporates. Time required to evaporate scales with Mass^3

[–] DogWater 1 points 7 hours ago

That's true the constant rate I mentioned would vary with the surface area of the black hole as it changes but the volume would increase exponentially faster

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

If you do, you may win a Nobel prize for it

[–] Scott_of_the_Arctic 5 points 12 hours ago

If only it could suck up a few specific people before evaporating itself out of existence.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

There is no danger of such a thing growing and consuming everything like an expanding katamari damacy ball.

Damn.

[–] LaunchesKayaks 5 points 11 hours ago

Disappointed beyond measure. :(

[–] Noodle07 16 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Thought we had an out.. Nope we got to tackle fascism and climate change the hard way

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 157 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

Not everyone can cough up the cash for some free-range organic black hole.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

If I read this post without any context I would think "this guy is too poor to hire a black prostitute" and not " this guy doesn't have a particle accelerator capable of making a miniature black hole"

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 77 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Cabin in the Woods

Who had 'Lab grown Black Hole?'

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

They didn't make a black hole, they just did the supersonic Rubidium gas trick

[–] [email protected] 63 points 22 hours ago (38 children)

Us developing an actual black hole would be one of the best things humanity has ever done. It would kinda be like inventing techniques to make fire.

We could throw shit around the orbit of the black hole and get fusion. Not just deuterium fusion! Even proton proton fusion. Our energy needs would be solved practically forever.

We could conduct a crazy amount of experiments on the black hole, see quantum effects of gravity and whatnot.

Maybe we could build one of em Alcubierre drives that don't need exotic matter?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

One of the first things we will use it for is to make a new weapon of mass destruction. Mark my words.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 49 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

Can you imagine what a "black hole fusion accident" could look like?

[–] [email protected] 87 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

No, of course not. The accident eats all the light I'd need for that.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (36 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›