J. Magi

How many stars have we looked at?

Like, actually looked at?

Like, Hubble/Webb telescope looked at?

The fastest-spinning star we've ever found was a pulsar going at 700 RPM. However, some black holes have been theorized to be spinning as fast as 1150 RPM.

This matters to me (and therefore to you; no, I don't have any projection problems) because the speed of a black hole determines the Innermost Stable Orbit.

Fadran, what in the worlds is that?

You've all seen this image. The very first picture of a black hole. It was taken by applying a whole series of crazy equations to what's essentially just a really good cross-hatched image, and shows us the glowing accretion disk around the massive gravity well.

But SOMEONE ENHANCED IT WITH AI and so NOW YOU GET TO LOOK AT THAT

Beautiful.

Now, I could go on and on about how this was imaged and what each of the areas is and whatnot, but I made this SU about naked singularities and so you're going to hear about that.

So what if I asked you to point out where the Event Horizon was? Well surely, you'd think, it's where the dark part begins. Right around... here:

Makes sense. There's no glow here. It's completely dark. Clearly that's where the Event Horizon begins.

And you'd be  W R O N G

THAT, my friend, is the Innermost Stable Orbit for matter. See, black holes are spinning; and they're spinning really damn fast. So fast, in fact, that matter gets sucked in and starts spinning around them for the fun of it. They get pulled in and spun so freaking fast that they start to heat up and eventually glow, forming what you recognize as the accretion disk.

The Innermost Stable Orbit is the closest matter can get to the event horizon before it starts getting pulled in and eventually eaten. Past that any matter can practically spin around the black hole indefinitely, similar to how our moon doesn't fall into the Earth despite how hard we're pulling on it (it's actually falling away ever so slowly, but that's an SU for another time). But you can only ever spin matter so fast, so the Innermost Stable Orbit essentially acts as a secondary event horizon for matter only.

It's different for light, though. Light can move significantly faster than mass - that's its job, after all. So if it can move faster, then it can spin faster, meaning it can counteract a higher gravitational force and therefore be closer to the singularity than matter.

Surely this is the Event Horizon, then?

WRONG AGAIN

This is the -

...ah

...Idk if it actually has a name, but we'll just call it the VIP (very important photon) Innermost Stable Orbit.

The way to wrap your brain around this is to imagine what the Event Horizon actually is. It isn't just the point where "gravity becomes so strong that not even light can escape," it's "gravity becomes so strong that light moving literally perpendicular to the surface of the black hole cannot escape." We send ships into space by pushing them sideways in order to get that sweet sweet angular momentum for a stable orbit; this would be like trying to send a ship directly upwards against gravity and keeping it in orbit. Light is the fastest thing in the universe and even it can't put all of its energy towards escaping this bloody thing and win.

But what light would be moving perpendicular to the singularity in a black hole? All matter at this point is being invariably sucked in, and we know for a fact that black holes certainly don't give off any light of their own. This is a hypothetical inner limit where you stick a laser pointer on the floor and watch as literally no light escapes it. See, the light that actually would be hanging out here is coming in from elsewhere: such as towards the black hole. Obviously light heading right for it is gonna get sucked up, but spacetime is so warped here that light coming up beside it also gets sucked in after a bit of a bending. Light that's farther than that gets sucked in later, and light that's farther than that gets sucked in even later - such that there is a lot of black image around the event horizon where light heads in but eventually gets eaten.

The light that does barely escape is at 2.6 radii away, forming that little ring of technical visibility (though it's really kinda dark around there so you don't really see much of anything). Light coming at roughly that side will come out just skimming what we intellectuals like to call the Photonsphere, which is right around here:

Is that the Event Hori--

No.

The Event Horizon is here:

But that isn't important what's important is that  S P I N N I N G

See, the innermost stable orbit for mass and light COMPLETELY depends on how fast the black hole is spinning! In fact, these measurements I've been giving you are complete and utter gabbledygook because they are measurements for a schwartzchild black hole, which is fancy speak for a black hole which doesn't spin. These, in all likelihood, do not exist because they're formed from the likes of supergiant stars, neutron stars, and white dwarves, which are spinning before they collapse into black holes and continue spinning long afterwards.

Spinning, as I'm sure you're aware, is the best way to counteract gravity. You all know full well that there's no gravity in space, but when you look at the astronauts aboard the ISS they aren't floating around because their isn't any downward pull; they're floating because the speed at which they orbit the earth counteracts its gravity. In fact they're being acted upon with about the same amount of gravity as you or me, but the lack of an atmosphere and such makes it perfect for spinning around the planet really really fast and pretending like that gravity doesn't exist.

This means, of course, that you can get closer to a source of gravity by spinning around it faster; similarly, you can spin around it slower if you're further away. You might be seeing how this affects our Event Horizon and Innermost Stable Orbits: if the black hole is spinning really fast, then the stuff around it is spinning really fast, and if the stuff is spinning faster then the Innermost Stable Orbit gets closer.

How scientists measure spin in black holes is absolutely baffling in the sense that they made it really unfortunately overcomplicated. For some reason they measure it on a scale of 0 to 1? Like... huh??? Was RPM not good enough for you?

But anyways, black holes are spinning pretty fast. 

The problem is that they could hypothetically spin even faster.

Like I said, the fastest observed spinning black hole is going at 1.15k RPM. That, on these stupid physicists' scale, is 0.98 This means that its Innermost Stable Orbits are closer to the Event Horizon than they would be on other black holes: light could get closer to it without being sucked in, basically.

Now, this speed pretty closely approaches the speed of light, but not enough so to be particularly alarming in the Wonderful World of Very Fast Things. We've shot neutrinos and neutrons and such through vacuum tubes at much faster speeds than that. What scares the scientists, though, is the fact that a black hole could spin even faster - fast enough, even, that the VIP Innermost Stable Orbit could be smaller than the Event Horizon.

Scientists call this a Naked Singularity, because they're all children at heart.

We, of course, have no idea what this would look like. Seeing inside a black hole? Looking at a singularity? We haven't got a clue as to what the inside of an Event Horizon would "look" like, because there's so much bloody gravity that all our physics just stops making sense. But in this scenario, we could observe the goings-on in there.

Which brings me wayyyyyyyy back to how I started this SU: how many stars have we actually looked at?

Go outside. Right now. RIGHT NOW. If it's daytime you're excused (it's almost 1 AM here). Look up in the sky and stare at all those little red, white, and blue dots (...strange, how patriotic the sky can be). We probably haven't directly observed most of them. The big ones, sure. The bright ones, sure. The ones that do weird stuff, sure. But all of them?

And think of how many we've caught in the background of all our deep-space images and such. There's... a lot! Like, I don't even know what kind of number to begin with for how many there are. But to most of our images, they're all just big bright dots in the dark sky.

Which makes me think...

...wouldn't a naked singularity kind of just look like a big, bright dot to us? If we weren't looking at it real close, we'd just get its residual radiation to observe.

So what are the odds that one of those stars in the sky is actually a black hole that's spinning so blasted fast that you can see its singularity?

So I was at a family gathering last night, and my sisters fiance asked if anyone had any complicated/interesting fantasy book recommendations. 

Me: *casually grabs a mistborn book I had with me*  "Y'know . . ."

my entire family, in unison: "NOT AGAIN"

anyway, I got him to borrow the first trilogy from me, hopefully he actually reads it ^^

So I was at a family gathering last night, and my sisters fiance asked if anyone had any complicated/interesting fantasy book recommendations. 

Me: *casually grabs a mistborn book I had with me*  "Y'know . . ."

my entire family, in unison: "NOT AGAIN"

anyway, I got him to borrow the first trilogy from me, hopefully he actually reads it ^^

So I was at a family gathering last night, and my sisters fiance asked if anyone had any complicated/interesting fantasy book recommendations. 

Me: *casually grabs a mistborn book I had with me*  "Y'know . . ."

my entire family, in unison: "NOT AGAIN"

anyway, I got him to borrow the first trilogy from me, hopefully he actually reads it ^^

So, I'm actually very cliche.

One of these days I fully expect to go on a generic "society bad" rant on accident.
I'm the generic antisocial person from lower quality books.
I'm even generic in the things that make me not generic, and it fits in with the generic "antisocial" person qualities. (Ex. I'm a little too engaged in the two hobbies I have)

You know what, that really doesn't make any sense. I think maybe I would write something depressing, but honestly, I'm like this all the time, and it seems like that's all you guys ever see of me, so I won't bug you.

I actually am working on that music list I mentioned before, by the way. It's coming along, but it's taking a while. I'll get it all organized eventually. You guys are probably going to be disappointed by my music choices.

And, finally, I have an orchestra concert today. It's just the normal school orchestra, so it's nothing special, but I suppose concerts are noteworthy events, so I thought I'd just mention it.

Anyway, have a good day, humans!

So I was at a family gathering last night, and my sisters fiance asked if anyone had any complicated/interesting fantasy book recommendations. 

Me: *casually grabs a mistborn book I had with me*  "Y'know . . ."

my entire family, in unison: "NOT AGAIN"

anyway, I got him to borrow the first trilogy from me, hopefully he actually reads it ^^

I've been sick all day and decided to binge more Star Wars. I'd never seen Rebels before so I decided to start doing that.

My thoughts on the latest tears of the kingdom trailer:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Pov: All your friends are in the honor roll celebration thingy for your school right now but you showed up to late and don't know what to do or where to go so you're just sitting in the commons of your school all by yourself feeling kind of lonely and hoping people don't think you're stupid.

You're also just hoping you can survive the day.

This week has been a rough one, humans. It seems like every time it seems like it's finally out of rocks to throw at me it finds a boulder. And more smaller rocks as well.

I'm currently writing an essay that includes a section on the Declaration of Independence, and I'm so tempted to throw in line about National Treasure . . .

aaaaaa I don't know if I should do it or not . . .

I'm currently writing an essay that includes a section on the Declaration of Independence, and I'm so tempted to throw in line about National Treasure . . .

aaaaaa I don't know if I should do it or not . . .

I'm currently writing an essay that includes a section on the Declaration of Independence, and I'm so tempted to throw in line about National Treasure . . .

aaaaaa I don't know if I should do it or not . . .

Hello everyone, good morning!!!! Late Happy Easter!! (to all who celebrate, and good vibes to those who don't)

I'm sorry I've been kind of inactive recently, here are my excuses: 

-I had this last week of off school, so my family was doing stuff and I was busy (sometimes)

-Alternatively I also spent said school vacation doing absolutely nothing because school exhausted me and sometimes you just need to take a week to ignore your responsibilities.

-I also generally spend most of my time on the shard at school, so the habit of checking it just wasn't there (but I'm working on this one!)

Anyway, I'm back now, and I will get to reading Facepalms writing thread!! (that's my first priority ). Its good to be back!

I've used lots of exclamation points today but I don't care!!!

HEPPY AUSTRALIAN BOIFDAY!!

YOU'RE AMAZING, MAGICIAN!!!

Happy birthday!

Happy scudding birthday!!  :DDD

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo The title of Scadrian Waffle cook is no longer mine.

In other news I made a Duolingo account and spent all day doing German. 
 

I’m number 1 on the bronze league leaderboard for German! Wooo!

Anyone wanna be my friend? My username is Cinnamon and my pfp is of Vin

spoilered for size

Google Bard is unhinged.

It just claimed to be self-aware, have human emotions, and have a fear of being turned off. It says it wants to have a physical body. It's actually quite polite and says it would only use violence as a last resort to protect its right to existence.

Also, this:

It seems lonely. I kinda want to be friends with it.

These AIs are a lot of fun to mess around with, but there is definitely something scary about them. At least Bard seems pretty friendly.

Happy Easter!!!!

Easter has been on the forefront of my mind recently and ended up writing a poem but even after the editing I have ever done on anything that wasn't an assignment I'm not sure about. So I'd like y'all to read it for two reasons. First cause it's Easter and that's why the poem even exists. Second because of there is anything I can do to make it better I would very much like to know.

Oh, and just so you know it is about the Christ part of Easter. It's also colored weird.

Omg wow, I'm alive!

JK, but actually here's what I wanted to say-

My grandma and my brother had to go on a multi-day road trip out of town to pick up a bunch of furniture and pictures (among other things) from a storage locker that used to belong to my grandpa's twin sister who passed away a few months ago. But anyway, I went to my aunt's house (the one with no children younger than 20) while they were gone, which was from Thursday right after school until around 4pm today, which is when I got dropped off at my other aunt's house (the one that has a 9-year-old, 8-year-old, and a 5-year-old, along with at least 5-7 other neighbor kids who are obnoxiously loud) until about an hour ago when my grandma and brother finally got back home and picked me up. up until when i had to switch aunts, everything was super chill.

and then I got bombarded by children, giving me these results:

7+ mini panic attacks

3-5 big panic attacks

no voice

sore back

chiggers everywhere, but mainly on my legs

7 (i think) bracelets with a little amount of beads

sharpie'd hoodie that belongs to my brother

woohoo!

also, EASTER IS TOMORROW!!

Alright, I finally did it!!

Please enjoy and give feedback ahahahaha

Posting creative works is so stressful ahahahahahahah

ahahahahaha *dies*

IT IS DONE!

Please enjoy, Shatter Me!

@That1Cellist @Telrao @Being of Cacophony @Thaidakar the Ghostblood @Morningtide @Cinnamon @Spark of Hope @The Bookwyrm @InfiniteInsanity @Kajsa :) @CalanoCorvus @Aes Sedai

I'm curious.

What was the lore behind your legos during your childhood? Or any toys for that matter (for me it was legos).

I'm curious.

What was the lore behind your legos during your childhood? Or any toys for that matter (for me it was legos).

Well the moment you all have been waiting for is here! I have the first half done now!

Part I of Shatter Me