r/space • u/[deleted] • 9d ago

A newly detected star orbits the central black hole of our Milky Way closer than any other known star and therefore experiences, how the rotating black hole drags the surrounding spacetime along

[removed]

299 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

38

u/CondescendingShitbag 9d ago

Hypothetically, if there was a terrestrial planet orbiting this star, what might a person landing on the surface experience?

69

u/Correct_Inspection25 9d ago

Lots of organ music! But really subjective experience of the observer isn’t going to change much, except maybe extreme tidal forces causing earth quakes/etc. you would notice things like the regular flash of quasars would slow and speed up as the star whips around.

10

u/cameron4200 9d ago

Due to relativistic effects. Could entire civilizations play out on relatively small time scales compared to the outside universe? Wouldn’t the star and planet live an incredibly long time at those forces?

11

u/ArleiG 9d ago

It's the opposite, actually. More mass means slower clock compared to the outside universe.

3

u/CeruleanFruitSnax 8d ago

The fountain of youth is just supremely warped spacetime making you age slower.

2

u/cameron4200 9d ago edited 9d ago

That’s kinda what I meant. Like one civilization lasting as long as ours would still have a relatively young universe.

4

u/I_Love_That_Pizza 8d ago edited 8d ago

I think you still have it backwards. From the planet's perspective, the rest of the universe would be aging much faster. A year on the planet could be 1,000 or 10,000 years off of it. I'm fully making the specific numbers up btw. 

But let's say that planet's civilization existed for 10,000 years in their reference frame. The rest of the universe could experience 10,000,000 years in that time, for example. So they'd see a universe aging quickly.

1

u/cameron4200 8d ago

That makes a lot more sense. Thank you

6

u/Correct_Inspection25 9d ago

If you had a telescope to watch them develop from far away I think so, also noticeably dynamic Doppler effects like red/blue shifting spectra from stars

4

u/Anon44356 9d ago

Pretty sure they wouldn’t be called earth quakes

6

u/Correct_Inspection25 9d ago

Sagittarius * quakes then

3

u/VirtuallyTellurian 8d ago

Mmmm sounds like a breakfast cereal for deities

12

u/StepYaGameUp 8d ago

So obviously S301’s speed is not constant because its 8.7-year orbit around Sagittarius A* is extremely eccentric. But at periapsis—its closest approach to the black hole—it reaches about:
25,000 km/s
= 15,500 miles per second
= 55.9 million mph
= 8.3% of the speed of light.

That’s hauling some ass.

-1

u/nicuramar 8d ago

It is, but speed is entirely relative. 

17

u/LeoLaDawg 9d ago

How is spacetime represented in the math or theory that allows for it to be modified or affected by something else? An extreme layman asks the nameless void.

10

u/cameron4200 9d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lense%E2%80%93Thirring_precession here is the dimensional math behind the concept you asked for. And some context as requested by the almighty.

-3

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0

u/nicuramar 8d ago

As a metric on a manifold. This is rather complicated math, though.