Timeline for Movie Interstellar - Followup Question to Escape Velocity
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| S Feb 2, 2016 at 21:46 | history | suggested | Nogueira |
creating a new tag.
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| Feb 2, 2016 at 19:32 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Feb 2, 2016 at 21:46 | |||||
| Jan 17, 2015 at 20:05 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackPhysics/status/556542750473351171 | ||
| Nov 19, 2014 at 17:11 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | In any case, I was thinking about the physics question here, an issue that occurred to me was that the types of coordinate systems used to describe black holes can be counterintuitive in that light itself doesn't travel at c everywhere in these systems...the most physical way to approach the question might be to ask: "If an object is originally moving along with orbit A, and then it experiences a sudden change in velocity V as measured in a local inertial frame (the comoving one at the moment before), what is the minimum V needed so that it will move out to the distance of a larger orbit B?" | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 17:07 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | I was thinking of a scenario where up until recently the IMBH had been in an orbit that kept it very far from 1 AU (say, closest approach 100 AU or even farther), but then recently some gravitational interaction (with another IMBH probably) had knocked it inward to a highly eccentric orbit that brought it very close, but this was so recent that there hadn't been enough time for it to disrupt the orbits of planets close to Gargantua. Maybe another possibility would be to imagine the "planets" were actually moons of IMBHs that just weren't shown. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 13:02 | comment | added | user32023 | I'm not an expert in planetary mechanics, but an eccentric orbit of an IMBH of several solar masses would just make the system more unstable. Even at 10 AUs, a 4 solar mass BH (the absolute low end for a black hole), would disrupt an orbit of a planet the size of Earth. I can't see a scenario where they could land and climb back out in a matter of hours. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 5:06 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | That's a good point about the orbits needing to not be too close or they would tend to have a disruptive gravitational effect, perhaps Thorne didn't consider that issue. As a last resort, one could imagine it was a fluke circumstance that an IMBH that hadn't previously been anywhere near the planet had very recently had its own orbit disrupted to move on a highly eccentric orbit that passed very near the event horizon, so there hadn't been enough time for it to disrupt the planet's orbit significantly. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 3:02 | comment | added | user32023 | If you put the IMBH far enough away that it doesn't disturb the orbit of the water planet, then we're back to the original problem: how do you get from the water planet to the IMBH (say at 5 AU to be generous) so you can use it as a slingshot? | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 2:58 | comment | added | user32023 | Thank you for the correction: 50%. I'm still having trouble with the geometry here. You mention a possible solution is to use an intermediate black hole at a distance of 1.1 AU to slingshot the shuttle in a retrograde direction. How does a black hole (let's assume 4 solar masses) at 1.1 AU not rip this planet out of it's orbit? I'm trying to imagine any mass large enough to provide a relativistic sling shot that still allowed for a stable orbit at 1 AU. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 2:06 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | As already pointed out, Kip Thorne says they don't just use chemical engines, his idea was that they use gravity assists from other smaller black holes orbiting the central supermassive black hole, which can potentially boost the speed of a ship passing close to one by a huge amount. Also, the planet would be traveling closer to 50% the speed of light in the Boyer-Lindquist coordinate system commonly used for Kerr black holes (the same one used to get the 1/3 figure for the larger ship at ~10 AU), where did you get 99% from? | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 1:34 | history | asked | user32023 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |