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-Dirty-Wizard- t1_j24r8xm wrote

Light doesn’t escape black holes (only very rare occasions and usually as a burst) so we can not know.

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Infernalism t1_j24rals wrote

It's an infinitely small, infinitely dense sphere of stuff that ignores all rules of physics.

You couldn't see even if you magically were able to enter the event horizon because of how small it is.

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Tistoer t1_j24rl2g wrote

It doesn't look like.

Light can't escape it, so light doesn't reach our eyes, so we can't see it. How something looks means how we see it, which we dont

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space-ModTeam t1_j24ropv wrote

Hello u/bhte, your submission "What does a black hole actually look like? (read below)" has been removed from r/space because:

  • Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

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frustrated_staff t1_j24sk7u wrote

So, there's a real problem here with the question itself. A black hole is a thing that can't be seen, bit the effects of a black hole can be seen. So, if the question is "What does a black hole itself look like?" The answer is "nothing. It looks like the absolute and complete absence of all things." If, however, the question is "what would we see if we tried looking at a black hole from a reasonably close, but safe, distance?" It's a little more complicated. Mostly, you'd see a pair of rings at 90 degrees to each other made of the brightest stuff imaginable and separated in your view by areas of the blackest, darkest hemi-circles you can imagine, except the borders of both areas are really, really fuzzy.

Also: black holes, if they had dimensions, would be spheres, and their effects are also spherical (sort of...kinda ellipsoidical, depending on rate of rotation and such, but generally spherical)

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aurorachairjunkie t1_j24twhm wrote

So if you were able to to say “freeze” a blackhole at a moment in space time, and remove literally EVERYTHING else around it, there would be nothing to (visually) observe.

As far as a shape, it doesn’t really have one, more so the effect it has on the space around it sort of would make a “spherical hole” so you could describe it as a sphere, but it would be a featureless void of of infinitely dense matter that just warps the way regular space and objects interact with the space around it.

I love how weird they are and the way it makes you warp your brain to think about it.

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