The Schwarzschild Radius

Written by Michael on July 4th, 2009

I’ve always been fascinated by Black Holes, not because of the movie (though as a kid that was cool and I love the soundtrack) but because of the thought experiments that happen in my head when I think of them. Information loss, relative time, etc. If you have any interest at all in Black Holes, I highly recommend you check out Leonard Susskind’s book, The Black Hole War. It’s a pretty dumb title but a fascinating read, even if you’re not a theoretical physicist.

Anyway, since I read that book, I’ve done lots of calculations using the Schwarzschild Radius (Rs = 2GM/c2) to determine the size you would have to compress some matter (like the Earth or Sun) to create a gravitational constant (aka a black hole). So I found this cool video on YouTube and REALLY liked the video at towards the end when he describes the evidence of a black hole at the center of The Milky Way. Awesome stuff, I’ve read about it but had never seen those images.

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