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liquid_at t1_j4w2hi5 wrote

Mainly the distance to the next black hole.

The closest Black hole is 1.566 Lightyears away from us. That's 99035 AUs

The furthest object we were able to send into space is Voyager-1, which got to 159AU in 45 years.

So, the closest black hole is 622x further away and would have taken Voyager-1 about 28,000 years to get there.

Which means, if we send a probe now, it will arrive at the black hole around the year 30,000

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Weed_O_Whirler t1_j4w3ih1 wrote

The nearest black hole to us isn't 1.6 lightyears away, it's 1600 lightyears away.

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liquid_at t1_j4w4ajz wrote

sorry, my mistake. (US and Europe use "." and "," in different ways")

So it's 622,000x as far away and would take 28m years. (or 1000x as long)

Same argument though. Anything exceeding the life-time of a few generations on earth is currently unfeasible.

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urzu_seven t1_j4zbbyc wrote

FYI the difference in "." and "," isn't a Europe/US difference. The UK also uses the decimal point "." as do most English speaking countries along with former British colonies such as India and Pakistan. Additionally Most of East Asia also uses the decimal point, including China, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. Indonesia and Vietnam are the exceptions in that region. Most of Central America and the Caribbean does too, with Cuba and the Dominican Republic being exceptions (plus a few of the smaller islands and overseas territories of European countries).

Additionally, due largely to English's influence on their development, most major computer languages use the decimal point (and don't use thousand's separators at all). Some computers and programs CAN handle input as text that uses the decimal comma, but its not universal.

Long story short though, in English you're better off using the decimal point to avoid confusion.

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liquid_at t1_j4zfr7m wrote

I can handle both, but when switching between sources it's easy to mix things up.

Every programmer had to suffer through that inconsistency in numbers.

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stealth941 OP t1_j4w2o3n wrote

I'm willing to take that chance for future generations... I mean its comforting knowing that's where the closest black hole is

E- yh I was naive there I'm learning as I read

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PhyPhillosophy t1_j4w350w wrote

I mean, i get what your saying, but this requires funding. And like other commenters have said, it wouldn't be able to transmit anything back to us, not only that, I don't think the information gained would even seem that useful, to justify an operation that would be 60,000 years into the future, when it's unclear if we'll be around for another 100 or so

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extropia t1_j4wjgoj wrote

Unfortunately movies like Interstellar (which I love btw) make it seem like simply entering a black hole would reveal all sorts of secrets of the universe to an observer. All we really know is that most of our physical models break down in there, and without a massive lineup of experiments and machines to conduct them to take into the black hole, let alone the current impossibility of doing so, it would be akin to you doing 5 tabs of acid and then telling the rest of us 'you've figured it all out'.

The latter would be a lot more enjoyable.

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aspheric_cow t1_j4wvphc wrote

It's not a matter of "taking chances." We don't have the technology to send a probe to even the closest stars (other than our Sun). And the closest black hole is hundreds of times further away than the closest stars.

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BDT81 t1_j4x5k6w wrote

>I'm willing to take that chance for future generations

All of recorded human history would not cover 1/10 of the time this journey would take. Being optimistic, I would hope that whatever we send today would be considered beyond an ancient, obsolete relic before it arrived at a black hole.

Additionally, the speed of this probe is actually the easiest problem. Then it has to be constructed to endure the massive gravity that will tear it apart on a molecular level. Then, we have to figure out how to transmit any data back from something that doesn't let light escape.

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BailysmmmCreamy t1_j4xh2ud wrote

Another thing to consider is that a probe sent by future generations would almost certainly beat a probe sent today to the destination due to advances in propulsion technology.

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