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the_fungible_man t1_j2826k3 wrote

>couldn't we just watch the neutron star until it gains enough mass to become a black hole?

Sure. You got a few million years? Patience is a virtue.

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Xethinus t1_j282pt8 wrote

We do.

Gravitational wave observatories are currently the best way to do it.

Okay, so maybe we wanna use telescopes. Remember the images of Sagittarius A* published in recent years? Took months(years?) to resolve, because it was so distance and that thing is massive.

Black holes are dense and tiny. So are neutron stars. We have trouble resolving the size of stars that are nearby and larger than our own, let alone stars that are mere kilometers across. The likelihood of an individual neutron star colliding with another neutron star to form a black hole within any resolveable distance is... astronomical.

It definitely would be an absolute treat to witness, and would be huge for the entire scientific community, but the closest neutron star collisions are outside of our galaxy.

Best we can do is point a telescope at a location and hope we get things like spectroscopy and light intensities to find out useful info. Build ever larger observatories that span solar systems. Wait a couple billion years and hope there are neutron star mergers in the milkdromeda galactic merge.

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Jebusfreek666 OP t1_j283emb wrote

>but the closest neutron star collisions are outside of our galaxy.

Those must just be the closest ones we have so far detected right? There is no reason our galaxy is different to the others. We should be able to locate something a little closer I think. Heck, maybe in the future we could actually cause the transformation to happen by artificially increasing the mass of the neutron star via a particle beam or some other tech...

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Xethinus t1_j2848ur wrote

I don't know how easy neutron stars are to find. I also don't know how easy binary neutron star systems are to find.

I do know we've been getting gravitational waves from all across the universe every few days from neutron star collisions and black hole mergers for the last few years. But that is a sample size of billions of cubic light-years of space. We're talking trillions of galaxies. A typical galaxy does not have a neutron star or black hole formation in any predictable way. I refer to the milkdromeda galactic merge for the most likely next neutron star collision anytime soon.

Now... engineering a black hole? That's bonkers. I would pay to see that. Someone get kurtzgesagt on that. Would become one of the most extreme science experiments possible.

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PoppersOfCorn t1_j281ntw wrote

The timeframe, distances.

Also, there have probably been detections of the formation of black holes by LIGO and VIRGO when they have felt the gravitational waves from neutron stars colliding.

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s1ngular1ty2 t1_j282czr wrote

We have seen this already. We also have seen stars collapse into black holes. Not sue what you expect to come of this...

We can't observe it directly because objects in space are VERY far away and small. We can however see that there was a supernova and the star is gone and now there appears to be a feeding black hole because there are massive jets coming out of where the star used to be or a blank spot where it used to be.

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___77___ t1_j282euw wrote

Now you see your it, now you don’t.

Would be nice to see a neutron star popping out of existence like that. The main problem would be time, money, patience, and the doubtful future of mankind.

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space-ModTeam t1_j287h8f wrote

Hello u/Jebusfreek666, your submission "Why can't we observe the formation of a black hole?" 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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