# Black hole devours star

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-hole-devours-star/594176>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [August 26, 2011, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-hole-devours-star/594176 "2011-08-26T13:16:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-hole-devours-star/594176/21 "2011-08-30T03:53:00Z")

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> [@Sailboat](#):
>
> Question: is the image in the first link (labeled “NASA image”) another artist’s conception (ho hum) or an _actual photograph?_ I know the movie in the second link is CGI.

Yep, that image is CG as well. It’s actually a still from the very same animation video (about 9 seconds in).

> [@Sailboat](#):
>
> I’m wondering if what NASA actually saw/measured is dramatic. I mean, haven’t they been sure they were seeing distant accretion disks and companion stars in the past? What’s different here?

I’m not sure myself, but my WAG is that this might be the first time they’ve been able to detect such an event from start to finish (or accretion).

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**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-hole-devours-star/594176/22 "2011-08-30T15:05:59Z")

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[QUOTE=DHMO]  
The situation is different in a supermassive black hole, containing the mass of several million to several billion stars.

\<snip\>

Due to relativistic time-dilation effects induced by the gravity of the black hole, your perception of light striking the poster and being reflected back into your eyes would be almost indistinguishable from “normal”.  
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the reply.

When you said that the Universe as a whole may be within the SR of… itself?.. it got me to thinking of the supermassive black holes, not the runts. 🙂 I sorta guessed that the SR of a 20 solar mass BH wasn’t all that far from the “surface” of the BH itself, and I would have noted the effects of the nearby mass long before I tripped over the SR.

In a supermassive BH, just inside the SR, wouldn’t any light I see already begin to be affected by the gravity? I don’t know if it would give stuff a red tint or not… or seem dimmer somehow.

Speaking of gravity, BH can affect photons and nearly any other particle we know about, right? Does this prove that gravity is not “transmitted” via Gravitons? Why is every other universal force/energy affected by BH, but not gravity?

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