That is, if the closest one we can observe is 1600 light years away, are we not observing these things as they were 1600 years ago? How do we know black holes didn’t just pop up for a brief time window, and now they are gone?
In: 2
Our minds and culture are full of ideas. The best ones are those that help us successfully navigate through life. One solid principle we can use to help identify the best ideas is: does it make predictions about what we can expect to experience, and when we test those predictions, do they work out?
Einstein had an idea about gravity back in the early 1900’s. His idea is called General Relativity. This idea makes a whole lot of incredibly specific predictions about what we will see if we do certain specific experiments. Many of those experiments had not been done in Einstein’s time, but over and over and over again, the predictions General Relativity makes, turn out to be true.
General Relativity is an incredibly trustworthy idea.
One of the predictions it makes is that black holes would exist. Black holes were unknown in Einstein’s time, and the first photographs of one were captured only a few years ago.
General relativity says that black holes will not just disappear. Since general relativity has been so incredibly reliable so far, there’s no good reason to doubt that the black hole 1600 light years away is still there.
Latest Answers