Do black holes teem with life

[Berzerker]

I think life spreads - panspermia - as life bearing objects (planets, moons, etc) go rogue for whatever reason. Imagine if the Earth was ejected from the solar system, perhaps after a collision, traveling thru space eventually entering another solar system. I'm convinced that happened here about 4 billion years ago. I dont think its a coincidence the first evidence of life (and plate tectonics) appears shortly after the Earth was bombarded with heavy elements from god who knows where. The Sun's neighbors would have been closer back then and its theorized we stole material (comets) from them, but I believe the supernovae that seeded our local group of stars was the source of life. The shock wave that compressed our nebula preceded the life bearing material by 1/2 billion years.

But that begs the question, if life was brought here 4 bya but was far older, how would we know? Life spreads out from a center point just as it does on Earth so if life is here its also nearby, maybe in our solar system. But if black holes act like vacuum cleaners sweeping up gas, dust, planets, moons, even stars, imagine the objects in orbit around the black hole, or maybe even the jets streaming outward from the poles - life would be everywhere. I dont know if life could survive getting blasted out the poles, unlikely, but the hundreds or thousands of orbiting objects would have a steady flow of incoming life bearing material.

[Jon Miller]

We definitely don't understand the physics near a black hole. What we understand does't seem to be friendly to life as we can conceive it.

JM

[Geronimo]

I think life spreads - panspermia - as life bearing objects (planets, moons, etc) go rogue for whatever reason. Imagine if the Earth was ejected from the solar system, perhaps after a collision, traveling thru space eventually entering another solar system. I'm convinced that happened here about 4 billion years ago. I dont think its a coincidence the first evidence of life (and plate tectonics) appears shortly after the Earth was bombarded with heavy elements from god who knows where. The Sun's neighbors would have been closer back then and its theorized we stole material (comets) from them, but I believe the supernovae that seeded our local group of stars was the source of life. The shock wave that compressed our nebula preceded the life bearing material by 1/2 billion years.

But that begs the question, if life was brought here 4 bya but was far older, how would we know? Life spreads out from a center point just as it does on Earth so if life is here its also nearby, maybe in our solar system. But if black holes act like vacuum cleaners sweeping up gas, dust, planets, moons, even stars, imagine the objects in orbit around the black hole, or maybe even the jets streaming outward from the poles - life would be everywhere. I dont know if life could survive getting blasted out the poles, unlikely, but the hundreds or thousands of orbiting objects would have a steady flow of incoming life bearing material.

In any case the only time I ever see astrophysicists or educators ever invoke a comparison of black holes to vacuum cleaners, is when they are using the comparison to explain what black holes are not.

https://mashable.com/article/black-holes-misconceptions-space-milky-way-image

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/06/19/no-black-holes-dont-suck-everything-into-them/

Anyway, as JM pointed out since everything that we can predict about the environment near the event horizon or anything beyond is not habitable, and since tidal forces near all but the most massive black holes will spaghettify anything falling in, and since panspermia theories predict life that was adapted to wet planetary environments I can't imagine why you'd pick black holes to imagine panspermia leading to a concentration of life. Long before we'd speculate about Black Holes or stars or stellar remnants teaming with life adapted to planets as a result of panspermia I'd imagine we'd first speculate about far less hostile (but still very hostile compared to mars or earth) seeding of gas giants like Jupiter, which is still quite a leap of speculation but at least gas giants actually are known for acting more like space vacuums in that they are not nearly as messy (inefficient) of eater as stellar remnants and might have some zones that are less instantly hostile to living things. Not sure how they'd stay in a goldilocks zone but still much easier than everything between them and a supermassive black hole in terms of gravity wells.

[Bereta_Eder]

I read somwhere that the solar system is a hugely unusually stable system and the earth itself is a very rare exception of comsic stability. the water in liquid form, the sea tides locked, all of that is extremely rare. the universe is a very violent place with very thin chances for life creating circumstances.

i think life must be extremely rare but it might exist elsewhere but it makes no difference becuase noone can circumvent timespace


so we are alone. this blue marble is all we have. better take care of it. or not. it will distard us without missing a beat - and carry on

[PLATO]

1 in a million? That would still give us 1000 habitable planets in the Milky way alone. There are thousands upon thousands of Galaxies. I think the answer isn't that life is rare, but how close the nearest intelligence is.

[Berzerker]

The Lord hath established the destinies... There are unusual aspects to our solar system that suggest another large body exists:

1) retrograde comets
2) asteroid belts and families
3) the solar system is tilted

regarding 3 the Sun's equatorial plane would be unaffected by a '9th planet' but if we did have another planet - following an inclined retrograde orbit - the planets would gradually migrate away from the plane of the original nebula. I suspect calculations of the planets' departure from that plane will give us parameters for this 9th planet. Its big and it comes closer to the realm of the gas giants.

I was surprised by how 'small' the Milky Way's black hole is, maybe 15 million miles. The largest black holes would extend far beyond Pluto (~10x). The vacuum cleaner analogy refers to the black holes' gravitational dominance, but black holes must have thousands of objects orbiting them. These objects would be fed a steady diet of life bearing materials.

[PLATO]

So, wrt Black Holes. (Disclaimer...I am not a physicist!) If I understand emissions from Black Holes, it is only Hawking Radiation. Hawking Radiation continues until a Black Hole evaporates with the amount of radiation increasing as the Black Hole gets smaller. Hawing Radiation is made up of particles and therefore could not contain any sequencing for life. From this we would have to assume that even if life entered the event horizon that it would be eventually destroyed. I think the only unknown is how quickly it would be destroyed.

[Dauphin]

The materials near event horizons in the accretion discs are superheated, don't think you'd see much life existing there.

[EPW]

How about we just give Berz this one guys?

[Geronimo]

The materials near event horizons in the accretion discs are superheated, don't think you'd see much life existing there.

for a stellar mass or smaller black hole that is true. However upwards of several hundred solar masses the tidal forces of the considerably expanded event horizon get to be far less dramatic. Crossing the event horizon of a super massive black hole (millions or billions of solar masses) would hardly be noticable. That still wouldn't change the fact that hat all orbits around the singularity are unstable within the event horizon of any black hole however so the hapless spores are still in for a rough end to their ride eventually.

[Dauphin]

https://www.space.com/sagittarius-a

​

In 2008, astronomers Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez determined Sagittarius A* to have a mass 4.3 million times that of the sun.

Astronomers have also calculated that the diameter of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is around 14.6 million miles (23.5 million kilometers) . This is  tiny compared to the Milky Way itself, which is 100,000 light-years wide and 1,000 light-years thick.

Also dwarfing Sagittarius A* is a disk of gas surrounding it that extends for between 5 and 30 light-years occasionally feeding matter to Sagittarius A* causing faint flashes of X-rays. This accretion disc is also connected with X-ray emissions caused by friction driving temperatures in the disc up as high as 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (10 million degrees Celsius).
​

[Geronimo]

https://www.space.com/sagittarius-a

​

In 2008, astronomers Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez determined Sagittarius A* to have a mass 4.3 million times that of the sun.

Astronomers have also calculated that the diameter of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is around 14.6 million miles (23.5 million kilometers) . This is  tiny compared to the Milky Way itself, which is 100,000 light-years wide and 1,000 light-years thick.

Also dwarfing Sagittarius A* is a disk of gas surrounding it that extends for between 5 and 30 light-years occasionally feeding matter to Sagittarius A* causing faint flashes of X-rays. This accretion disc is also connected with X-ray emissions caused by friction driving temperatures in the disc up as high as 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (10 million degrees Celsius).
​

The orbital of interactions that accelerated the gasses to 0.30 C and then led these gases to reach densities where interactions between particles of the gasses are possible at those velocities as they spiral in made them heat like this. If a spore bearing object managed to cross when the supermassive back hole was relatively quiet the actual transit of the event horizon would be a relative non event.

[Dauphin]

Reminds me of the 'I have a solution but it only works for a spherical chicken in a vacuum' situations.

[Broken_Erika]

Anyone remember the Star Trek TNG episode Timescape?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timescape_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)