How dark can dark get ?

[lord_emperor]

I cast... Magic Missile!!!

 

[DrPizza]

I was going to photoshop a picture of a dimmer switch, and label it with numbers going from 10 down to negative 2. I'm too lazy though.

 

[Locut0s]

i was going to photoshop a picture of a dimmer switch, and label it with numbers going from 10 down to negative 2. I'm too lazy though.

10|-|
9.|.|
8.|.|
7.|.|
6.|.|
5.|_|
4.|_|
3.|.|
2.|.|
1.|.|
0.|.|
-1|.|
-2|-|

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

How dark can dark get ?

As dark as dark wants. There is no limit to the darkness within.

 

[BabaBooey]

Ask sammy sosa....oh wait...

 

[mmntech]

Depends on how you define darkness. Scientifically, dark is the absence of electromagnetic energy. A perfectly dark object would not radiate any energy, and would thus have to be absolute zero. The latter is only theoretically possible. It's called heat death, a potential cause of the end of the universe. The point where the universe will expand and cool so much that all energy radiation stops.

Either that, or it would have to have such a high gravity that light cannot escape it, like a black hole. Mind you, quantum mechanics suggests that they do emit radiation, so are not truly completely dark. That's where things get complicated.

That's the long winded explanation for you.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

racist thread is racist.

 

[Locut0s]

Serious answer ahead:

In any given volume of space the darkest it can get is the absence of ALL photons. However technically this is not possible as even a perfect vacuum has "vacuum energy" composed of random particles, including photons, being created an annihilated all the time. So this vacuum sate is the "darkest" any volume of space can get.

 

[Mxylplyx]

This thread makes me want to smoke too.

 

[LikeLinus]

Thought this thread was about Wesley Snipes for a minute.

 

[Lemon law]

In my mind, dark is the absence of light the human eye can see. If we want to include all wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, we would not experience full dark inside the hypothetical black body radiator at any temperature greater than absolute zero.

But given the fact, that in my younger days, I was a cave explorer, aka a spelunker, and found going deep into a cave is the best place on earth to experience total darkness.

 

[sleep]

you are using the wrong word "dark"

 

[TheSlamma]

how dumb can dumb get

 

[Jeff7]

Well if that damn woodchuck would chuck some more wood, maybe we could keep a fire going, and it wouldn't be so damned dark.

 

[glenn1]

0x000000 is as dark as you can ever get. You can pretty much just translate that to 0.

What if you were only at 99.9999999...% of 0x000000? Does decimal repeating nines dark equal one dark?

 

[IronWing]

Fuligin baby!

 

[HamburgerBoy]

No one has said amdhunter yet?

 

[FallenHero]

Black holes are as dark as you can get.
Nothing can escape (photons, neutrinos, nothing).

 

[Locut0s]

how dumb can dumb get

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Albert Einstein

Or at least it's commonly attributed to Einstein.

 

[gevorg]

 

[Locut0s]

Black holes are as dark as you can get.
Nothing can escape (photons, neutrinos, nothing).

Has it been proven how black a black hole actually is ? And is it possible for a black hole to be darker than anything we know ?

Your post is the types of post im looking for. :thumbsup:

Black holes have not been definitely proven but there is VERY strong evidence for their existence. For example at the centre of galaxies we see stars orbiting "something" at the centre of the galaxy. These stars orbit so close and so quickly that physics dictates that whatever they are orbiting has to have an enormous mass compacted into a very small area. The only thing that fits the bill are black holes. And anything else with a similar amount of mass in such a small volume would collapse into a black hole anyway. There are many other forms of evidence in favour of black holes existing as well.

As for them being totally black, nothing escaping. That's not entirely true as Steven Hawking has shown that black holes emit what has come to be called Hawking Radiation. Near the event horizon of black hole (and everywhere else) virtual particles are constantly being created and annihilated, sometimes one of the pair will fall into the hole and its partner will escape. This escaping particle is seen as the black hole radiating energy. Due to conservation rules the particle that was eaten is forced to have "negative" energy and hence decreases the mass of the hole. Over time this means black holes will naturally lose mass.

 

[datalink7]