Hello Everyone,
My name is Ben Hewitt and I'm the News Editor of a small uk music website called The Quietus. We recently published an interview with Patrick Moore in which he discusses a lot of space and scientific theory (unfortunately, his knowledge of pop music wasn't what we hoped!).

I thought it may be of interest to some of you, so I've included a link here. I hope you'll check it out,

Thanks again,

Ben

http://thequietus.com/articles/01994-space-rock-the-final-frontier-sir-patrick-moore-on-interplanetary-pop

That was a good interview, and quite entertaining with the music.

I don't know if you knew that Sir Patrick is a composer, himself, and that he and Brian May are quite good friends (and co-authors).

Here he performs his Penguin Parade on YouTube.

You can discuss the interview here, of course. I'm sure you'll get more replies.

I don't know who could settle the matter of his possibly contributing the idea of using Strauss's music on 2001: A Space Odyssey but do notice in the interview that he stresses that he may have had a role.

 Thanks very much!

 You are quite right, he doesn't claim he definitely did contribute the idea, just that he may have. And yes, we were aware about his musical background and friendship with Brian May, that's why we hoped he'd be up for the interview.

 Glad you enjoyed it; anywhere else you think we should post it?

 Thanks,

 Ben

I should think they'd be happy to post it, or a link to it, at his official Web site.

And you'd get a warm welcome at the UK's premiere astronomy club site, The Society for Popular Astronomy, where there is also a discussion forum you can join.

Another major online astronomy forum is here.

Good evening Ben & everybody else.

Don't you think that Patrick Moore has just got the best English accent there is?

I found the interview most amusing & informative & I love the way that he pitches his conversation at such a level that most people can understand it.

From this interview questions are bound to arise & here's a couple from me:

Quote PM.

What would happen to us if we fell into a black hole?

"We don't really know, but you certainly wouldn't come out of it alive. Absolutely nothing can escape from a black hole, therefore our ignorance is complete. Inside a black hole, all the ordinary laws of science break down, and all the ordinary laws of common sense break down. Just like the House of Commons! Ha ha!"

Question:Why does he say that all the ordinary laws of science break down? Does he know or think that science laws break down? Why should those laws break down?

It's an educated guess.

The mathematics are very weird. Essentially, since the event horizon closes off the interior to our view, all we can do is make assumptions that can be tested by outside observations.

So far, all the outside observations we have are from watching stars orbit around a supermassive, optically invisible object near the center of the Milky Way. It's massive enough to cause stars to slingshot around it with periods of a few years -- which is unusual right there.

We can calculate the energy due to friction for a given amount of gas and dust falling into a black hole of a given mass and radius -- that is, we can estimate what the appearance of the event horizon must be. We can't, however, say anything from direct observation about what happens to matter once it crosses the event horizon.  For that matter, we can't say for sure what happens to spacetime in there, except that it is effectively closed off to the outside.

We can observe that gravity acts on nearby bodies as if the mass is still present. With a little more time for observations, we might be able to caculate the effects more accurately. And that might tell us something about how much mass is able to escape being dragged across the event horizon and/or how hot the event horizon actually gets (as opposed to our estimates).

But if time does what we think it does inside the black hole, then the laws of physics that apply outside the black hole can't be expected to operate inside the black hole.

Yet, if black holes spin, and grow (and obviously they grow), then time doesn't stop -- at least the internal mass can change (as evidenced by changes in the orbits of nearby objects outside the event horizon).

So, who knows?

Good evening Chip.

Again thanks for the reply and for increasing my knowledge.

Since you replied,I've had a bit of a read about blackholes & note that the belief in their existance is based on mathematics.This makes sense to me but just incase the maths are wrong,what could be in the place of a blackhole?

Einstien himself didn't believe in blackholes although his theory kicked off the examination of them.So if he didn't believe in them,what did he think was the cause of all those planets going round that invisible object?

We had no observational evidence of black holes during Einstein's lifetime. He understood that his equations allowed them to exist, but he abhorred the idea, calling them "fantastic" (meaning imaginary). They do seem too weird to be real.

However, we do now have observational evidence that can only be explained (thus far) by a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.

In the region of Sagittarius, we have imaged in infrared (and later in X-rays, using the Chandra space telescope) a number of stars orbiting in a very small region of space and tremendous velocities and whipping around an invisible object. We can calculate the masses of these stars, and their velocities. The only thing we can imagine that would cause their orbital velocities (and changes thereto) is a supermassive black hole. This observation supports the idea of black holes, and nothing else that we have posited thus far.

Here's a link to further reading on that topic. That article is from 2002. Many additional research projects have confirmed those findings. There can be little doubt that the object in question is a black hole. Those who believe it is not are at a loss to otherwise explain it.

Scarcely a year later, the estimate of its mass and spin rate increased dramatically as new data came in (read about that here).

By 2008, the noose was even tighter, leaving less room for doubt. More here.

If you Google "ESO animated black hole video" you will find multiple file types you can download and play with whatever media player your system supports. You will see the results of 16 years of research played out in seconds, as stars appear to approach, whip around, and then fling outward from the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. These animations were made based on the real data: positions of these stars recorded over a period of years in infrared and x-ray telescopes.

Here's an animated .gif file based on 8 years of that data. Note: this is not an actual video ... it is a sequence of individual computer-generated images where the stars are based on the actual measured positions of stars from the research project. Since there are massive clouds of gas and dust between us and these stars, we do not see them directly, as you would by stepping outside on a clear night and looking up. But it's as close as we're gonna get anytime soon!

This animation is explained here.

it would be nice to post it at http://forum.ourdarkskies.com/ he wrote one of the forwards in it along with Brian May and Arthur C Clarke, Noel Carboni and Greg Parker are the authors of the book Star Vista's- (whom also post at the forum)- and i must add, its the most interesting astrophotography books i've ever read it my life-  http://www.amazon.com/Star-Vistas-Collection-Fine-Astrophotography/product-reviews/0387884351/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1