News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Milky Way’s Black Hole Just Flared, Growing 75 Times as Bright for a Few Hours. Parent comment

Re:Milky Way’s Black Hole Just Flared, Growing 75 Times as B... by Eriksrocks on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @10:52PM (#20692343)
Sure, if you consider 3,200 feet as "measured in feet" [1]. Anything can technically be measured in feet. When you said that I assumed you meant they were like 20-30 feet thick, not over half a mile.

[1] http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/108-How-large-are-Sat....

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Milky Way’s Black Hole Just Flared, Growing 75 Times as B... by dnadler on Thursday August 22, 2019 @11:50AM (#20769426)
From a NASA website[0]: Saturn’s rings are incredibly thin. The main rings are generally only about 30 feet (10 meters) thick, though parts of the main and other rings can be more than a mile, or several kilometers, thick.

[0] https://hubblesite.org/quick-facts/all-quick-facts

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Milky Way’s Black Hole Just Flared, Growing 75 Times as B... by dwaltrip on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @01:48AM (#20693001)
That's still pretty damn thin, relative to the size of the rings. An interesting quote from your link:

"If you had a model of Saturn that was a meter stick wide (3 feet), its rings would be about 10,000 times thinner than a razor blade!"

[ Parent | on HN ]