It was the image that broke the Internet in
April 2019. The subject? One that had managed
to evade the paparazzi for as long as people
have theorized about its existence. Sooo,
Big Foot? Nessie? Sasquatch? (No that’s
the same as Bigfoot! Sorry. Nope, I’m talking
about the first photo ever taken of a black
hole!
I’m sure you remember the recent hype, at
least, if you weren’t living under a rock.
It was a monumental event, not only for scientists
but for the public too! People have always
been mesmerized and slightly terrified by
the idea of a black hole.
But up until recently, black holes had only
technically been a theory. Well, astronomers
were pretty sure they exist. I mean, for decades
they’ve been watching the pull and push
of black holes that influenced neighboring
planets and stars. They’ve even been listening
to the powerful gravitational waves that appear
after supermassive black holes collide. Whoa!
Up till now, astrophysicists have always lacked
that final proof of their existence.
But those days are gone thanks to an international
team of over 200 astronomers that had been
working for years to capture a unique photo
of a black hole. They started getting all
the necessary data back in 2017, but it’d
take a while to put it all together in an
image. It’s not like they just pointed a
camera, told the black hole to “Say Cheese!”
and snapped the photo! It was a little more
complicated than that…
We can admire this amazing space phenomenon
thanks to a vast global network of telescopes,
called the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
or simply EHT. Yeah that’s shorter! Why
such a name? Glad you asked! You see, the
event horizon is “the point of no return”
on the outskirts of a black hole. Once something,
for example, matter, radiation, or light,
reaches this boundary, there’s no way for
it to escape the black hole's clutches.
Anyway, to capture the very first image of
a black hole, scientists created a (sorta)
mega Earth-sized virtual telescope by combining
the power of 8 different radio telescopes
spread around our globe. The researchers had
to simultaneously point the telescopes in
a meticulously planned order with the help
of precise atomic clocks set on each of them.
All in all, the process resembled a carefully
choreographed dance. But thanks to these preparations,
over two weeks, the telescopes collected a
whopping 5,000 terabytes of data! (That’s
5 quadrillion bytes – 15 zeros if you wanna
count ‘em all!) All that data was then processed
by several supercomputers, and scientists
finally got the long-awaited image…
What they observed was a monster of a black
hole measuring about 25 billion miles (40
bln km) across. Just imagine: that’d be
like 30,000 of our suns, or (to really make
you feel itsy bitsy) 40 billion Earths! The
size of this giant might easily be larger
than our entire Solar System. Now let that
sink in….
But don’t worry! This supermassive black
hole isn’t going to engulf our planet or
anything. It’s somewhere out in the middle
of the supergiant Messier 87 galaxy, about
55 million light years away from our little
floating rock in space. Hence, why it was
so tough to get a clear image of the thing!
Imagine trying to take a picture of a donut
left on the moon just by using your smartphone!
Uh huh!
Astronomers had previously got some images
of a light stream coming from the area where,
as they’d suspected, the M87 black hole
could be. But they couldn't capture the hole
itself because their equipment at that time
was a far cry from the perfection that is
EHT.
If you look at the fuzzy image of the giant
hole, which admittedly doesn't look THAT big
in the photo, you'll see a ring of superheated
gas that's being sucked into a flawlessly
circular hole. That's the event horizon I
mentioned earlier: after light reaches it,
it disappears without a trace. But it’s
thanks to this exact ring of light, which
is way brighter than all the stars of M87
combined, that astronomers here on Earth managed
to take the photo.
The headline-making black hole is a mature
one. It's just chillin’, resting, and eating
gas that's trickling from nearby stars. The
giant is dimmer than other more energetic
black holes. Those youngsters accumulate much
larger amounts of matter, so their radiant
gas swirls shine a lot brighter. But the most
exciting thing about this black hole is that
scientists are pretty sure it’s the heaviest
they’ve found so far, probably with a mass
6.5 billion times that of our sun. Man, space
makes you feel teeny tiny, doesn’t it?
Black holes are some of the most extreme objects
that exist anywhere in space. They pack incredible
amounts of mass in a single point, which makes
them infinitely dense. Just like my college
roommate. Nyah just kidding. And when I say
INFINITELY, I mean it! As a result, such density
creates an enormous gravitational pull toward
the center that no one and nothing can overcome.
In other words, black holes are so unique
because they're the only existing objects
surrounded by a region of spacetime that’s
entirely inaccessible for the rest of the
Universe! They also super-heat matter to billions
of degrees and make it reach the speed of
light… before swallowing anything that carelessly
gets too close to them!
And that’s where the theories get trippy.
Some scientists are sure that certain black
holes (the ones that spin fast) can create
wormholes in spacetime! Did you catch that?
Like, if you jump into a black hole, you could
find yourself in a different time on the other
side of the Universe!
And guess what? If scientists can get more
images of black holes, they may be able to
confirm (or reject) this hypothesis! Who knows,
maybe one day, astronomers will get a photo
of a black hole with a wormhole attached to
it? And while it sounds like sci-fi stuff
now, just remember: the mere existence of
black holes was just a theory until recently.
So, anything’s possible!
And now, to really fill your plate for the
day, here are some more cool facts about black
holes!
- There are tiny ones called primordial black
holes. They vary from the size of an atom
to that of a mountain!
- There’s a theory that galaxies get formed
around black holes. Meaning that when a large
star implodes on itself, a black hole appears
in its place, and the rest of the galaxy just
pops up around it.
- There’s a supermassive black hole right
in the middle of our Milky Way galaxy! It’s
called Sagittarius A, and it's 4 million times
as heavy as the Sun. And, no, we’re not
going to get sucked into this hole. It's more
than 26,000 light years away from Earth – too
far to have any influence on our planet.
- Besides Sagittarius A, there are a staggering
100 million medium-sized black holes in our
galaxy. Can you imagine how many there are
in all the 100 billion galaxies that exist
out there? You do the math!
- Scientists have found out that there exist
black hole binaries: two black holes that
orbit each other.
- If you ever find yourself near a black hole,
you’ll notice that time slows down significantly.
(Hey, more time to tackle that bucket list!)
Just don't let yourself get tugged behind
the event horizon, aka the point of no return!
Buh bye!
- If you managed to squeeze Earth down to
the size of a cherry tomato, it would turn
into a black hole. In fact, you could also
become one yourself, if you agreed to be scaled
down to the size of an atom! Well?
- Black holes aren't some hungry predators
that roam the Universe preying on poor unsuspecting
planets and stars. They just gulp down the
stuff that ends up too close to them.
- They also sometimes fling out "spitballs"
the size of a planet. These things manage
to escape a black hole’s immense gravitational
pull by slipping away before going past the
point of no return. In fact, with Sagittarius
A, we should be worried not about its pull
but about these spitballs coming at us at
20 million miles per hour (32 mln kph)! Eh,
the chances are slim though, so don’t sweat
it!
- South African astronomers have recently
come across another head-scratching black
hole mystery. In a region of distant space,
they noticed that several black holes located
in different galaxies aligned in the same
direction. It looks as if their gas emissions
have been synchronized by design. Hey why
can’t we can synchronize my gas emissions?
Anyway, scientists can't explain why and how
these black holes, which are about 300 million
light-years from one another, can be acting
in unison. Hey, maybe it’s a cross-universe
black hole flash mob? Ha ha.
Have you heard about any other cool black
hole facts? Please leave them down in the
comments! If you learned something new today,
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