Just for anyone who has no idea what that actually is: a black hole is an area in the universe with so much gravity that even light cannot get out, NASA writes on the website. “A black hole can form when a star dies out.”
Scientists know for sure: we will see this in all books on astronomy. Because this discovery could lead to whole new insights into physics. It is not the first picture of a black hole, because in April 2019 there was already shared a photo of a black hole further away, but this is the black hole of our galaxy. Not that it’s close: it’s 27,000 light-years away.
There is also material coming out
But what do you actually see in this photo? The plate is actually a composition of several telescopes connected together, the so-called Event Horizon Telescope. It is all about the dark part in the middle, where the surrounding luminous grit is sucked into.
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But beware: according to astrophysics Sera Markoff, it is not the case that black holes just suck up matter. Sometimes material comes out. “And that is often completely different than when it went in.”
Spaghettification
One of the reasons for this is the so-called ‘spaghettification’. Markoff: “Gravity works the same there as it does here, but it’s much stronger. So it feels a lot more powerful at your feet than at your head, pulling you apart, as it were.”
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Fun fact, but we hardly have any real physical knowledge about black holes, but that they exist has been proven with the photo. A milestone for researchers, who knew from measurements that something like a black hole must exist in our galaxy, but never had visual evidence for it. Until now.
The black hole cannot be seen with the naked eye of course, but perhaps it would be nice for the stargazers among us to know where the hole is. If you look up on a clear night, look for the constellation ‘the Sagittarius’. The black hole can be found somewhere nearby, the experts know.
5 years analysis
The investigation into the photo took five years. Sounds long, but the images taken by the Event Horizon Telescope had to be put together, analyzed until the actual conclusion could be drawn: this is the black hole. Our black hole.
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