For the first time, astronomers watched the light from behind a black hole. It is another proof that Einstein was right – ČT24 – Czech Television

A new study by published by the professional magazine Nature, namely, described the first observation of radiation coming from behind a black hole; was bent due to the deformation of spacetime around this supermassive object. According to the authors of the study, this is further proof of the veracity of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and how ingeniously this physicist predicted future discoveries a hundred years ago.

“It’s an extremely exciting result,” Edward Cackett, an astronomer at Wayne State University who did not take part in the study, told MIT Technology Review. “Although we have previously observed the signature of an X-ray echo, it has not yet been possible to separate the echo that comes from behind a black hole and bends into our line of sight. It will allow us to better understand how things fall into black holes and how black holes bend the spacetime around us. “

The release of energy through black holes, sometimes in the form of X-rays, is an extreme process in which a huge amount of energy is released. And because supermassive black holes release so much energy, they are essentially a kind of “powerhouse” that allows the galaxies around them to grow. “If we want to understand how galaxies form, you have to understand these processes outside the black hole, which are able to release such vast amounts of energy that we study as significant sources of light,” said Dan Wilkins, an astrophysicist at Stanford University and lead author.

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Galaxy too far away

The study focuses on a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy called I Zwicky 1 (abbreviated I Zw 1), which is located about 100 million light-years from Earth. In supermassive black holes, such as I Zw 1, a large amount of gas falls towards the center (i.e. the so-called event horizon, which is basically a point of no return) and tends to flatten into the disk. Above the black hole, charged particles and a magnetic field coincide – the result is high-energy X-rays.

Some of these X-rays shine directly on Earth and can normally be observed with binoculars. However, some of them also glow downwards towards the flat disk of gas and bounce off it. The rotation of the black hole I Zw 1 slows down at a faster rate than that observed with most supermassive black holes, which causes the surrounding gas and dust to fall in more easily and supply the black hole with mass from multiple directions. This, in turn, leads to stronger X-rays than usual – and this is what Wilkins and his team were particularly interested in.

As Wilkins’s team observed the black hole, the researchers noticed that the black hole seemed to “flash.” These flashes, caused by X-ray pulses reflected from a massive disk of gas, came from behind the shadow of a black hole – a place that is normally hidden from astronomers. This is because the black hole bends the space around it, and the reflections of X-rays bend around it, which means that we can see them on Earth as well.

Einstein was right again

Scientists have found signals using two different space telescopes optimized to search for X-rays in space: NuSTAR, run by NASA, and XMM-Newton, run by the European Space Agency.

The most important consequence of the new findings is that they confirm what Albert Einstein predicted in 1963 in his general theory of relativity – the way in which light should bend around extremely massive objects, such as supermassive black holes.

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“It’s the first time we’ve actually seen light bend right behind a black hole into our field of vision, because of the way a black hole deforms the space around us,” says Wilkins.

“Although this observation does not change our general picture of black holes, it is a nice confirmation that the general theory of relativity plays a role in these systems,” said MIT astrophysicist Erin Kar, who did not participate in the study.

Despite its name, supermassive black holes are so far away that they actually look just like individual points of light, even with the help of state-of-the-art instruments. Therefore, it will not be possible to take pictures of all of them as scientists used the Event Horizon Telescope to capture the shadow of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87.

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Professor Wilkins hopes that detecting and studying more of these X-ray echoes could help them create partial or even complete images of distant supermassive black holes. This, in turn, could help them uncover some of the great mysteries about how supermassive black holes grow, sustain entire galaxies, and create an environment where the laws of physics seem to cease to apply.

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