Supermassive Black Hole Portrait, Gluttonous Predator in the Galactic Center

Introduce, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*)a supermassive black hole with a mass of 4.3 million solar masses at the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

In 2019 the world was shocked by the first photo of a black hole. The pictured is black hole at the center of galaxy M87 whose mass is 6.5 billion solar masses.

The black hole M87* is much larger in size and mass than Sagittarius A* in the Milky Way. Because of this, the surrounding material can take days to weeks to circle the black hole. Meanwhile, around Sagittarius A*, the gas that surrounds it only takes a few minutes to circle the supermassive black hole.

While changes in M87* can be seen in weeks, changes in Sgr A* are only minutes. As a result, observing and shooting these black holes is much more difficult. It’s like trying to take a picture of a dog trying to catch its tail. It is not easy to analyze the data obtained but of course it is not a hurdle.

Observational data of 6000 TB was successfully analyzed and for the first time we have a photo of Sagittarius A* in the center of the Milky Way. This achievement is as important as the photograph of the black hole M87*, when we were able to photograph the monster at the center of the galaxy for the first time for the first time. Or rather photographing the shadow of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

We cannot see black holes directly. To be sure this is not a hole in the universe.

Black hole is an object known as a voracious and cruel predator. Its gravity is so extreme that anything that falls into a black hole must travel at the speed of light or even greater than the speed of light to escape the object’s gravity.

In order not to be trapped inside a black hole, there is a safe distance from which matter can orbit the black hole known as the event horizon or boundary from which there is no turning back.

Although black holes cannot be seen, these objects can be identified by the motion of objects around them. Extreme gravity will attract matter around it.

There are black holes whose mass is equivalent to the mass of stars and formed from the remnants of exploding stellar cores. In double star pairs where the black hole is paired with a normal star, the black hole can be detected from the gas that is pulled or taken from the normal star partner.

If the pair of double stars is both a black hole or a black hole and a neutron star, the interaction of the pair of stars can trigger the two to spiral toward each other and collide with each other and even merge. Traces of its existence can be from the detection of gravitational waves or ripples generated in the universe due to the collision of the two black holes.

There is another black hole that is extremely large in mass and is often found in the center of galaxies. We know it as a supermassive black hole. It is suspected that this type of black hole was formed from an early generation black hole that devoured the stars and gas around it. Or from the merger of supermassive black holes at the center of small galaxies when these galaxies collide with each other.

For a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, its enormous gravity attracts nearby matter in the form of gas and dust. As a result, the flow of matter moves toward the center of the galaxy and around the supermassive black hole at the center in a disk we call the accretion disk. The strong gravity makes the material inside the disk move at high speeds and collide with each other. The temperature of this dish can reach 10 million C!

We really can’t see for ourselves the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. But we can see the effect of gravity on the light being bent and forming a ring of light around the dark region where the black hole is. This dark region is what we know as the shadow of a black hole. This is what was photographed so that we can see the shadow of a black hole or a photo of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way and galaxy M87.

Of course it is not easy to photograph the shadow of the black hole!

Astronomers build Collaboration Telescope Event Horizon which consists of a network of eight radio telescopes in 2017 and more in 2018. All of these telescopes perform observations using interferometry techniques and produce a giant virtual telescope that functions as a giant telescope the size of Earth.

As a result, they were able to photograph Sagittarius A* and M87* black holes.

But there is an interesting thing. Black holes are not discovered by observation. The existence of black holes appeared in the predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity published in 1916. Einstein discovered that light passing through a large mass object would be bent.

Black holes were first predicted by German physicist and astronomer Karl Schwarzschild when working on the first solution to the general relativity equation in the trenches of World War I, before finally dying in 1916. It wasn’t until 1964 that a black hole was observed for the first time in Cygnus X-1. which is 6,070 light years away in the constellation Cygnus.

Again Einstein was right.

Photos of black holes show how mathematical concepts can be transformed into physical objects that can be tested, measured, and observed over and over again. In addition, by understanding black holes we can understand the formation and evolution of galaxies because black holes are the main engine that controls the evolution of galaxies.

This article is a collaboration between detikEdu and Langitselatan and has been published on the portal detikEdu.

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