The Mysterious World of Black Holes

As we explore the vast expanse of space, one phenomenon stands out as particularly fascinating: black holes. These cosmic entities have long captivated our imagination with their immense power and mystique. But what exactly are black holes, and how do they form? According to scientists, supermassive black holes reside at the centers of galaxies, with some boasting masses millions or even billions of times that of our sun.

The Origin of Supermassive Black Holes

There is still much research being conducted on supermassive black holes, but the current understanding suggests that they could be created by the merger of smaller black holes. This process involves two black holes colliding and merging their masses, with the resulting black hole possessing a mass significantly greater than its constituent parts. While this concept may seem far-fetched, it is supported by scientific theories and observations.

The Notorious Property of Light

Light plays a crucial role in our understanding of black holes, despite being unable to escape the event horizon that marks their boundary. Instead, we observe the hot ring of gas and dust swirling around the black hole, known as the accretion disk, which emits X-rays that can be detected by instruments like NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By analyzing these X-rays, scientists can gather information about the mass and spin rate of a black hole.

The Event Horizon: A Point of No Return

Beyond the event horizon lies the singularity at the center of the black hole, a point with such intense gravity that not even light can escape its grasp. The event horizon marks the boundary beyond which anything that enters cannot escape, and it is this phenomenon that allows us to infer the existence of black holes.

The Discovery of Black Holes

Despite their elusive nature, scientists have developed methods to detect black holes indirectly. By analyzing X-rays emitted by hot gas swirling around a black hole, researchers can infer its presence and even determine its mass. In 2019, scientists made headlines with the capture of the first-ever image of a black hole shadow using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). This radio light image was obtained by combining data from eight radio telescopes worldwide, which collectively formed an "observatory" that could be thought of as planet-wide.

The EHT: A Revolutionary Tool

The Event Horizon Telescope is an extraordinary tool that allows scientists to study black holes in unprecedented detail. By aligning the signals received from the eight individual telescopes, researchers can reconstruct images of the black hole's shadow and even count the "dimples" on a golf ball-like object located 54 million light-years away. The EHT has provided us with direct evidence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.

The Significance of Studying Black Holes

Scientists hope that continued study of black holes will reveal more about their behavior, particularly in relation to matter and energy under extreme conditions. By exploring the death of stars and its effects on the surrounding environment, researchers aim to better understand the workings of the universe. The mysteries of black holes are a captivating aspect of astronomy, pushing our understanding of the cosmos ever-forward.

Exploring Beyond the Event Horizon

The question remains: what lies beyond the event horizon? Scientists have proposed various theories, but the answer is still shrouded in mystery. As we continue to study black holes and push the boundaries of our knowledge, we may one day uncover the truth about these enigmatic objects.

For those interested in learning more about space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope's hunt for invisible light from deep space, a video has been created that can be accessed by clicking on the link.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enblack holes the biggest puzzle in our universe they're massive and they swallow literally everything in their path including light but if they're so mysterious then how do we know they're there at all and why do we have images of them i'm claire riley and i'm cnet's resident space nerd i'm here to break down everything you need to know about black holes i'm going to cover what they are how we find them and what these all-consuming space monsters can teach us about the universe in short i'm going to work out exactly why space sucks but you didn't expect me to say that black holes are everywhere in science fiction terrifying vortexes that suck in everything around them but is there any truth to that fiction well to work out what a black hole actually is i went to the experts at nasa's goddard space flight center who have dedicated their life to this fascinating part of the universe my name is regina caputo and i'm a research astrophysicist at the nasa goddard space flight center a black hole is just a region of space where gravity is so strong that light can't escape essentially that huge gravitational pull comes from a lot of mass being crammed in a really small space there are a few types of black holes the smallest ones are called primordial black holes according to nasa they were formed in the first fraction of a second of the life of the universe they can be as small as an atom but contain the mass of a mountain next up we have stellar black holes they can cram the mass of 20 suns into a space 10 miles across that's 20 suns across the length of manhattan then at the top of the size scale are the super massive black holes no it's not just a muse song they're the equivalent of the mass of millions or even billions of suns and they sit at the center of galaxies with how big and dense they are it's pretty impressive that there are so many in our universe kind of makes you wonder how these giant space sinks are formed oh don't worry i asked regina about that as well yeah we became quite good friends so we know that the smaller ones the ones that are on the scale of the mass of a star those are generally created through the gravitational collapse of a massive star and so what happens is the star is so massive it's burning up all of its fuel and at the end of its lifetime gravity will actually win out over the other forces and cause all of the star stuff to collapse but for the supermassive black holes so these are black holes that are at the centers of galaxies um we don't actually know how they get that big there's a lot of research around supermassive black holes but the current thinking is that they could be created by black holes merging yes black holes also eat each other neat so if light can't escape the center of a black hole how do we know what they actually look like now i'm no physicist but i do know the one notorious property of light is that it lets us see things well turns out that we're not actually looking at the hole itself when we see them but the hot ring of gas and dust that's swirling around the black hole and getting sucked into the middle that's known as the accretion disk and the boundary between the bright swirl of gas and the dark hole at the center that's known as the event horizon as for what's at the very center of the void beyond the event horizon well scientists only really have mathematical theories about that we can't see it because light can't escape the event horizon but lots of theorists have come up with ideas as to what would be at the center and right now we follow this idea that it's like a singularity and so it's just a single point in space and that somehow has the mass of a billion stars alright so how do we find these black holes in space after all we're talking about something we can't actually see well we do this and i say we even though very much i'm not the one doing it by looking for the x-rays emitted by the super-hot swirls of gas and dust around black holes instruments like nasa's chandra x-ray observatory can measure the movement of particles which tells us things like how fast a black hole is spinning and what kinds of matter it's sucking up in fact the chandra x-ray observatory has also managed to capture the sound of a black hole scientists translated sound waves coming from a black hole 200 million light years away it was a note about 57 octaves below middle c and they synthesized it up to the range of human hearing so good to know what my existential crisis now sounds like but we haven't just heard black holes now we've seen evidence of them too in 2019 scientists revealed the first ever image of a black hole shadow from the event horizon telescope this is a radio light image taken of the shadow cast by the event horizon of a black hole in this case a black hole 6 billion times the mass of our sun that's billion with a b there are eight radio telescopes that make up the event horizon telescope kind of like a planet-wide observatory they all collected light from around the black hole gathering petabytes worth of data but there were still some gaps in that data so scientists use algorithms to fill those gaps reconstructing the most likely image of the black hole the resolution of the eht is so sharp that it could count the dimples on a golf ball in la all the way from new york that's not the actual distance between la and new york but you get what i mean but in this case it's not zooming in on a golf ball it's zooming in on a galaxy 54 million light years away in 2022 the eht released a second image of the supermassive black hole known as sagittarius a star it was the first direct evidence of the black hole at the center of our galaxy so why do we study this weird and wild part of space well scientists hope images like the ones produced by the eht can teach us about how matter behaves around black holes and perhaps what's even beyond the event horizon these are one of the most extreme objects that exist and you know understanding like the catastrophic death of stars and how it relates to the rest of the environment around it like you know you think about it and it's like man like i'm trying to figure out how the universe works so there you have it science fiction makes black holes look huge and fascinating and mysterious and the truth is well kind of the same we're only just scratching the surface but this is one part of science that could prove to be even cooler than science fiction if you want to know more about the deepest darkest parts of our universe then i've linked a video i made on the james webb space telescope it's on the hunt for invisible light from deep space and if you want to know more about space closer to home then we've got that too in the meantime make sure you like and subscribe and hit me up in the comments if you want to know anything more about space or you want any cool concepts explained until next time i'm claire for cnetblack holes the biggest puzzle in our universe they're massive and they swallow literally everything in their path including light but if they're so mysterious then how do we know they're there at all and why do we have images of them i'm claire riley and i'm cnet's resident space nerd i'm here to break down everything you need to know about black holes i'm going to cover what they are how we find them and what these all-consuming space monsters can teach us about the universe in short i'm going to work out exactly why space sucks but you didn't expect me to say that black holes are everywhere in science fiction terrifying vortexes that suck in everything around them but is there any truth to that fiction well to work out what a black hole actually is i went to the experts at nasa's goddard space flight center who have dedicated their life to this fascinating part of the universe my name is regina caputo and i'm a research astrophysicist at the nasa goddard space flight center a black hole is just a region of space where gravity is so strong that light can't escape essentially that huge gravitational pull comes from a lot of mass being crammed in a really small space there are a few types of black holes the smallest ones are called primordial black holes according to nasa they were formed in the first fraction of a second of the life of the universe they can be as small as an atom but contain the mass of a mountain next up we have stellar black holes they can cram the mass of 20 suns into a space 10 miles across that's 20 suns across the length of manhattan then at the top of the size scale are the super massive black holes no it's not just a muse song they're the equivalent of the mass of millions or even billions of suns and they sit at the center of galaxies with how big and dense they are it's pretty impressive that there are so many in our universe kind of makes you wonder how these giant space sinks are formed oh don't worry i asked regina about that as well yeah we became quite good friends so we know that the smaller ones the ones that are on the scale of the mass of a star those are generally created through the gravitational collapse of a massive star and so what happens is the star is so massive it's burning up all of its fuel and at the end of its lifetime gravity will actually win out over the other forces and cause all of the star stuff to collapse but for the supermassive black holes so these are black holes that are at the centers of galaxies um we don't actually know how they get that big there's a lot of research around supermassive black holes but the current thinking is that they could be created by black holes merging yes black holes also eat each other neat so if light can't escape the center of a black hole how do we know what they actually look like now i'm no physicist but i do know the one notorious property of light is that it lets us see things well turns out that we're not actually looking at the hole itself when we see them but the hot ring of gas and dust that's swirling around the black hole and getting sucked into the middle that's known as the accretion disk and the boundary between the bright swirl of gas and the dark hole at the center that's known as the event horizon as for what's at the very center of the void beyond the event horizon well scientists only really have mathematical theories about that we can't see it because light can't escape the event horizon but lots of theorists have come up with ideas as to what would be at the center and right now we follow this idea that it's like a singularity and so it's just a single point in space and that somehow has the mass of a billion stars alright so how do we find these black holes in space after all we're talking about something we can't actually see well we do this and i say we even though very much i'm not the one doing it by looking for the x-rays emitted by the super-hot swirls of gas and dust around black holes instruments like nasa's chandra x-ray observatory can measure the movement of particles which tells us things like how fast a black hole is spinning and what kinds of matter it's sucking up in fact the chandra x-ray observatory has also managed to capture the sound of a black hole scientists translated sound waves coming from a black hole 200 million light years away it was a note about 57 octaves below middle c and they synthesized it up to the range of human hearing so good to know what my existential crisis now sounds like but we haven't just heard black holes now we've seen evidence of them too in 2019 scientists revealed the first ever image of a black hole shadow from the event horizon telescope this is a radio light image taken of the shadow cast by the event horizon of a black hole in this case a black hole 6 billion times the mass of our sun that's billion with a b there are eight radio telescopes that make up the event horizon telescope kind of like a planet-wide observatory they all collected light from around the black hole gathering petabytes worth of data but there were still some gaps in that data so scientists use algorithms to fill those gaps reconstructing the most likely image of the black hole the resolution of the eht is so sharp that it could count the dimples on a golf ball in la all the way from new york that's not the actual distance between la and new york but you get what i mean but in this case it's not zooming in on a golf ball it's zooming in on a galaxy 54 million light years away in 2022 the eht released a second image of the supermassive black hole known as sagittarius a star it was the first direct evidence of the black hole at the center of our galaxy so why do we study this weird and wild part of space well scientists hope images like the ones produced by the eht can teach us about how matter behaves around black holes and perhaps what's even beyond the event horizon these are one of the most extreme objects that exist and you know understanding like the catastrophic death of stars and how it relates to the rest of the environment around it like you know you think about it and it's like man like i'm trying to figure out how the universe works so there you have it science fiction makes black holes look huge and fascinating and mysterious and the truth is well kind of the same we're only just scratching the surface but this is one part of science that could prove to be even cooler than science fiction if you want to know more about the deepest darkest parts of our universe then i've linked a video i made on the james webb space telescope it's on the hunt for invisible light from deep space and if you want to know more about space closer to home then we've got that too in the meantime make sure you like and subscribe and hit me up in the comments if you want to know anything more about space or you want any cool concepts explained until next time i'm claire for cnet\n"