The discovery of a black hole on
April 10th, 2018 opened a new chapter in Astrophysics. This historical
event was made possible by a gigantic and intricate network of “event horizon
telescopes” existing in the galaxy M87. These were able to create the first
picture of a black hole. This black hole is vastly far from the earth,
precisely 53 million light years away.
In fact, capturing its mammoth size was made
possible by using telescopes which were of the size of planet earth. It took scientists two years to
assemble it for the required mission. The results obtained by them have paved way
for understanding more about these mysterious objects.
A remarkable feature of this black hole is its mass which is
6.5 billion times compared to the Sun and is one of the heaviest black holes
ever known to mankind. The fact that a huge international team of 200
scientists burnt the midnight oil to point the networked telescopes
intentionally towards M87 for over a continuous stretch of 10 days is
mindboggling. Spitzer Space Telescope,
belonging to NASA did measure infra-red light which was radiating from this
particular galaxy.
Black
Holes are absolutely gigantic and massive. Another interesting aspect to its
feature is that anything literally that travels past it is surely going to
ultimately fall into the black hole. The fact can be stated with certainty, as
per the observations incurred by scientists. This manifests the conclusion that
there is complete darkness inside the black hole which means that in reality,
the black hole will appear as a black hole’s ‘shadow’ or a black blob in spite
of using advanced photography techniques.
There are a volley of questions though, lurking in the minds
of scientists even today. They are curious to look out for knowing what causes
the bright ring to appear around the hole and also what happens exactly when
anything falls into a black hole. Extensive research will provide more and more
answers to intriguing questions like these.
Einstein’s theory of relativity had predicted the concept of
black holes back then, which showed a small and dense cone is formed whenever a
star dies. Well, his prediction has indeed come true with this recent event in
astrophysics. It has also been found that more clarity of images can be
achieved by using light having slightly higher frequency.
What does the future
hold?
The future of this discovery
has paved way for a bright future, as scientists plan to add more observatories
to work with by the year 2020. They have a plan to add more number of telescopes which can
ultimately help them capture more clearly everything that emits from the black hole.
The next target for scientists at NASA is knowing more about
the black hole situated at the centre of the Milky Way. This part is called as
Sagittarius A. It‘s size is approximately 1000 times smaller than the one which
they have photographed lately – M87 and is much closer.
Since it is smaller in size, hence its technical features also
varies as the material moving around the event horizon completes one whole
circuit in just a few minutes. This is more compared to M87 which takes few
days to go about it. There are exciting times yet to come in the future as they
release varied images of M87 and continue with the herculean task of discovering
more black holes.
The latest update in black hole research was recently announced when scientists discovered a black hole behaving rather strangely at a distance of only 8000 light years away. The black hole in V404 Cygni which was discovered in the year 1989 was found lately to behave in a bizarre and unusual manner. The most astonishing feature which the scientists observed is that the disk of its material and the black hole itself are not aligned with each other. In fact, the disk of this black hole looks like it is quivering just like a spinning top, while drastically changing its orientation.
