Roger Penrose, Reinhard Ganzel and Andrea Gaz. He is the joint winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on black holes. Image by Nobel Media.
Earlier this month (October 6, 2020), the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced for two groundbreaking researches in astrophysics, both focusing on black holes. Half the prize for 2020 went to Roger Penrose, a mathematician at the University of Oxford, who said that “the formation of black holes is a strong prediction of the general theory of relativity.” The other half went jointly with Andrea Gaz of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the University of California at Los Angeles, “in search of a supermassive compact object object at the center of our galaxy.”
It was a great moment for black hole physics as well as for the field of astronomy and astrophysics in general. And it’s a wonderful time to reflect on the beautiful history of black hole science.
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What is a black hole?
Black holes are foreign objects in space. The best view for the formation of a black hole is centered on a giant star that comes out of the internal fuel needed to make it shine. The star ses high density under its own self-gravitational pull, leaving the compact leaving object with an abundant gravitational pull. A black hole is a space in space in which matter is so dense and compact that it creates an area around itself from which light cannot escape. The boundary of this region is known as the event horizon. After the event of a black hole has passed the horizon, the gravitational pull of the hole is favorable.
If there is material in the space near the black hole – and if this material comes too close – it is pulled inside. But it doesn’t just leave a hole at once; Instead, it forms a glowing disk around the black hole called an attraction disk. Friction in an acceleration disc can heat a disc by billions of degrees, causing it to emit radiation into the electromagnetic spectrum. Even though no light can escape a black hole, astronomers can observe black holes in space through their growth disks.
What’s more, in the process of preserving the angular velocity, black holes can cause provocations that come perpendicular to the action disc. These are called outbursts Jet By astronomers, and they can move material in space at relative speeds, i.e. speeds that are a significant fraction of the speed of light (186,000 miles or 300,000 km per second). Astronomers can also study black hole jets to learn more about black holes.
Development of the theory of black holes
All of the above was Principle, Developed in the 20th century. Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, published in 1916, contains the seeds of the modern concept of black holes, although the same concept was first mentioned in 1783, when an English natural philosopher by the name of John Mitchell did not theorize the existence of light. .
Einstein’s theory of relativity discusses the curvature of space-time as a result of gravity. This curvature causes any object to move along a straight line equivalent curved path in the absence of gravity. The principle has allowed the existence of filled objects in space of small and infinite lengths. Theory was published in 1915 as the field of gravitation.
While serving in the German Army during World War I, the astronomer and director of the Astrophysical Observatory at Potsdam Karl Schwarzschild was the first to solve Einstein’s field equations. Their solution successfully describes how space-time is rotated, not only around a planet or star, but also around theoretically high-density people, such as black holes. In the space around a sufficiently dense and massive object, gravity is so strong that the fastest moving material in the universe cannot escape 186,000 miles (300,000 km) per second. Thus it was Schwarzschild who first conceived Event HorizonOr the boundary area around a black hole. Today physicists speak of the Schwarzschild radius, which is (basically) the radius of the event horizon of a black hole. Schwarzschild’s solution of Einstein’s field equations also beautifully illustrates the concept of loneliness – the central point of a black hole – a point in space where all the laws of physics are broken.
Initially, this concept was considered a mathematical curiosity. Scientists, including Einstein, had no idea that such things existed in nature.
But years later, in 1965, Roger Penrose, working with the great theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, showed that black holes can actually exist in nature and are formed by a stable and robust process. And in fact, for some stars, black holes are the ultimate destiny, the inevitable consequence of stellar collapse.
The important work done by Penrose and Hawking ushered in a new era in the study of black holes. The work of Penrose, through the process of Penrose, in the form of jets and dissipations, was also key in showing how black holes emit energy.
Meanwhile, it was the physicist John Wheeler who, in 1967, popularized the term. Black hole. Wheeler summarized Einstein’s equations as follows:
Space-time, tells how to move; Space-time tells how to bend an object.
Observation of black holes
Astronomers did not find the first stellar mass black hole – Cygnus X-1, until the middle of the 20th century. In the 1964 rocket flight, the Cygnus X-1 emerged as the strongest source of X-rays ever seen from Earth. By the 1970s, most astronomers believed that the Cygnus X-1 was actually a black hole. It is now thought to be a black hole with a mass about 14.8 times that of our Sun and an event horizon with a radius of about 27 miles (44 km). It is the opposite of our sun’s radius of 3,000 miles (666,000 km).
Diagonal-mass black holes are difficult to detect due to their quiet nature. When a passing material hits their action disc they can display short and unexpected spreads, after which they remain silent for decades.
That is why it was discovered Supermassive To give black hole science its real boost, black holes at the centers of most galaxies, including our own galaxy.
Left: Cygnus X-1 observed by the Lunar X-Ray Observatory. Right: The artist’s idea of a black hole to increase his vision from his fellow star. (Left) Image by NASA NASA / CXC / SAO; (Right) NASA / CXC / M.V.S.
Supermassive black holes
Today, astronomers believe that most galaxies have supermassive black holes in their centers. Supermassive black holes contain tens of millions to billions of solar masses, forming galaxies around the same time as the galaxy. More than 100,000 supermassive black hole candidates have been observed to date, far more than the number of well-known stellar-mass black holes.
Among the many observed black hole candidates, a Sagittarius A * (SGR A *, pronounced Sagittarius A-star) in the center of our own galaxy is called. Two independent studies over the past 25 years, led by Andre Gaz and Reinhard Ganzel – the joint winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in the second half of 2020 – have mapped the stars orbiting an invisible object object at the center of our galaxy. Using a powerful telescope at the Cake Observatory in Hawaii and a very large telescope in Chile, the teams focused on a star called S0-2. S0-2 orbits our galaxy closer to the central supermassive black hole than any other observed star.
Knowing the period of the orbit of the star S0-2, from its very elongated elliptical orbit and the approximate approach to the central black hole of our galaxy, scientists calculated the mass of SGR A * to be 4 million solar months. The teams were able to observe two full orbits of the star S-0-2 around the central black hole, which furthers their claim and, through observations, also proved what Einstein, Schwarzschild and Penrose predicted in theory about black holes.
The area around Sagittarius A * in the center of our galaxy. Left: X-ray (blue) and infrared emission (red and yellow). Inset (X-ray only) shows the hot gas captured by the central black hole, SGR A *. NASA / UMAS / D. Wang et al. Image by NASA / STSCI. Right: Observes stellar orbits at the Galactic Center for more than 15 years. Image by Andrea Geez / UCLA Galactic Center Group.
Further recognition of Einstein’s general theory of relativity came when on April 10, 2019, the Horizon Telescope collaboration published the first image of a comparatively close black hole (by cosmic standards) called M87 visible in the constellation Virgo. The mass of the black hole in the center of the M87 center is op..5 billion solar. The Galaxy M87 and its famous jet – high energy radiation from its center – have been observed for decades. However, this was the first successful attempt at direct imaging of its black hole. The image shows a bright ring formed by the curvature of light at the seam of the horizon occurring black holes, due to its extreme gravity pulling.
These observations were followed in September 2020, when more images of the M87’s black holes were taken in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013 in collaboration with the Event Horizon Telescope. These images reveal interesting and exciting information about the wreckage of the rosy ring. Bending the light, and a crescent-like feature that appears to be changing its target during the observation period, gives the ring the appearance of shaking.
The Event Horizon Telescope team has opened a new window for our understanding of black holes and the physics of their gravity with these latest images.
With this new knowledge and the emergence of more advanced ground- and space-based telescopes and technologies in the next decade or so, we are entering a new, exciting era in black hole physics and astronomy research. We do not yet have any observational evidence as to whether general physics is valid within black holes. Future observations of black holes and their surroundings will greatly enhance our understanding of black holes and bring new theories to physics and astronomy.
M87 * Snapshots of black holes obtained by imaging / geometric modeling and an array of Event Horizon Telescope array telescopes in 2009-2017. The diameter of all the rings is the same, but the position of the bright side varies. like this. Image by Wilgus / D Pace / Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.
Bottom line: The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Ganzel and Andrea Gazz for their groundbreaking work in the observation and theory of black holes. This article explores the history of our understanding of black holes.
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