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Supermassive black holes are an enigma of astrophysics, especially when it comes to explaining how they manage to get so large. The formation of these black holes has been at the center of modern astrophysics research and is believed to devour all the gas in the dense galaxies around them with incredible speed. The concept emerged in the late 18th century, but could only be developed after technology advanced and allowed for more advanced observations in the 20th century.
Being invisible, they can only be observed by contrast, observing the phenomena that take place near them.
Interest in black holes increased after the publication, in 1915, of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, who predicted that matter warps the structure of space and time. A massive star could, from this perspective, collapse in on itself to become a point with a mass tending to zero and infinite gravity, which was later called a “gravitational singularity.”
The black hole is not a simple curiosity, nor is it a concept alien to reality
The gravitational singularity is a point of infinite concentration and with an immense gravitational force. Black holes are supposed to have a gravitational singularity at their center, drawing absolutely everything around them, including light, by gravity.
But the great physicists of a century ago challenged the gravitational singularity hypothesis, including Einstein, who considered it physical nonsense for a star to shrink and self-destruct to the point of becoming an ultra-small point.
Roger Penrose, who has worked with Stephen Hawking since 1965, has shown that these singularities can exist and should not be considered a super rarity. The black hole is not a simple curiosity, nor is it a concept alien to reality, in addition, black holes can appear in many places in the universe. For example, within galaxies, many stars explode as supernovae, leaving behind a black stellar hole (which has the mass of a star). When the black hole is at the center of the galaxy, it devours the surrounding stars along its course to become “supermassive.”
Penrose used mathematical models to show that black holes can form, becoming an entity from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Their calculations showed that black holes are a direct consequence of the general theory of relativity.
Sagittarius A *: the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy
Since the early 1990s, the other two 2020 honorees, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, have been diligently investigating the area at the center of our galaxy. Using the most powerful telescopes, they explored the interstellar gas clouds at the center of the galaxy and made discoveries about this supermassive black hole, obtaining solid evidence to support its existence. They also provided evidence that the black hole attracts the stars around it.
Andrea Ghez became the fourth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, a prize in which men have the highest percentage of the six Nobel Prizes awarded.
Sagittarius A * is the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, it is 26,000 light years from Earth and has a diameter of 120 astronomical units (3,000 million km) and a mass 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Black holes ravenously suck up everything around them, but research has shown that Sagittarius A * behaves somewhat more calmly in this regard. Being close to Earth compared to other black holes, Sagittarius A * was one of the few where the “flow” of matter in its area could be studied.
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