At that temperature, electrons separate from atoms, creating a magnetized plasma. The leading theory for what a corona is starts with gas sliding into the black hole where it superheats to millions of degrees. This light-which is X-ray light-can be analyzed to map and characterize a black hole. Material falling into a supermassive black hole powers the brightest continuous sources of light in the universe, and as it does so, forms a corona around the black hole. The original motivation behind this research was to learn more about a mysterious feature of certain black holes, called a corona. “Fifty years ago, when astrophysicists starting speculating about how the magnetic field might behave close to a black hole, they had no idea that one day we might have the techniques to observe this directly and see Einstein’s general theory of relativity in action,” says Roger Blandford, a coauthor of the paper, professor of physics at Stanford, and SLAC professor of particle physics and astrophysics. The strange discovery, detailed in a paper in Nature, is the first direct observation of light from behind a black hole-a scenario that Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted but had never been confirmed, until now. “The reason we can see that is because that black hole is warping space, bending light, and twisting magnetic fields around itself,” Wilkins explains. It is another strange characteristic of the black hole, however, that makes this observation possible. “Any light that goes into that black hole doesn’t come out, so we shouldn’t be able to see anything that’s behind the black hole,” says Wilkins, who is a research scientist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. “…that black hole is warping space, bending light, and twisting magnetic fields around itself.”Īccording to theory, these luminous echoes were consistent with X-rays reflected from behind the black hole-but even a basic understanding of black holes tells us that is a strange place for light to come from. He observed a series of bright flares of X-rays-exciting, but not unprecedented-and then, the telescopes recorded something unexpected: additional flashes of X-rays that were smaller, later, and of different “colors” than the bright flares. Watching X-rays flung out into the universe by the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 800 million light-years away, Stanford University astrophysicist Dan Wilkins noticed an intriguing pattern. This black hole would not only need to be supermassive, but completely isolated from any surrounding space material, gas, or stars as well.Fulfilling a prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, researchers report the first-ever recordings of X-ray emissions from the far side of a black hole. A person falling into a stellar-size black hole will be much closer to the black hole's center when passing through the event horizon, which results in a gravitational pull so large that they will likely immediately die as they'll be stretched into a "long, thin noodle-like shape." A person falling into a supermassive black hole, however, would safely pass through, free of noodle-like stretching, because of how far away the event horizon is from the gravity-causing center of the black hole. "Thus, someone falling into a stellar-size black hole (non-supermassive size) will get much, much closer to the black hole's center before passing the event horizon, as opposed to falling into a supermassive black hole," the two physicists write. The supermassive black hole, by way of its sheer size, has a mass that's roughly 4 million times the mass of our Sun and has an event horizon with a radius of 7.3 million miles as a result. There are two main types of black holes in the universe, according to them, and one is supermassive while the other is not. Physicists Leo Rodriguez and Shanshan Rodriguez are both assistant professors of physics at Grinnell College and they explain how this successful trip through a black hole could happen safely in their report on The Conversation.
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