Not published! Find the ray of light behind the supermassive black hole

This is the first direct observation of light from behind a black hole in a phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but not yet confirmed.

For the first time, astronomers are observing light coming from the other side of a black hole, which bends due to the warping of space-time around the object. This observation coincided with Albert Einstein’s 1963 prediction of how gravity bends light around black holes, as described in the general theory of relativity.

An international team led by Dan Wilkins of Stanford University (USA) used ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescope to observe flashes of extremely bright X-ray light coming from around a black hole.

The researchers focused on observing the black hole’s mysterious “halo,” which is a source of bright X-ray light and is believed to be caused by gas constantly falling into the black hole, causing it to heat up and form a disk around it. During the observations, the science team also saw a series of smaller flashes. The researchers determined that they were the same as X-ray flashes, but reflected from the back of the disc.

“The light that goes into the black hole doesn’t come out, so we shouldn’t be able to see anything behind the black hole. The reason we can see is that black holes distort space,” explains Wilkins, lead author of the new study. study, published in Nature. , bends light, and wraps a magnetic field around it.

The black hole observed is located at the center of the spiral galaxy I Zwicky 1, 800 million light years from Earth, and 10 million times as massive as our Sun.

“50 years ago, when astrophysicists started speculating about how magnetic fields would behave near black holes, they had no idea that one day we might have the technique to observe them directly and see Einstein’s theory of general relativity in action,” said Roger Blandford. . , co-author of the article, adapted from the Phys.org portal.

“This is the first time we’ve seen a direct sign of the way the light behind a black hole bends into our line of sight, because of the way the black hole curves into the space around it,” Wilkins added.

Source: elciudadano.com

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