Scientists have successfully taken first ever picture of the shadow of a черна дупка providing direct observation of its immediate environment
Image taken from “EHTC, Akiyama K et al 2019, ‘First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Черна дупка‘, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 875, no. L1.”
Супер-масивният черни дупки were first predicted by Einstein in 1915 in his General Theory of Relativity when he showed gravity bends light. There have been many developments since then but never any direct evidence. Scientists were only able to detect them indirectly. The first real picture of the shadow of a super massive черна дупка has now been captured providing first direct evidence of their presence, thanks to ”The Event Horizon Телескоп Сътрудничество".
- черни дупки are extremely compressed mass in a very small region. Its gravity is so high that nothing at all escapes if gets too close to its boundary. The Event Horizon is the boundary around the черна дупка that marks what is inside and what is outside. Once anything crosses this boundary, it gets swallowed and can never come out. Черни дупки swallow all light therefore they are invisible and cannot be seen or pictured.
The intense gravity of черна дупка attracts and pulls interstellar gas onto itself faster and faster. This heats up the gas immensely and light radiation is emitted. These emissions are warped into a circular ring by the gravity of the черна дупка.
A черна дупка itself is invisible but its shadow against super-heated gas cloud around it could be pictured.
Black hole’s presence couldn’t be directly observed uptill now mainly due to the fact that черни дупки are extremely small targets for the available радио telescopes which were not capable enough to observe their event horizon. Observing черни дупки directly needed building an ingenious telescope virtually the size of Earth.
It took about a decade to organise a network of telescopes called the ”Event Horizon Telescope” spanning the face of the Earth which combined eight separate telescopes in Mexico, Arizona, Hawaii, Chile and South Pole. All eight dishes of the telescope needed to be linked and pointed towards the черна дупка at exactly the same time. The signals received by the telescopes were combined by a correlator (a super computer) to give an image of the event horizon of the черна дупка.
Успехът на този експеримент е значителен пробив в астрономията.
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Източник (и)
1. EHTC, Akiyama K et al 2019. Първи резултати M87 Event Horizon Telescope. I. Сянката на свръхмасивната черна дупка. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 875(L1) https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0ec7
2. Max Planck Institute for радио Astronomy, 2019. First-ever picture of a black hole. Retrieved from https://www.mpg.de/13337404/first-ever-picture-of-black-hole
3. BlackHoleCam, 2019. ИЗОБРАЖЕНИЕ НА ХОРИЗОНТА НА СЪБИТИЯТА НА ЧЕРНИ ДУПКИ, извлечено от https://blackholecam.org/
4. Европейска комисия – Съобщение за пресата, 2019 г. Учени, финансирани от ЕС, разкриват първото по рода си изображение на черна дупка. Извлечено от http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-2053_en.htm
