#blackholes

🕳️🌌 Black holes are one of the most mysterious objects in the universe. They form when massive stars collapse under their own gravity, creating a region where gravity is incredibly strong. This intense gravity affects both space and time in extraordinary ways.

According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, space and time are bound together in a structure called 'space-time'. Massive objects bend this space-time, much like a heavy ball creates a dent in a stretched rubber sheet. Because black holes are so dense, they create the sharpest curvature of space-time known in the universe. 🌠

One major consequence of this is gravitational time dilation. ⏳ The closer an object gets to a black hole, the slower time passes compared to someone farther away. For example, a person close to a black hole may experience only a few hours, while for someone observing from a safe distance in space, it may seem like years have passed.

Black holes also affect light. 💡 Their gravity bends light traveling close to them, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. If light crosses the event horizon (the boundary of the black hole), it cannot escape. This is why black holes appear dark or invisible.

Blog#359

Wednesday, December 20th, 2023

Welcome back,

Not all black holes are the destructive monsters they're often made out to be, according to new research done with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists from Montana State University published an article in Nature this week that found a star formation in Henize 2-10, a dwarf starburst galaxy — and they say the black hole at the center of that galaxy actually created them.

"We conclude that this black-hole outflow triggered the star formation," the authors wrote.

The findings provided insight into a decade-old mystery about whether smaller galaxies had black holes proportional in size to larger ones, according to NASA.

"Ten years ago, as a graduate student thinking I would spend my career on star formation, I looked at the data from Henize 2-10 and everything changed," Amy Reines, a researcher at the University of Virginia and one of the study's authors, told NASA. "From the beginning I knew something unusual and special was happening."

Reines told NASA that she expects even more research into dwarf galaxy black holes in the future. Using them as clues to better understand how supermassive black holes came into existence would solve a persistent problem for astronomers, and NASA reports that of the three leading theories about how black holes are created, none of them stand out as more likely than the others.

"It really has become the big question: where did they come from?" Reines said. "Dwarf galaxies may retain some memory of the black hole seeding scenario that has otherwise been lost to time and space."

It's poetic that an unusually creative black hole defying rules about how black holes are "supposed" to act may actually help scientists understand the most ancient of galactic mysteries.

Originally published on futurism.com

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(Saturday, December 23rd, 2023)