A black hole is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by gravitational desire
I fell into a ring of fire
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2/ Or to be less Johnny-Cash-like:
Using the planet-spanning Event Horizon Telescope astronomers have, for the first time, SEEN A RING OF LIGHT AROUND A BLACK HOLE *CAUSED BY PHOTONS ORBITING IT*.
Holy relativistic spacetime warping!
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3/ This is from the original image data of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 that broke all our brains in 2019. Astronomers were able to tease the light from the ring out of the data using extremely sophisticated techniques. Relativity predicted it to exist.
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4/ In that original image you're seeing a blend of light from several sources. The hole in the middle isn't the black hole itself, but a region where gravity is strong enough that photons circle many times before falling in. It's called the black hole shadow.
read image description
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5/ The photon ring is just outside the shadow. Photons can circle once, twice, or more times before escaping, and we see that as a narrow ring.
Watch:
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6/6 I have the details on how they did this and what it means in my article. It's mind-bendy stuff and a lot of fun to think about. And it was in the data the whole time! What else is there to see, especially in the image of our Milky Way's black hole?
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Replying to
Cool Cash reference... :-)
