#blackhole

Creepy Expanding Black Hole IllusionJust look at this black hole! Is it expanding, are are you coming closer to it? It makes you feel as it you are moving toward the void, doesn't it? Spoiler: you aren't moving forward. Even more surprising is that that is a static image, and doesn't move at all. It's just your perception preparing to move toward the black hole. Your visual perception tricks the brain into getting ready for a change ahead. In developing this illusion, 50 subject were exposed to the picture rendered in different colors, and to nonsensical images as a control. The image that produced the most illusory effect was the black hole. Researchers even detected that the subject's pupils dilated somewhat when confronted with the black hole. Read more about this illusion and why our brains react the way they do at ScienceAlert.(Image credit: Laeng et al., Front. Hum. Neurosci., 2022)#illusion #blackhole #perception #visual perception #optical illusion
Can You Solve the Mysterious Chalk Doodles on Stephen Hawking's Blackboard?Legendary physicists know how to have fun too. This is apparent in one of the objects that is currently being displayed at the Science Museum in London, UK—a blackboard full of doodles and punny messages that Stephen Hawking kept untouched for more than 35 years.
Astronomers Found a Wandering Black Hole in Interstellar Space for the First TimeWith the abundance of discussions around black holes in the media, one would think that there are scientific proofs of multiple black holes across the universe. Which was untrue because the discovery of one actually takes so long due to the difficulty of spotting them against the vast blackness of space. Until today.After a long time, researchers finally announced that they have spotted an isolated stellar-mass black hole wandering around in space for the first time.This discovery is a continuation of a finding in 2011 when two project teams from Warsaw as well as the combined researchers in New Zealand and Japan spotted an extremely bright star light years away from Earth.They found out that the star changed its location, discovered that no light is emanating from the lensing, and ensured that the magnification lasted for a long time. These are necessary to make sure of the existence of a black hole. Additionally, they also identified it to be 20,000 light years from Earth, and is seven times bigger than our sun.Image: Sahu KC, et al/Arxiv#blackhole #astronomy #space
Supermassive Black Holes Spawned Massive Cosmic "Dancing Ghosts"Astronomers from Western Sydney University and Australia's national science agency CSIRO have discovered a strange electron cloud deep in the universe the that looks like "two dancing ghosts."The strange cloud was discovered during a deep sky survey using CSIRO's Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope."When we first saw the 'dancing ghosts' we had no idea what they were," said lead researcher Ray Norris in a statement. "After weeks of work, we figured out we were seeing two 'host' galaxies, about a billion light years away. In their centers are two supermassive black holes, squirting out jets of electrons that are then bent into grotesque shapes by an intergalactic wind."Image: Western Sydney University#galaxy #blackhole #ghost #electroncloud #dancing #astronomy #radiotelescope
Image of a Gigantic Jet in the Heart of a Black Hole Captured by the Event Horizon TelescopeThe Event Horizon Telescope (ETH) has released a fascinating new image of an astrophysical jet of matters spewing out of a black hole in the Centaurus A galaxy.The image shows a jet with a dark center flanked by two parallel stripes with bright, glowing edges. Astronomers think that the jet may have that bright edge because its outer regions are rubbing against the surrounding gas and dust, thus causing them to glow.But what drives the powerful jets? Science Magazine explains two theories:One theory holds that an accretion disk, the swirling whirlpool of matter spiraling into the black hole, generates a magnetic field that funnels some of the matter into a jet. Others argue this magnetic field must tap into the rotational energy of the black hole itself to be able to achieve such colossal power.The new observations of Centaurus A don’t resolve that question, but they hold clues. Janssen says the images show that the remarkably parallel edges of the jet narrow into a cone close to the black hole. The base of that cone remains wide, [Michael Janssen of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy] says, which might suggest it is coming from the accretion disk. “It remains to be seen,” he says.#astrophysicaljet #astronomy #astrophysics #ETH #EventHorizonTelescope #blackhole #CentaurusA