Seeing The Unseeable

Black holes are one of the most intriguing yet perplexing objects found in the intricacies of the universe and astronomers have been brainstorming to unravel this enigma. 

Black holes are infinitely dense points in the universe having immense gravitational strength that even light, the fastest known entity tends to sink into the hole. Therefore, astronomers can’t see them directly, unlike other glittery cosmic objects in the sky. But they can undoubtedly infer the presence of these invisible monsters with the aid of special telescopes by observing the erratic movements of the surrounding objects like stars and gas. 

A misconception about the black holes is that they are cosmic vacuum cleaners whereas they are no less than deep gravity sinks. A black hole does not suck matter in, but everything tends to fall into the black hole due to the enormous gravitational pull once it passes the boundary of the black hole. The edge of the black hole is called the event horizon, the point of no return where time, space and laws of physics no longer apply. The object tends to stretch or spaghettifies into molecules or particles when entering the black hole. 

There isn't just one but billions of black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way itself. Black holes are of four types: stellar, intermediate, super massive and miniature, Stellar and super massive being the most common. When stars those are 10 to 20 times as massive as our sun start decaying, it creates a supernova emitting a colossal amount of energy and radiation forming a stellar black hole. Every galaxy has one super massive black hole at its centre. Ours has Sagittarius A* that is 4 million times as massive as our sun. 

Recently, scientists were able to capture the first-ever image of a black hole. They made darkness visible to the rest of the world, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe's most mysterious objects. The super massive black hole was found in the middle of the galaxy, Messier 87. It looked like a hungry shark with its mouth wide open waiting to swallow you whole. They were only able to capture the enormous amount of light and radiation and the swirling glittery objects around the hole. All of this was possible due to the Earth-sized telescope run by Dr. Sheperd Doeleman. He splendidly made the existence of earth-sized telescope called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) likely by forming a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain to Chile, in an effort involving more than 200 scientists. Although what remains inside is still a mystery that'll hopefully unfold soon. 

An untold number of black holes are interspersed throughout the universe, continually distorting space and time, transforming entire galaxies and endlessly influencing both astronomers and our collective fascination.

Renée Kolentine (IBDP Jr.)  Editor
Cambridge International Foundation School
2019-2020