They are the science fiction boogiers, a paradox of science, and possibly the key to understanding the universe.
Scientists are struggling to understand the mysterious forces of black holes for decades, but so far it seems that they have found more existential questions than answers.
We know that a black hole is so heavy that its gravity creates a kind of wild in the geometry of the universe, said Priyajada Natarajan, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Yale.
“The black hole is so concentrated that it causes a little deep drilling in space/time. At the end of drilling, there is something called singularity, where all the known laws of nature fall apart. Nothing we know exists at that moment.”
Understanding what science knows about black holes involves mysterious small red spots, galaxies and spaghetti (the unpleasant thought experiment about what will happen to a person who is unhappy enough to be sucked into a black hole).
First, the good news: the black holes are not out to drive us. They do not shrink around the universe, looking for galaxies, sunny and planets to absorb.
“They don’t just sneak next to you in a dark alley,” says Lloyd Knox, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis.
But our understanding of the very foundations of the universe has been transformed over the last decade of new telescopes and sensors that allow scientists to see more black holes and at every stage of their lives.
“Our understanding of the role of black holes play that they are an essential part of galaxies, it is new,” Natarajan said.
Here are what cosmic secrets are revealed:
This illustration shows a glowing stream of star material as it is absorbed by an over -fat black hole. When a star passes at a certain distance from a black hole – close enough to be gravitiously disturbed – the star material is stretched and compressed when it falls into the black hole.
A new kind of black hole and a recently proven theory
The initial understanding of how black holes were formed were that when the sun is enough (about 10 times or more massively than our sun) it reached the end of its life, it can explode into a supernova, which then collapses back into a black hole. Matter can collapse into something only a few miles away, it becomes so thick that its gravity is strong enough that nothing, even light, can escape. This is called a black hole in a star table.
But over the last two decades, new types of black holes have been seen and astronomers have begun to understand how they are formed. Called over -fat black holes, they are found in the center of almost every galaxy and are one hundred thousand to a billion times more than the mass of our sun.
But how did they form?
“The original idea was that small black holes were formed and then they grow,” Natarajan said. “But then there is a crunchy crunchy to explain the monsters observed in the early universe.
In 2017, she theorizes that these super -greasy black holes from the early beginnings of the universe happen when the galactic gas clouds collapsed directly to themselves, jumping all over the star scene and passing straight from gas to a massive seed from a black hole, with an initial start, which can then grow.
“Then guess what? In 2023, James Web Telescope found these objects,” she said. “That’s why a scientist lives to make a forecast and see him proven.”
These composite images show side by side of two different galactic clusters, each with a central black hole surrounded by spots and threads of gas. The galactic clusters, known as Perseus and Centaur, are two out of seven galactic clusters observed as part of an international survey led by the University of Santiago de Chile
Black holes don’t suck everything in them
As they have such massive gravity, black holes raise star gases and anything else that approaches them too much. But this is not an endless process that ends with that the whole universe is sucked into them.
People sometimes worry that black holes are those huge vacuum cleaners that attract everything to sight. “It’s not like a whirlpool that drags everything into it,” Knox said.
Black holes are really like any other mass concentration, whether it’s a sun or a planet. They have their own gravitational pulling, but it’s not endless.
“If you are far enough, you would just feel the gravitational power, just the way you would feel it from a planet,” says Brena Mocller, a doctorate at Carnegie’s Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, California.
This image shows the location of the newly discovered binary star D9, which is an orbit of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. This is the first star couple discovered near an over -massive black hole.
If you are in a black hole you will be “spaghetti”
All the matter causes immersion or hole in space/time, Natarajan said. The black hole is so heavy that its gravity creates a kind of wild in the geometry of the universe.
“The greater the liturgy, the greater the hole,” she said. “At the end of the breakthrough, you have something called singularity, in which all the known laws of nature fall apart. Nothing we know exists at that moment.”
Where this stab is not known.
“This is an open question,” Natarajan said. “We don’t think this may be another universe because we don’t know where in our universe it can go. But we don’t know.”
And what if a person falls into a black hole? Astrophysicists have a word for this – spaghetti.
“If you first find yourself in the head in a black hole, the different weight between your head and toes would be so intense that you will be stretched and spaghetti,” Natarajan said.
Our sun will never turn into a black hole
There is no fear that our own sun will turn into a black hole, Knox said. It’s not big enough.
“The stars of the smaller mass burn through their hydrogen to make helium and then they will start burning helium in carbon. And then at one point it turns out that he just moves everyone at a distance,” he said.
“Our sun will eventually expand and surround the earth and destroy it – but it is in 5 billion years, so you have some time to get ready. But this will not turn into a black hole.”
Still unanswered mystery – “small red dots”
NASA’s super mighty cosmic telescope James Web began its scientific mission in 2022 and almost immediately raised something that no one can explain so far: small red objects that look abundant in space.
Entitled “Small Red Dots”, these objects are puzzled astronomers. They could be very, very dense, highly forming galaxies.
“Or they could be very acustering super -fat black holes from the worst universe,” says Mocler, who is an entry professor at the University of California Davis.
This article originally appeared in USA Today: What is a black hole? Scientists make themselves exchange the cosmic mystery