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Showing posts with the label gravitational wave

The Black Hole Party

The very idea of black hole is baffling and scary at the same time. Many scientists have dedicated their lives for studying these scary things. Why scary? C’mon let’s be honest.   Getting sucked by a black hole due to its strong gravitational field means instant death. Although we still don’t know what exactly will happen if a human being falls in the black hole , we have drawn our conclusions based on what it does to light. That’s why; it may sound even scarier when we learned that scientists have discovered a dozen of black holes teaming up at the center of our galaxy-Milky way.   Data from NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray observatory has allowed researchers to detect a group of black holes surrounding Sagittarius A*. Sagittarius A* is a super massive black hole at the center of Milky Way-that’s where we are. For a while now, scientists have believed that there is something at this place and now it’s confirmed! Based on the findings,   up to 10,000 black h...

Binary Black Hole

In early 2016, a group of scientists at LIGO observatory made an incredible announcement-detection of gravitational waves.   Gravitational waves are ripples in curvature of space-time. Till then, gravitational waves were considered as a theoretical concept.   This discovery is not momentous just because gravitational waves were discovered but also because nobody had ever seen two supermassive black holes orbiting so close to each other. This system is called Binary Black Hole (BBH). BINARY BLACK HOLE:- Binary black hole is a system which consists of two super massive black holes orbiting close to each other. Like ordinary black holes, BBH is also divided into stellar (black holes formed by gravitationalcollapse of a massive star) black holes. For many years, proving the existence of binary black hole was difficult because of nature of black holes itself and limited detection methods. When two black holes orbit close to each other, they give out immense amoun...

Event Horizon Telescope

Black holes have always been a mystery to many. Many scientists have dedicated their lives for the study of black holes. Although till date, we still don’t have an actual picture of a Black hole; scientists are trying to get a closer look at it. And with advancements in the field of technology, soon we’ll be able to see an actual picture of a black hole. How is it possible? Let’s see. Event Horizon Telescope is a project which has been started to study the event horizon of the black hole -Sagittarius A* which is situated in our galaxy. It will capture the pictures of the event horizon and send it back to Earth.   Before going into detail of this project, first let’s see what an Event Horizon is. Event Horizon: Event horizon is a boundary in space-time, beyond which the events cannot affect the outside observer. Simply put, it is the boundary of no returns. It is the boundary of the black hole, beyond which events are not affected by the space time and once in this...

Black Hole

“Black holes are where God divided by zero” – Albert Einstein.  Black holes are giant black bodies in the outer space, which have baffled the minds of many! Many believe their existence as an enormous body that pulls everything in and destroys it and many other believe their existence as a place where time stops and freezes everything. But apart from these beliefs, there are real questions like: how black hole is formed? How it was discovered and what are the theories that explain the nature of the black hole. Black holes are formed when a star collapses upon itself. In short, a star causes a supernova and explodes to form a black hole. Simple enough, isn’t it? Now let’s get into the discovery of black hole and many theories surrounding it. BEGINNING OF BLACK HOLE THEORY:   The idea of Black hole was first put forth in the 18 th century by John Michell. He put forth this idea in a letter published in 1783-84. The calculations in the letter assumed that ...