One of the most enigmatic elements of space are the black holes. It is an astronomical element whose interior has a concentration of mass high enough to generate a gravitational field such that no particle or radiation—not even light—can escape from it.
Now, a NASA supercomputer has produced a new immersive visualization that allows you to delve into the so-called event horizonthe point of no return of a black hole.
Jeremy Schnittmanan astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was in charge of creating the visualizations and explained how he did it.
“I simulated two different scenarios, one in which a camera, a substitute for a daring astronautit simply does not reach the event horizon and shoots out; and another in which he crosses the limit, sealing his fate,” he said.
To create the visualizations, Schnittman teamed up with Goddard scientist Brian Powell and used the Discover supercomputer at NASA’s Climate Simulation Center.
The project generated around 10 terabytes of data and took about five days to run on just 0.3% of Discover’s 129,000 processors. The same feat would take more than a decade on a typical laptop.
In the simulation, the supermassive black hole has 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun, equivalent to the monster located in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
“Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to 30 solar masseshave much smaller event horizons and stronger tidal forces that can tear approaching objects apart before they reach the horizon,” Schnittman says.
The simulated black hole’s event horizon spans about 25 million kilometers, or about 17% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. A flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called an accretion disk surrounds it and serves as a visual reference during the fall.
As the camera approaches the black hole, reaching speeds closer and closer to that of light itself, the brightness of the accretion disk and the stars in the background is amplified in much the same way as it increases. the tone of the sound of an approaching racing car. Its light appears brighter and whiter when looking in the direction of travel.
The film begins with the camera positioned almost 640 million kilometers away, and the black hole quickly occupies the image. Along the way, the black hole’s disk, photon rings, and night sky become increasingly distorted, even forming multiple images as its light traverses the increasingly warped spacetime.
In real time, it takes about three hours for the camera to descend to the event horizon, and along the way it performs almost two complete 30 minute orbits. But for anyone watching from afar, it will never get to that point. As space-time distorts closer and closer to the horizon, the camera image slows down and appears to freeze just before reaching it. That’s why astronomers originally referred to black holes as ‘frozen stars.’
At the event horizon, even spacetime itself flows inward at the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit. Once inside, both the camera and the space-time in which it moves are rush towards the center of the black holea one-dimensional point called the singularity, where the laws of physics as we know them stop working.
“Once the camera crosses the horizon, its spaghettification destruction is just 12.8 seconds away”Schnittman said. From there, it is only 128,000 kilometers to the singularity. This last stage of the journey ends in the blink of an eye.
In the alternative scenario, the camera orbits near the event horizon, but He never crosses it and escapes to safety. If an astronaut flew in a spacecraft on this six-hour round trip while his colleagues on a mothership stayed away from the black hole, he would return 36 minutes younger than his colleagues. This is because time passes more slowly near a strong gravitational source and when moving near the speed of light.
“This situation may be even more extreme,” Schnittman said. “If the black hole were spinning rapidly, like the one shown in the 2014 film Interstellar, I would return many years younger than his shipmates,” he concluded.