Science
Related: About this forumOne of Einstein's predictions on black holes has finally been confirmed
Hannah Seo 10 hrs ago
Detecting strong X-ray flares beaming from the center of a black hole is nothing new. But detecting light signals from behind one is a different story. Thats because the force of gravity in a black hole is so severe that nothing that goes in can come out. No scientist has managed to find light from beyonduntil now.
a star in the dark© Provided by Popular Science
In contrast to what their name implies, supermassive black holes can be one of the brightest sources of continuous light in the universe. Their extreme gravitational pull brings in all kinds of material that manifests as a bright ring, or corona, around the so-called event. Little is known about supermassive black hole coronas, so scientists turned to black hole I Zwicky 1, which lies 100 million light-years from Earth, to investigate the beams shooting out.
They detected smaller X-ray echoes around the supermassive black hole, in addition to the expected flares. The light signature of these pulsing beams indicated that they were the same X-ray flares, but reflected from the back sidemeaning the supermassive black holes gravity must have actually warped space-time, thus bending the beams around in a direction then detectable by specialized telescopes. The findings, published in Nature, support a key prediction from Einsteins theory of general relativity.
Back in 1963, Einstein described the way light could be expected to bend around supermassive black holes. But fifty years ago, when astrophysicists starting speculating about how the magnetic field might behave close to a black hole, they had no idea that one day we might have the techniques to observe this directly and see Einsteins general theory of relativity in action, said Roger Blandford, an astrophysicist and co-author of the paper, in a statement.
This research is the first to confirm what the renowned physicist predicted more than half a century ago.
Although we have seen the signature of x-ray echoes before, until now it has not been possible to separate out the echo that comes from behind the black hole and gets bent around into our line of sight, Edward Cackett, an astronomer at Wayne State University who was not involved with the study, told Technology Review. It will allow for better mapping of how things fall into black holes and how black holes bend the space-time around them.
More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/one-of-einsteins-predictions-on-black-holes-has-finally-been-confirmed/ar-AAMIV6d?li=BBnbfcL
Joinfortmill
(14,247 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)I did find a reference to 1963 and Einstein:
This is probably at the root of what the confused writer is trying to convey.
-misanthroptimist
(770 posts)Einstein was an amazing man with an amazing mind. But I would have been surprised had he published eight years after he died.
burrowowl
(17,607 posts)"
eggplant
(3,893 posts)After spending eight years in the black hole that is academia.
BillE
(137 posts)JohnnyRingo
(18,581 posts)In the true meaning of the word.
Thanx for posting!
tavernier
(12,322 posts)and I dont understand a damn thing about it. Ive never been stupid but I fully understand that there are minds that dwarf mine, times 1000.
keithbvadu2
(36,369 posts)Confirmed?!?! I never doubted it.
Of course it's way beyond my ken to understand it that deeply anyway.