Xinhua News Agency, Shanghai, April 10 Title: You are the first human beings to "see" black holes!
Wang Linlin, a reporter for Xinhua News Agency's "China Net Affairs."
Black hole, a strange hot word that no one knows but knows very little, ushered in a historic moment today - Beijing time on the 10th, a "super giant" mass black hole in Shanghai and other parts of the world for the first time to show the true appearance of human beings, with a high-definition "photo", with a "seeing is believing" way, fixed their real existence, but also triggered more curiosity.
In the hundred years since the black hole prophecy has been circulating, we are the first humans to "see" a black hole!
For a sneak peek, Xinhua News Agency reporters interviewed a number of scientists at the press conference for the first time, using the simplest language to decrypt the "100,000 whys" behind this landmark discovery.
- Come on, black hole, please introduce yourself first.
Black Hole A: Okay, I'll introduce you to the global press conference. I lived more than 10 billion years, and humans finally took a picture of me. Today, my "photo" was published in a special issue in the Astrophysical Journal Communications, and the device that photographed me was a "virtual" telescope with a diameter the size of the earth, and more than 200 researchers finally captured my "golden side" by combining 8 radio telescopes from different locations on the earth into an observation array.
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Black Hole Answer: That's right!
Commentary: Although in science fiction movies such as "Interstellar", we have "truly" appreciated the magnificence of black holes again and again, but those pictures are just the "wishful thinking" imagination of directors, and no one has really seen what black holes look like.
About 100 years ago, great scientists represented by Einstein predicted that massive stars would collapse and accumulate in the inner central region after running out of fuel and ending their lives, eventually forming black holes.
In the early days, black holes existed only in the formulas and equations of Newton's law of universal gravitation and Einstein's general theory of relativity, because they were so "beyond human understanding" that even the earliest prophecies doubted the existence of black holes. "It wasn't until 2015, when humans first detected gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes, that they strongly proved the existence of black holes, but that was still only indirect proof." Shen Zhiqiang, director of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who participated in the international cooperation, said.
Therefore, there is no picture and no truth, and it has been a "legend" until it is "seen" by seeing for believing.
- This "hermit", where did you "hide" to?
Black Hole Answer: If you had to add a distance between "you and me", it would be 55 million light years.
Narrator: Previously, black holes have indeed existed in countless speculative data of scientists, but we have never met them. Now, humans have finally taken the first picture of a black hole.
Shen Zhiqiang pointed to the photo and said: "This black hole photographed by humans is located at the center of m87, a supermassive galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, 55 million light-years away from Earth. Our Milky Way galaxy is also a member of the Virgo cluster. ”
I heard that you look "too big to be borderless", how big is that?
Black Hole Answer: Inaccurate! I'm just heavy, but I'm small.
Commentary: In most people's imagination, the "big" of black holes is beyond human intuitive cognition of large sizes. But to be precise, "the black hole is only massive and dense beyond imagination, for example, the black hole shot this time has a mass of 6.5 billion times that of the sun, which is a supermassive black hole, but it is relatively small, so small that there is almost no gap in its interior." Lu Rusen, a researcher at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who participated in the international cooperation, said.
For example, "If we want to turn the sun into a black hole, we have to compress the sun into a space with a very small radius." Shen Zhiqiang said that once the sun is compressed into such a small space, it can be renamed "black hole", which has a super gravitational "innate gene" that can "swallow" the surrounding gas, dust, and even nearby star systems and smaller black holes. Super gravity helps the black hole "race" in an extremely violent way, swearing its "sphere of influence".
——Which "part" of you was photographed in the first black hole "photo"?
Black Hole Answer: My side face "outline".
Commentary: Yuan Feng, one of the five members of the paper publishing working group and deputy director of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who participated in the international cooperation, said: "In the photo, the center of the black circle shadow 'hides' the true body of the black hole. The crescent-shaped halo on the outside of the shadow is the light emitted by the gas around the black hole, so, to be precise, the first black hole 'photo' captures the 'outline' of the black hole. ”
- Black hole, are you black or not?
Black Hole Answer: It's black on the outside, maybe not black on the inside.
The black hole is like a "bottomless pit", even the famous "most cattle scud" - light can not escape the "magic hole". But the late scientist Stephen Hawking deduced that black holes aren't as black as they thought, and that things can escape from them.
Which is true? Which is false?
"Judging from the photos, it is indeed pitch black within the black hole's sphere of influence, but in the sphere of influence, what color the celestial body with super large mass and super small size is still unclear on the photo." Shen Zhiqiang said.
As for whether everything swallowed up by the black hole has the "escape channel" imagined in the science fiction movie, Lu Rusen said: "It is still unclear, it cannot be seen in the photo, it may not be." ”
I heard that some theories in physics textbooks have failed?
Black Hole Answer: Happy a little early.
In 2016, after analyzing gravitational wave data for the first time in 2015, scientists said that Einstein's general theory of relativity may fail around the black hole. Are you sure?
The first "photo" of the black hole reveals the mystery. Yuan Feng said that before taking pictures of the black hole, scientists accurately calculated the structure of the black region outside the black hole and the crescent-shaped halo based on Einstein's general theory of relativity. "After taking pictures of the black hole, we found that the real situation was exactly the same as the results of our calculations, and it can be seen that the observations verified Einstein's general theory of relativity."
However, Shen Zhiqiang said that since we cannot "see" the innermost part of the black hole at present, it is unknown whether the laws of operation there contradict the laws of physics known to mankind.
Physics textbooks are currently being put to the test again, are you excited?
- Human beings "wait for a thousand years to take a picture", and then what?
Black Hole Answer: Don't you want to see if I am the most powerful being in the universe?
As the first "carbon-based creatures" in the universe to see the black hole with their own eyes, human beings living on today's earth can already have "no regrets", but the curious human beings are still working hard.
"The first time the black hole is photographed, it is only a historic step in human cognition of black holes, and we will further increase the number and resolution of observation telescopes, and even do not rule out the possibility of 'building' a higher definition telescope in outer space." Yuan Feng said.
"We hope to take pictures of black holes with richer detail and more diverse angles in less time, and we hope to one day carry out a systematic 'black hole census' in the universe." Shen Zhiqiang said that this will help further verify the basic scientific theories of human beings such as Einstein's general theory of relativity, and also help humans understand how black holes exist, how spectacular jets at the center of galaxies are produced, how big the universe is, how it is formed and how it evolves.
"Who am I, where did I come from, where am I going", black holes, the answer to humanity's "ultimate three questions" are all in your place?
We're looking forward to it!