#BLACKHOLE WALLPAPER MOVIE#
#BLACKHOLE WALLPAPER SERIES#

“This symmetry smells like something to do with the central problem of understanding the quantum dynamics of black holes,” he said. The symmetry suggests that the ring may encode information about the hole’s quantum structure. In a paper posted online in May and recently accepted for publication in Classical Quantum Gravity, Strominger and his collaborators revealed that the photon ring around a spinning black hole has an unexpected kind of symmetry - a way that it can be transformed and still stay the same. “We’re exploring, excitedly, the possibility that the photon ring is the thing that you have to understand to unlock the secrets of Kerr black holes,” he said, referring to the kind of spinning black holes created when stars die and gravitationally collapse. Now Strominger is making his own U-turn and trying to convince other theorists to join him. “And I thought of the photon ring as some sort of technical, complicated thing which didn’t have any deep significance.” “I had taken the view that the event horizon was what we needed to understand,” said Andrew Strominger, a leading black hole and quantum gravity theorist at Harvard University. Quantum gravity theorists seeking a truer, quantum description of gravity have therefore looked to the horizon for answers. But space-time warps so much inside black holes that general relativity breaks down there. Throughout most of the cosmos, gravity tracks with curves in space and time as described by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. It makes sense that researchers have been preoccupied with the event horizon, since it marks the edge of their knowledge about the universe. If you detect the photons, “you’re going to see every object in the universe infinitely many times,” said Sam Gralla, a physicist at the University of Arizona.īut unlike the iconic event horizon of a black hole - the boundary within which gravity is so strong that nothing can escape - the photon ring, which orbits the hole farther away, has never received much attention from theorists.

#BLACKHOLE WALLPAPER MOVIE#

Some of these photons keep circling the black hole practically forever.ĭescribed by astrophysicists as a “cosmic movie camera” and an “infinite light trap,” the resulting ring of orbiting photons is among the weirdest phenomena in nature.

#BLACKHOLE WALLPAPER SERIES#

A rare few, however, skirt the hole, making a series of abrupt U-turns. In this episode of The Stream, we will talk about the latest theories about black holes and the public’s fascination with them.When photons hurtle toward a black hole, most are sucked into its depths, never to return, or gently deflected away. Yet so much remains unknown and mysterious about the nature of black holes. And the first-ever black hole audio remix from the Perseus galaxy cluster had a recent viral moment on social media. In May, scientists shared the first-ever image of Sagittarius A* – a supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Aided by the latest advancements in telescopes and imaging technology, astronomers say they are in the midst of a new era of black hole science. Once deemed purely theoretical, black holes have now been imaged twice, building upon years of indirect observational research. But how much do scientists really know about black holes, and what purpose do they serve? A black hole is believed to be the most extreme environment in the universe – an area in space where the force of gravity is so intense, not even light can escape.

Blackhole wallpaper