Black Holes!
In the late teens of the 20th century, more specifically in 1916, Karl Schwarzschild proposed a solution to Einstein’s famous Theory of Relativity. What Einstein's theory stated was that the fabric of spacetime, in which both space and time are joined together in a great cosmic love affair, bends in the presence of mass. Why does matter orbit figures in space such as stars and planets? Why do we orbit the sun? Because those objects have matter, allowing them to drape spacetime around them like blankets, creating a spiral-like complex much like a dime falling into a funnel from a change machine. Schwarzschild’s calculations focused on Einstein’s equations near a single spherical mass and demonstrated their points of singularity, where the math results in infinite values. This was the first mathematical incentive to imagine the phenomenon we now call black holes, inspiring what might be called an obsession for this rather strange and mysterious property of the grand frontier that is space. Indeed, to imagine a point in which the mass is so great that even light, its energy waves being the fastest we are aware of, cannot escape its grasp is rather baffling, to say the least.
Almost exactly a century later in the early teens of the 21st century, we now have photographic evidence of a black hole. What was once hardly imaginable is now reality. Even crazier, our artistic demonstrations of a black hole--basically our best guess of what a black hole would look like using the math of Einstein--don’t appear to be incorrect. The picture alludes to the fact that what we have predicted not only could actually be real, but is real. Once again, the amazing power of math has helped us understand the world around us to unbelievable dimensions. If you are reading this, I can only hope you know the extent to which this is a remarkable time to be alive.
The circle of light that you see is due to the matter orbiting the event horizon, which is the black circle you can observe in the center of the ring of light. The event horizon marks what you might refer to as the point of no return, the edge of which collapses into an infinite drop of inescapable pull and unexplored mystery. Time itself no longer exists beyond that edge, something which continues to confuse and frustrate astronomers. Our physics, the glue which holds large parts of our understanding of the world together, simply dissolves in the body of a black hole. Physics does not and cannot work in a world in which time is non-existent. In the modern world of instant learning gratification and answers, the insane curiosity that black holes present to us continue to be a remarkable tool in sustaining and supporting curiosity for the extravagant enigma that is life itself.
And if your mind isn’t blown yet, if you still fail to find excitement for the Great Unknown, perhaps it will help to put things into perspective. Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is 1,120% the size of Earth. The sun can hold 1,000 Jupiters. And that black hole, the one captured above, has a mass 6.5 billion times that of our sun. Let this be your daily reminder then of just how small we really are, if the word small even does much justice within the big picture of the cosmos. Is it not rather beautiful that such small life forms are able to capture and understand (to some degree) a phenomenon as mysterious, mind-boggling, and massive as a black hole?
By Emmaline Elsbree