NASA Shares Video Showing What Would Happen Inside a Black Hole and it's Spectacular
Blackholes are among the most mysterious phenomena witnessed in the universe and for a long time, curious minds have wondered what happens inside them. Different interpretations and theories have also made it to popular media through the portrayal of black holes in movies. Some of the most popular projects trying to decode black holes are The Black Hole and High Life. NASA has now presented its own version of events that take place once something enters a black hole using a supercomputer, as reported by BBC. A clip generated by the space research body shows a huge glowing ring around the black hole which is a result of gas, as well as the light that constantly orbits around it.
“People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” said Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who created the visualizations. “So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate,” he added.
Black Holes are structures that are left behind when supernovas, which are stars that have the brightness of 10 billion suns, end their lifecycles. As the center of such a star collapses on itself, black holes come into existence. Contrary to what the name suggests, a black hole is actually filled with a lot of matter. The gravity inside these structures is so strong, that it pulls everything in the vicinity towards it, and even light is unable to get away. The way in which light disappears into it prompted scientists to name the celestial phenomenon 'black hole.'
The journey within the black hole is beyond captivating with space and stars bending at every turn. The video takes the viewer through a black hole at a fast pace. As visuals match the speed of light, the glow from the accretion disk and background gets amplified. The light is brighter and whiter inside the black hole. The final leg of the journey because of time-space distortion seems to go by in a flash.
Time in the Black Hole passes by very differently in comparison to normal circumstances. As per NASA, if a person goes on a 6-hour trip into the black hole they will come out 36 minutes younger than their counterparts. The passage of time is slowed down when it is near a strong gravitational source such as a black hole. However, if the rotation in the black hole becomes rapid, the result might be different. “This situation can be even more extreme,” Schnittman noted. “If the black hole were rapidly rotating, like the one shown in the 2014 movie ‘Interstellar,’ she (the character who passed through) would return many years younger than her shipmates.” The organization took 5 days to create the entire output on a supercomputer known as Discover, while the same process would have taken a decade on a laptop.