Black Holes by Natalie Blaszak
Only a few months ago in April, the first picture of a black hole was taken--an incredible advancement in our knowledge of outer space. NASA has been constantly discovering even more about them since that discovery. Through their satellite TESS, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was able to watch as a star grew brighter and brighter and was stretched out “like spaghetti dough” due to a tidal disruption. This is the result of the star coming too close to a black hole. The discovery of this phenomenon was validated by a global network of 20 robotic telescope observatories called ASAS-SN where an astronomer Dr. Thomas Holoien from the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena told NASA that “TESS data let us see exactly when this destructive event, named ASASSN-19bt, started to get brighter, which we’ve never been able to do before.” Following this data, Holoien and his team were able to perform further observations and determine that the tidal disruption caused the star’s temperature to decrease from 71.500°F to just 35,500°F. For these astronomers to catch this event and find all this new data is huge progress, since supernova eruptions are relatively rare, only occurring once every 100 years or so.
As most people believe, if we get too close to a black hole, it will suck us into another dimension or bring us to a point of no return or something else. Despite what has been thought, black holes don’t just randomly suck things up. This is actually just the black hole’s own gravity. Say the sun was replaced by a black hole. Generally speaking, people might think that we would be sucked right up into the black hole and into a new dimension. However, the earth would actually just continue its orbit around the black hole like it would orbit the sun, although the black hole would most likely destroy the planet. What creates this illusion are the effects that a black hole has on other objects when they enter its orbit. Matter surrounding the black hole will experience tidal forces that stretch the matter, acceleration, and even temperature increase that can cause the matter to emit radiation.
From researching this topic, I have come to understand that although there is so much of outer space that we don’t know about, we do still know a lot. We have been able to picture our solar system, our galaxy, and beyond our galaxy, all within a matter of not even one century. To know so much about a place in which we really haven’t spent much time and to know so much about something so far away from our planet really just makes it that much more unbelievable.
Sources: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1183354/Black-hole-NASA-TESS-black-hole-tearing-star-shreds-asassn-19bt-NASA-news
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/12/11/2019s-science-breakthrough-of-the-year-will-show-us-a-black-holes-event-horizon/#ab5ac9110ae8
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/04/03/why-doesnt-the-black-hole-in-the-middle-of-our-galaxy-consume-everything/#238bdda25c25
From researching this topic, I have come to understand that although there is so much of outer space that we don’t know about, we do still know a lot. We have been able to picture our solar system, our galaxy, and beyond our galaxy, all within a matter of not even one century. To know so much about a place in which we really haven’t spent much time and to know so much about something so far away from our planet really just makes it that much more unbelievable.
Sources: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1183354/Black-hole-NASA-TESS-black-hole-tearing-star-shreds-asassn-19bt-NASA-news
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/12/11/2019s-science-breakthrough-of-the-year-will-show-us-a-black-holes-event-horizon/#ab5ac9110ae8
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/04/03/why-doesnt-the-black-hole-in-the-middle-of-our-galaxy-consume-everything/#238bdda25c25
Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteAs you said in the conclusion of your post, it's simply incredible the things that we have been able to do with technology. In such a short time, we have gone from the euphoria of finally sending a man to the moon to autonomous robots on mars and beautiful images and knowledge regarding many seemingly inexplicable parts of the world around us. This post was really well written and very interesting!
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