This Is What Scientists Saw From The Other Side Of A Black Hole, Einstein Was Right.

Astrophysicist Dan Wilkins, and his team from Stanford, were able to discover light emitting from the other side of a black hole.

Among the many mysteries our Universe holds, Black Holes remain to be one of the most puzzling and mysterious regions in space. From John Michell, who in 1783 proposed the idea of the existence of bodies that can suck everything, to Stephen Hawking, who in 1974, showed that black holes are not entirely black, Scientists are still working on finding new details about them. However, thanks to the technological advancements made in the 21st century, scientists now are able to prove details and facts that were once theories.

A couple of years back on April 10, 2019, a historic feat was achieved when Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured the first-ever image of a black hole with its shadow. This black hole was 55 million lightyears from Earth, in the center of Messier 87 (M87), a distant galaxy.

Now recently this week, scientists have achieved another marvelous feat when astrophysicist Dan Wilkins and his team from Stanford, were able to discover light emitting from the other side of a black hole. Using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR space telescopes, researchers studied X-rays that were being emitted by a black khole 800 million lightyears away from Earth, in another galaxy. This discovery was surprising as black holes are really dense and gravity is supposed to be so strong that an object that reaches its event horizon has no way of returning back, even electromagnetic waves such as light.

The group of scientists found some surprising patterns among the emitted X-rays. They saw brighter bursts of X-rays and then they saw some dimmer and smaller bursts of X-rays that were differently colored, the smaller ones being the ones that brought the researchers attention. The rays looked as if they were “echoing” from the other side of the black hole. Dan Wilkins stated, “Any light that goes into that black hole doesn’t come out, so we shouldn’t be able to see anything that’s behind the black hole,”. He further added that the reason we can see that is because the "black hole is warping space, bending light and twisting magnetic fields around itself”.

This discovery, however, was already theorized by Einstein in 1916, in his famous General Theory of Relativity. But it was not until this week that it was actually observed. His theory stated that massive objects could affect space-time and can curve space. The heavier the mass, the more the curving and warping of space, and thus, they can bend light around themselves.

Wilkins also said, "I've been building theoretical predictions of how these echoes appear to us for a few years," said Wilkins. "I'd already seen them in the theory I've been developing, so once I saw them in the telescope observations, I could figure out the connection."

As more and more mysteries unfold and more technological and scientific advancements are being made day by day, soon we might be able to fully explore the science behind black holes in the near future. Wilkins and his team are also determined to continue studying the x-rays being emitted so they could paint a better picture of black holes that are present in the vastness of the Universe.

by Anas Siddiqui