What’s in a black hole? In a video, NASA simulates a dive into the heart of the mysterious celestial object

In the form of flat maps, 360° videos and even scientific guides, NASA offers diving into the heart of a black hole. The American space agency published this Monday, May 6, various contents around celestial objects raising many questions among ordinary mortals.

To answer this, astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman carried out a simulation of two scenarios. In the first, the expert, who works at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland (United States), imagined a simple passage above a black hole. But the second simulation doesn’t just fly over the event, it imagines the point of view of an astronaut trapped inside.

“People often wonder about this, and simulating these difficult-to-conceive processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to consequences in the real universe.”explains Jeremy Schnittman in a NASA press release.

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A simulation that would have taken ten years of calculation for an average computer

To obtain his results, the astrophysicist used the Discover supercomputer at NASA’s climate simulation center. The experiment required five days of work to generate 10 terabytes of data (or approximately 1,250 GB). It must be said that it has barely encroached on the computing power of Discover’s 129,000 processors, appropriating only 0.3% of its capacities. However, it would have taken more than 10 years for a typical laptop to do the same.

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The final rendering places the viewer in front of a supermassive black hole 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun. Which is equivalent to the real black hole present at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. An assumed choice by the astrophysicist to give more to see.

“If you have a choice, you want to fall into a supermassive black hole”he assures. “Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to about 30 times the mass of the Sunhave much smaller horizon lines and greater twisting forces, which can shred approaching objects before they reach the horizon line.”

A phenomenon which may seem surprising, but which can be explained by the gravitational attraction of black holes. Those of small sizes see the pull at one edge of the black hole much higher than that at the other end. The objects entering it are therefore stretched like noodles, hence the name of the phenomenon by scientists: spaghettification.

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The singularity, the center of a black hole where physics ceases to apply

Here, the imagined black hole measures around 25 million kilometers. Which prevents the experience from ending too quickly. So, it takes three hours in real time for the camera to fall on the event horizon. A time during which two complete orbits of 30 minutes each are carried out.

During the fall, the cloud of hot gas surrounding the black hole serves as a visual reference. In addition to this accretion disk, the rings of photons, the incandescent structures formed closest to the black hole also serve as a benchmark. The image is complemented by a background depicting a view of the starry sky from Earth.

The experiment allows us to observe a distortion of the images, due to the distortion of space-time. It is even possible to reach the center of the black hole: “A one-dimensional point called a singularity, where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate”describes NASA.

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By accumulating speed as it falls within the black hole, the simulation tends to make the camera reach the speed of light. Once it crosses the horizon of the simulated black hole, it only takes 12.8 seconds for the object entering it to be disintegrated by spaghettification. From this moment, you still have to travel 128,000 kilometers to reach the singularity. But at such speeds, you only need to blink to achieve it.