{"id":55827,"date":"2024-05-11T23:27:40","date_gmt":"2024-05-11T21:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=55827"},"modified":"2026-05-11T00:44:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T22:44:22","slug":"nasas-virtual-journey-to-the-event-horizon-of-a-supermassive-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/05\/11\/nasas-virtual-journey-to-the-event-horizon-of-a-supermassive-black-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA's virtual journey to the event horizon of a supermassive black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe. The question of what will be behind them will never be answered.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/02\/14\/the-supermassive-black-hole-of-phoenix-a-the-biggest-known-light-devouring-monster\/\">The supermassive black hole of Phoenix A, the biggest known light-devouring monster<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/06\/09\/ngc-6325-the-photo-of-a-huge-cluster-of-stars-that-has-a-hidden-monster\/\">NGC 6325: the photo of a huge cluster of stars that has a 'hidden monster'<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p>However, a few days ago <strong>NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center published two videos in which it takes a virtual trip to the event horizon of a supermassive black hole<\/strong>, that is, with a mass that equivalent to millions or billions of times that of the Sun. In this case, <strong>the destination is a supermassive black hole with a mass of 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun<\/strong>, the equivalent of the black hole black that is in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53714188061_740c509461_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The <strong>event horizon<\/strong> is that border where space and time begin to distort due to the brutal gravitational force of the black hole. <strong>Beyond that, all we would see would be an absolutely black space<\/strong>, since the light from outside would no longer be able to reach us. <strong>The first video is in 360\u00ba format:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"360 Video: NASA Simulation Plunges Into a Black Hole\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/crXGmeWFb9o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The second video, published the same day, explains what we see in the first<\/strong>, showing us the position of the camera with respect to the black hole and indicating what the lines we see around it are:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NASA Simulation\u2019s Plunge Into a Black Hole: Explained\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/chhcwk4-esM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>NASA has explained that this video begins with a camera located 640 million kilometers from the supermassive black hole:<\/strong> <em>\"In real time, the camera takes about 3 hours to fall to the event horizon, executing almost two complete 30-minute orbits along the way. But <strong>to anyone observing from afar, it would never quite get there.<\/strong> As space-time becomes ever more distorted closer to the horizon, the image of the camera would slow and then seem to freeze just shy of it.\"<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53714510514_f12454c454_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In this video, <strong>the camera would end up destroyed a few microseconds before reaching the singularity<\/strong>, a one-dimensional point at which the laws of physics as we know them stop operating. <em>\"<strong>Once the camera crosses the horizon, its destruction by spaghettification is just 12.8 seconds away<\/strong>\"<\/em>says Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. from NASA. <strong>From the event horizon to the singularity there would be a distance of about 128,000 kilometers.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53714232006_104a819059_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>NASA has explained that to carry out this simulation, <em>\"Schnittman teamed up with fellow Goddard scientist Brian Powell and used the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. <strong>The project generated about 10 terabytes of data<\/strong> \u2014 equivalent to roughly half of the estimated text content in the Library of Congress \u2014 <strong>and took about 5 days running on just 0.3% of Discover\u2019s 129,000 processors.<\/strong> The same feat would take more than a decade on a typical laptop.\"<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe. The question of what will be behind them will never be answered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,16878],"tags":[21174,1304],"class_list":["post-55827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-space","tag-black-holes","tag-nasa"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-12 10:02:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}