杏吧原创

News

Explore the most exciting new ideas and emerging concepts in science, health, technology and the environment with New 杏吧原创鈥檚 exclusive in-depth articles, interviews and long reads.

Space

China is about to land on the far side of the moon with Chang’e 6

Landing on the far side of the moon is rarely attempted, due to difficulties communicating with Earth, but China is about to try. If successful, its Chang'e 6 mission will then bring lunar samples back home

News

Environment

Cleaner ship emissions may warm the planet far faster than expected

News

Life

Chicks link shapes with ‘bouba’ and ‘kiki’ sounds just like humans

News

Space

‘Unluckiest star’ may be trapped in deadly dance with a black hole

News

Mind

Smartphone use can actually help teenagers boost their mood

News

Mind

Babies group together their squeals and growls to prepare for speech

News

Life

Why we can’t afford to ignore the world’s smallest freshwater bodies

News
This new visualization of a black hole illustrates how its gravity distorts our view, warping its surroundings as if seen in a carnival mirror. The visualization simulates the appearance of a black hole where infalling matter has collected into a thin, hot structure called an accretion disk. The black hole?s extreme gravity skews light emitted by different regions of the disk, producing the misshapen appearance. Bright knots constantly form and dissipate in the disk as magnetic fields wind and twist through the churning gas. Nearest the black hole, the gas orbits at close to the speed of light, while the outer portions spin a bit more slowly. This difference stretches and shears the bright knots, producing light and dark lanes in the disk. Viewed from the side, the disk looks brighter on the left than it does on the right. Glowing gas on the left side of the disk moves toward us so fast that the effects of Einstein?s relativity give it a boost in brightness; the opposite happens on the right side, where gas moving away us becomes slightly dimmer. This asymmetry disappears when we see the disk exactly face on because, from that perspective, none of the material is moving along our line of sight. Closest to the black hole, the gravitational light-bending becomes so excessive that we can see the underside of the disk as a bright ring of light seemingly outlining the black hole. This so-called ?photon ring? is composed of multiple rings, which grow progressively fainter and thinner, from light that has circled the black hole two, three, or even more times before escaping to reach our eyes. Because the black hole modeled in this visualization is spherical and non-rotating, the photon ring looks nearly circular and identical from any viewing angle. Inside the photon ring is the black hole?s shadow, an area roughly twice the size of the event horizon ? its point of no return. This visualization is ?mass invariant,? which means it can represent a black hole of any mass. The size of the black hole's shadow is proportional to its mass, but so is the size of the accreetion disk, so its properties scale accordingly. Simulations and movies like these really help us visualize what Einstein meant when he said that gravity warps the fabric of space and time.

Physics

How the weird and powerful pull of black holes made me a physicist

News
2X4HHK9 extreme heat wave 2024

Environment

Don’t be fooled by El Ni帽o’s end 鈥� net zero is more urgent than ever

News

Health

Risk of bird flu outbreak in cows causing pandemic is less than feared

Cow udders have lots of bird-like flu virus receptors but no human-like ones, a study has found, meaning there鈥檚 no reason for the virus to evolve to become better at infecting people

News

Health

Parkinson鈥檚 disease could be prevented by a recent tetanus vaccine

News

Space

What would happen if we pulled out Mars鈥檚 iron core with a magnet?

News

Technology

Can Google fix its disastrous new AI search tool?

News

Humans

Ancient Egyptian skull shows oldest known attempt at treating cancer

News