r/spaceporn • u/[deleted] • Apr 10 '19

First ever real image of a black hole

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u/dont_worry_im_here Apr 10 '19

What is a black hole? I keep seeing this posted on /r/all and I don't know what I'm looking at.

2

u/CeruleanRuin Apr 11 '19 edited Apr 11 '19

Tons of decent videos on YouTube on the subject. Here's a good one covering the basics.

And this one does a good job of explaining what you see in this image.

Essentially it's what you get when a star gains so much mass that it collapses under its own gravity to a sphere so dense that it bends spacetime so much not even light can escape.

Space and time itself is bent around into loops by the intense gravity, to the point where our current understanding of physics no longer applies. As a result of this, they are the subject of intense research and theory, because understanding how they work can help us better understand how the universe itself works.