Space travel is one of the last remaining frontiers for tourism. Although some companies are beginning to offer unforgettable experiences to Earth’s orbit, no matter how much the industry advances, there is a journey that will never be possible if we intend to return to tell the story. It is a journey inside a black hole. Thus, NASA has created an unprecedented simulation so that any curious person can delve into this great mystery of the universe.
Black holes are one of the great current enigmas of space study. The supermassive black hole in which NASA takes you on a trip with this simulation It is 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun, “equivalent to the monster located in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way,” explains the agency.
In a major computational effort, NASA’s supercomputer has created this simulation. A dance of lights and shapes is presented to the viewer in this video created by NASA. Is about the most realistic simulation to date of what it would mean to travel through space until you enter a black hole, until you get lost in the event horizon, the point of no return of a black hole.
Travell Whit out return
A dance of lights and shapes is presented to the viewer in this video created by NASA. It is the most realistic simulation to date of what it would mean to travel through space until you enter a black hole, until you get lost in the event horizon, the point of no return of a black hole.
Although for the viewer the experience is only a few minutes, the real time trip is 3 hours in which the camera falls until it reaches the event horizon and executes almost two full 30-minute orbits along the way.
NASA simulation of a trip to a black hole explained
POT
As the camera approaches the black hole, it reaches speeds increasingly closer to the speed of light and the brightness intensifies, turning into white lights. On the way, the black hole disk, photon rings and the night sky distort Increasingly, they appear to form multiple images as their light traverses increasingly warped space-time.
The viewer can observe how the speed seems to stop, this is because space-time is distorted closer and closer to the horizon, which is why astronomers originally referred to black holes as “frozen stars.”
[El impactante vídeo de la NASA que revela el descomunal tamaño de los mayores agujeros negros]
Once inside the event horizon, both the camera and the space-time in which it moves rush towards the center of the black hole, a one-dimensional point known as the singularity, where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate. But before reaching that point, the last leg of the journey occurs in a small instant, when the camera is destroyed by spaghettification just 12.8 seconds away.
Alternative ending
In order not to be left with this sad but epic ending, the agency proposes a second simulation, an alternative ending in which the camera orbits near the event horizon but never crosses it and escapes to a safe place.
If you were an astronaut flying a spaceship while the rest of the team waits for you on the mothership away from the black hole, the round trip would take six hours and he would return 36 minutes younger than the rest of the crew. NASA explains that this phenomenon is due to the fact that time passes more slowly near a strong gravitational source and when it moves near the speed of light.
How was it created?
Schnittman has managed to create this simulation with the help of Goddard scientist Brian Powell and the Discover supercomputer at NASA’s Climate Simulation Center. The machine took 5 days to complete the entire simulation, consuming only 0.3% of the 129,000 processors it integrates. It would take a traditional computer decades to tackle this project. The feat has generated around 10 terabytes of data, which is equivalent to half of the text content of the Library of Congress, as explained by NASA.
Illustration of hot gas disks formed around massive black holes.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
POT
The agency has published two versions, an explanatory one with information about what is being observed and a second video with 360-degree recreations so that the viewer can move freely through the scene during the trip.
