A NASA supercomputer managed to develop a new immersive visualization that allows us to enter the event horizon of a black hole. Through detailed simulations, scientists can study how this force of nature affects the real universe.
Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said: “People often wonder about this, and simulating these hard-to-imagine processes helps us connect the mathematics of relativity with real consequences in the universe. So I simulated two scenarios: one in which a camera, like a brave astronaut, tried to cross the event horizon and another in which it failed to reach it and was thrown backwards.
The generated visualizations are available in different formats. Explainer videos act as tour guides, while 360-degree videos allow viewers to look around during the trip. In addition, flat maps of the entire sky were also created.
To carry out this project, Schnittman teamed up with Goddard scientist Brian Powell and used the Discover supercomputer at NASA’s Climate Simulation Center. The simulation generated approximately 10 terabytes of data in just five days of running with 0.3% of Discover’s processors. If it had been done on a conventional laptop, it would have taken more than a decade.
The black hole they focused on is 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun and is located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Schnittman explained: “If you had the choice, you would rather fall into a supermassive black hole. “Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to 30 times the mass of our Sun, have smaller event horizons and stronger tidal forces, which can tear approaching objects apart before they cross the horizon.”
The simulation of the event horizon spans about 25 million kilometers, about 17% of the distance between Earth and the Sun. A flat, swirling cloud of hot gas called an accretion disk can be seen, as well as rings of photons, which are bright structures formed from light that orbited the black hole one or more times. All of this is completed with a starry background seen from Earth.
As the camera approaches the black hole at near-light speeds, the brightness of the accretion disk and background stars amplifies, similar to how the sound of an approaching race car increases. The light appears brighter and whiter when viewed in the direction of motion.
The film begins with the camera located 640 million kilometers away, and the black hole quickly fills the field of view. As the camera zooms in, the black hole’s disk, photon rings, and night sky become distorted, forming multiple images as its light passes through the warped spacetime.
