„Think of it like a river turning into a waterfall — hitherto, we have been looking at the river. This is our first sight of the waterfall.“
Robert Lea | SPACE.com
An illustration shows a black hole causing a „plunging“ warp in spacetime. (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva))
Scientists have confirmed, for the first time, that the very fabric of spacetime takes a „final plunge“ at the edge of a black hole.
The observation of this plunging region around black holes was made by astrophysicists at Oxford University Physics, and helps validate a key prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 theory of gravity: general relativity.
The Oxford team made the discovery while focusing on regions surrounding stellar-mass black holes in binaries with companion stars located relatively close to Earth. The researchers utilized X-ray data collected from a range of space telescopes, including NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the International Space Station’s mounted Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER).
This data allowed them to determine the fate of hot ionized gas and plasma, stripped from a companion star, taking a final plunge at the very edge of its associated black hole. The findings demonstrated that these so-called plunging regions around a black hole are the locations of some of the strongest spots of gravitational influence ever seen in our Milky Way galaxy.
Brights - Die Natur des Zweifels 