Supermassive black holes are capable of violently devouring entire stars, and warping the very fabric of spacetime with their near incomprehensible mass and gravitational influence. Their awesome power and mysterious nature has captured the imaginations of generations of scientists and entertainers, ranging from Albert Einstein, to Christopher Noland, who have sought to render the unknowable understandable through their works of audiovisual art, and groundbreaking research.
Now, a new set of NASA supercomputer simulations is giving the public an opportunity to see the reality bending influence of these cosmic leviathans up close, by showing them what it would be like to travel through the event horizon of a supermassive black hole with a mass the equivilent to 4.3 million Suns.
“People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” explained NASA astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman, of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who worked to create the visualizations. “So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.”
Ever wonder what happens when you fall into a black hole?
Thanks to a new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer, we’re kicking off #BlackHoleWeek with a virtual plunge into the event horizon—a black hole’s point of no return: https://t.co/aIk9MC1ayK pic.twitter.com/CoMsArORj4
— NASA (@NASA) May 6, 2024
The simulations were crafted by Schnittman and fellow NASA scientist Brian Powell using the Discover supercomputer located at NASA’s Center for Climate Simulation. According to the agency, It would have taken a regular laptop around a decade to tackle the monumental task, but Discover’s 129,000 processors were able to compile the visualizations in a mere five days, using just 0.3 percent of its computing power.
The singularity at the heart of the simulations was created to have roughly the same mass as the monstrous supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). As explained by Schnittman, the incredible size of the supermassive black hole could work to an astronaut’s advantage, helping them to survive right up to the point where the brave explorer passes through the event horizon, at which point they would be torn apart via a process known as spaghettification.
“The risk of spaghettification is much greater for small black holes on the order of the mass of our sun,” said Schnittman in an email to IGN. “For those, tidal forces would indeed rip apart any normal spacecraft long before it reaches the horizon. For supermassive black holes like Sgr A*, the horizon is so large, it looks and feels flat, just like a ship on the ocean doesn’t risk ‘falling over the horizon,’ even though it could easily fall over a waterfall on a small river.”
“To calculate the exact point of spaghettification, we used the strength of a typical human body, who would probably not survive more than 10 g’s of acceleration, so that is the point where we declared the camera to be destroyed,” continued the NASA astrophysicist. “For Sgr A*, that corresponds to only 1% of the event horizon radius. In other words, the camera/astronaut crosses the horizon, and then still survives 99% of the way to the singularity before getting torn apart. Or burned up by the intense radiation, but that’s a story for another day.”
As to what an intrepid explorer would actually see as they plunged into one of the universe’s darkest pockets? Well, as its name would imply, the singularity at the centre of any given black hole is impossible to observe directly, owing to the fact that its gravity prevents even light itself from escaping the event horizon once it has passed through it. However, astronomers are able to observe the glowing mass of superheated material surrounding a black hole, which settles into a flat disk as it is drawn inexorably towards the event horizon.
NASA’s supercomputer visualizations reveal in magnificent detail how the mass of 4.3 million Suns might work to radically warp the light from the flat accretion disk. Each simulation begins with the viewer staring at the black hole from a distance of around 400 million miles. From here, the gravitational influence of the cosmic leviathan can already be observed, as it manipulates the disk’s light to frame the top and bottom of the event horizon, echoing the appearance of the ‘Gargantua’ black hole seen in Christopher Noland’s 2014 movie Interstellar.
As the journey continues, the influence of the supermassive black hole intensifies to create a kaleidoscope of shifting photon lines, which become ever thinner as the would be astronaut approaches and passes through the event horizon.
NASA has uploaded multiple versions of the simulations to YouTube, including a 360 degree YouTube video that allows viewers free reign to look around as they fall into the deepest of cosmic pits, or alternatively, travel to escape the pull of the insatiable singularity. Some of the videos also display information as to the perspective of the camera, and how relativistic effects such as time dilation – a phenomenon wherin time passes at different speeds for different observers depending on where they are, and the velocity at which they are travelling – would affect a person as they drew closer to the singularity.
Check out this IGN article for an explanation of what time dilation is, and how it could prove to be a headache for future astronauts exploring distant stars. For more astronomy news why not read up on a once in a lifetime stellar explosion that should be visible from Earth later this year, or find out about how millions of borderlands players got collectively listed as the authors of a peer reviewed scientific study.
Image credit: NASA
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
Dr. Sarah Adams is a scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to all. Her articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
