Up@dawn 2.0

Friday, April 26, 2019

Final Report - Dean Cheevers

First Image of Black Hole
Dean Cheevers

April 10 of this year marked an incredibly important day for science and humanity. The event that made this day so important was the revelation of the first ever image of a black hole’s event horizon. Before this incredible image, the image of a black hole was unknown to humanity. However, thanks to the incredible team of scientists, the Event Horizon Telescope was able to capture the historic photo.
The black hole that was photographed has a mass that is 6.5 billion times the mass of our Sun and is located in the Messier 87 galaxy. This is 55 million light-years from our planet Earth. The size of the black hole is significantly bigger than our solar system, in fact it would take almost 3 million Earths lined up next to each other to span the length of the black hole. Thankfully, this amazing object is not too close to us.
The image is not only significant in the science world, but also greatly important for all other aspects of interest on the planet. The large reason behind this is because this image of the black hole strongly supports Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Einstein’s theory relates gravity, time, and space together and how each of these elements of nature are affected by each other.
Most of the general population doesn't understand the full significance of Einstein’s theories, but they may be familiar with novels and movies which harness his theory to create amazing scientific fiction stories with elegant stories. For example, the popular novel “Contact” written by Carl Sagan, and the perspective movie, uses a strong amount Einstein’s Relativity.  In the novel and movie, Dr. Eleanor Arroway passes through the machine in a few seconds Earth time, but she spends approximately 18 hours in another part of the Universe.
But perhaps the greatest public connection to a black hole and Einstein’s Relativity, comes from Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”. This movie was made several years before the first image of black hole was made, and depicts a black hole that is amazingly similar to the real image. The movie is based around the battle of time. As the astronauts travel in Space, they are constantly worried about the relationship of gravity and how it affects time.

These ideas signify some of humanity's deepest philosophical questions: what is gravity and what is time? Humans do not understand time and it is the one thing most of us would like to control. The brilliant minds of Einstein and all the other scientists that led to the first image of a black hole are helping us step by step, to answer the question of: what is our place among the cosmos.

Sources
https://futurism.com/the-byte/big-m87-black-hole-compared-the-earth

https://www.eso.org/public/usa/news/eso1907/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7385

https://astronomy.com/news/2019/04/its-a-haunting-thing-space-artists-on-the-first-black-hole-image

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7372

https://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/

Discussion Questions
Do you think the black hole picture received enough press?
What was your emotional reaction to seeing the image?
Did you ever imagine that a black hole would look like that?
Were you surprised about the similarities of the black hole in “Interstellar” and the real image?
Does the idea of a black hole fascinate or scare you?

Quiz
What was the date that the black hole image was released?
What galaxy is the black hole located in?
What science fiction movies share the Theory of Relativity in them?
How many Earths would it take to lineup across the black hole?
Who created the Theory of Relativity?


Posts I have commented on:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-influence-of-music-on-society-final.html?showComment=1556265668226#c338906846267939073

https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-life-on-eight-bit-farm.html?showComment=1556265954092#c1315490245098668073

4 comments:

  1. First of all, Interstellar is my favorite movie of all time so this event was huge to me. I don’t think it got NEARLY enough covereage by the press. I used to read about Einstein’s theories of relativity (specifically black holes) and assume that we had already seen one. Then when I learned that not only had we not seen one, we hadn’t even proved it’s existence until not long ago. Einstein received a lot of praise during his time, but also a lot of critics. I thinks it’s amazing to be alive to witness something as huge scientifically as that, but also something that was theorized now more than a hundred years ago.

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  2. I agree, this was a profound moment in our species' history. It's a real milestone, a "giant step" towards the solution of so many cosmic mysteries. In the long annals of human history it will dwarf the petty day-to-day news cycle of politics and sectarian strife (if those don't pull the plug on humanity before history can unfold). Can we, one day, harness the power of these cosmic portals and shrink the cosmic distances that make the depths of space and time so vastly beyond our reach? Hate to resort to cliche, but here it seems apt: time will tell.

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  3. I was very excited to hear about the picture of the blackhole. It's insane that this thing that we've known about for years has finally been seen. it makes me wonder what else we will learn form it or will it just be picture where we look at it and say "yeah that's cool but it doesn't really answer anything".

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  4. The phenomenon of blackholes is absolutely fascinating. Even though scientists now have an image of a blackhole, there is still so much more to learn about them. A mass that has infinite density at its center thus forming a hole but at the time is theorized to evaporate and release electromagnetic radiation. It is a paradox that reveals we still have a lot to learn about how our universe works, and that is a really exciting thought.

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