![]() ![]() The measurements were made using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton spacecraft to track an Earth-sized clump of matter as it was pulled towards the hole. It was detected at about 20 times the hole’s size – extremely close, in astronomical terms. ![]() In contrast to the spiralling gas and dust, they found it fell directly towards the centre with almost no rotation at all.ĭuring its plummet the matter hit speeds of around 30% of the speed of light, or about 100,000 kilometres per second. Looking at PG1211+143, Pounds and his team turned their attention to falling matter that might not align with the rotation of the black hole. Instead, it spirals inwards in an ever-accelerating orbit, becoming hot and luminous, and turning gravitational energy into radiation observable by astronomers. ![]() However, their incredible density means they are relatively small in size, so the gas and matter in the accretion discs surrounding them rotate too quickly to fall in directly. The centres of almost every galaxy feature supermassive black holes, usually with masses millions to billions of times that of the sun. They create a new scenario for astronomers trying to understand the behaviour of matter surrounding black holes. The findings, by a team led by Ken Pounds at the University of Leicester in the UK, have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. And rather than falling in an ever-tightening orbit, as expected, it is plunging directly into the centre. This page was last updated June 27, 2015.New observations have discovered matter falling into the black hole at the centre of a galaxy dubbed PG1211+143 at around 30% of the speed of light. The more you are able to "hold yourself back" before you fall in, the more of the outside universe's future you will be able to witness.įor another physicist's take on this question, see this link. Your trip from the event horizon to the singularity is so short that most of the light from faraway distances doesn't have time to reach you so that you can see it.Įxactly how much of the future that you get to see depends on how slowly you are able to approach the event horizon. As this happens, you will be shredded to pieces and killed by the black hole's tidal forces (assuming this hasn't happened already), and furthermore, you will hit the singularity at the center of the black hole where nobody really knows what will happen to the material that used to be you! Whatever happens, you certainly won't get a chance to see or make sense of any of the light that is coming in from the outside. As soon as you get there, you are, by definition, pulled very quickly towards the center of the black hole. The problem is that there is no way for you to sit still at the event horizon. So when you look out at them, the rate at which you see their time passing will approach infinitely fast - however, this does not quite mean that you get to see the entire future of the universe evolve before your eyes. It is as if their time were passing by infinitely faster than yours. An outside observer who is very far away and watching you fall in will see your time slow down so much that it approaches a complete stop! To them, you will appear to slow down and freeze as you approach the event horizon, then fade away into darkness. This doesn't just apply to black holes, by the way - in fact, the effect occurs at least a tiny bit for any massive object - but it can become quite extreme (and very noticeable!) near a black hole because the gravity there is so strong.Īs you approach the event horizon of the black hole (the point within which nothing can escape), truly bizarre things begin to happen. Since your time is slowing down as you fall into the black hole, everyone else who's far away will seem to be evolving faster from your point of view. This is a consequence of general relativity, which explains that the gravity of a massive object causes time to slow down near that object. Everyone's watches will appear to be running faster than yours, and they will appear to be moving as if someone had pressed the "fast-forward" button. It is true that if you watch the outside world as you are falling into a black hole then you will see time evolve faster there. That depends what you mean by "see the future". People keep saying that when you get sucked in a black hole, you can see the future or the past. ![]()
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