Birth of a Black Hole 4K

[Music] far out in space in the center of receiving cosmic Maelstrom extreme heat high velocities adam's tear and space literally buckles photons fly out across the universe energized to the limits found in nature [Music] billions of years later they enter the detectors of spacecraft stationed above our atmosphere our ability to record them is part of a new age of high-energy astronomy and a new age of insights into nature at its most extreme what can we learn by witnessing the violent birth of a black hole [Music] there have been times when our understanding of the universe has reached a standstill when our grasp of the workings of time and space the nature of matter and energy do not fully square with what we observe in those times opposing world views cannot be resolved so it was in the spring of 1920 when astronomers debated the scale of the universe the scene was the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC on one side was the astronomer Harlow Shapley known for his groundbreaking work on the size of our galaxy and the position of the Sun within it Chaplin described the galaxy as an island universe as lives as his measurement suggested it worse it might indeed be all there is that included mysterious fuzzy shapes known as spiral nebulae he argued they were merely gas clouds on the opposing side Hepler curtis argued that some nebulae were also Island universes that idea was not new 165 years earlier the German philosopher Immanuel Kant described the nebulae as galaxies unto themselves it is noted only in the Milky Way he said that whitish clouds are seen several patches of similar aspect shine with faint lights here and there throughout the ether and if the telescope is turned upon any of these it confronts us with a tight mass of stars [Music] it took a new generation of powerful telescopes for astronomers to finally measure the distance to those mysterious objects within a few years after the great debate Edwin Hubble reported data showing the spiral nebulae lay far beyond the Milky Way that led to our current understanding of a universe billions of light years across filled with galaxies and expanding rapidly in the years since essential details about this dynamic universe have stubbornly resisted our inquiries the deeper we dug into the nature of matter of energy the more obscure they seemed to become one of the deepest mysteries of all emerged in the 1960s that was a time when nations were rapidly expanding and testing their nuclear arsenals in 1963 the United States Soviet Union and the United Kingdom signed the limited test ban treaty which prohibited above-ground nuclear testing to verify compliance the United States launched six pairs of satellites known as whele from the spanish verb to watch over or keep vigil they were designed to record a distinctive signal of nuclear explosions called gamma rays gamma rays are an ultra-high energy form of electromagnetic radiation a term used to describe particles called photons that travel out from an energy source the lowest energy form radio has a wavelength of up to 300 meters though we can't see them they are produced naturally for example in flashes of lightning our eyes are tuned to capture much smaller visible wavelengths down to 400 nanometers or 400 billions of a meter carrying even more energy ultraviolet light as a wave length is short as 10 nanometers x-rays which penetrate soft tissue in our bodies can be as short as one hundredth of a nanometer gamma ray is carry so much energy that their wavelength can be less than 10 Pico meters that's below the diameter of an atom [Music] they are known as ionizing radiation which means heavy exposure can strip electrons from atoms in your body and to kill you fortunately gamma rays from space do not penetrate our atmosphere still one theory says that a nearby gamma-ray burst might have been responsible for a mass extinction 440 million years ago by destroying Earth's ozone layer and allowing in a flood of deadly ultraviolet radiation [Music] unlike lower-energy forms of electromagnetic radiation gamma rays are produced by the often violent decay of atomic nuclei in nuclear reactions on the hunt for clandestine nuclear tests on July 2nd 1967 the Vela 3 and availa 4 satellites detected a flash of gamma radiation that was unlike a nuclear weapon as additional Vela satellites were launched a team at Los Alamos National Lab continued to find these mysterious bursts in their data they were able to narrow the sky positions of 16 and to rule out a terrestrial or solar origin it would take at least 30 years to figure out what they were a year after the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 the 17-ton Compton gamma-ray Observatory was set up in part to produce a comprehensive map of gamma-ray bursts over a thousand detections showed the bursts were randomly spread across the sky that led to another great debate held in 1995 to stimulate fresh thinking on the long-running mystery Donald Lam of the University of Chicago argued that they came from a recently discovered crop of neutron stars that had escaped into the halo of our galaxy Bohdan pitch in ski on Princeton University argued that their locations followed the general layout of galaxies and quasars but at these distances he conceded the bursts would have to be the most luminous objects known in the universe and yet a third of them disappear in less than two seconds the rest die out within minutes with a star's flaring up within our cosmic neighborhood or were they something far more violent and more fundamental to the workings of time and space in the years that follow a revolution would sweep the field of high-energy astronomy the Chandra x-ray Observatory was launched in 1997 it was followed by the gamma-ray satellites integral in 2002 and 82 in 2003 the ultimate gamma-ray hunter Swift was sent into orbit in 2004 with ultraviolet x-ray and gamma-ray sensors Swift's goal was to pinpoint as many as 100 gamma-ray bursts per year and to relay their locations down to earth within seconds that would allow astronomers on the ground to quickly aim their telescopes at the source to capture the afterglow that would allow them to measure its distance and to find clues to what caused it in the first place [Music] those clues began to appear in early 1997 an Italian satellite called Beppo Sachs detected a burst and relayed its location to earth the Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the fading afterglow suggesting that it came from another galaxy beyond our own astronomers analyzed light captured by ground telescopes and found hints that it was associated with a supernova the association with supernovae became stronger over time a 1998 burst coincided with this supernova a 2003 burst with this supernova and a 2006 burst with this supernova [Music] but these were no ordinary explosions scientists were struck by the amount of energy released and by their extreme brightness on March 19 2008 astronomers recorded a burst that originated 7.5 billion light-years away and yet it's afterglow was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from Earth that confirmed a long-running suspicion that the source was a narrow and extremely powerful beam of light what astronomers saw was actually the impact of this beam as it passed through clouds of gas heating them up to billions of degrees and generating ultra high-energy gamma rays phenomena like this are not uncommon in our universe you can find beams and high speed Jets wherever matter falls rapidly into stars galaxies or black holes few of these are known to marshal as much power as a gamma-ray burst [Music] September 13th 2008 the Swift satellite recorded a burst with the power of 9000 supernovae and a gent that was clocked at 99.9999% the speed of light [Music] april 29th 2009 brought the second most distant object ever recorded the journey of this gamma-ray burst started 13.1 four billion years ago astronomers have begun to see these beacons as probes for understanding the chemical evolution of the cosmos going all the way back to when stars and galaxies were just beginning to form [Music] but how does nature produce a beacon of light that can reach across the entire breadth of the visible universe one team of scientists has been looking for answers close to home in a giant galaxy some 50 million light years away known as m87 the event horizon telescope links telescopes thousands of kilometres apart into a single giant instrument the astronomers target accept millimeter radio waves because they are just the right frequency to move through dust and gas in the core of m87 that galaxy has one of the largest black holes known at 6.6 billion solar masses the resolution of this system was enough to collect data on a region just outside the event horizon of the black hole the point beyond which nothing can escape its gravitational pull the scientists were able to see down to the base of a spectacular jet that blasts continuously out of m87 score this region is held under the spell of extreme gravity [Music] subject to what Albert Einstein called frame dragging space and time are pulled along on a path that leads into the black hole as gas dust stars or planets fall into the hole they form into a disk that spirals in with the flow of space-time the spinning motion of this so-called accretion disk can channel some of the inflowing matter out into a pair of high-energy beams or jets our jet conformed was shown in a super computer simulation of a short gamma-ray burst it was based on a 40 millisecond long burst recorded by Swift on May 8th 2005 it had come from a giant galaxy 2.6 billion light-years away filled with old stars scientists suspected that this was a case of two dead stars falling into a catastrophic embrace orbiting each other they moved ever closer gradually gaining speed at the end of the line they began tearing each other apart until they finally merged NASA scientists simulated the final 35 thousandths of a second when a black hole forms as the two objects move together their mass is scrambled into a dense hot cloud of swirling debris on the right are magnetic fields that spin up off this cloud blue represents magnetic strength a billion times greater than that of the Sun these fields begin to channel a cloud of plasma that surrounds the newly formed black hole the new structure becomes steadily more organized and the magnetic field takes on the character of a jet within less than a second after the black hole is born it launches a jet of particles to a speed approaching light a similar chain of events in the death of a large star is responsible for longer gamma-ray bursts stars resist gravity by generating photons that push outward on their enormous mass but the weight of a large star's core increases from the accumulation of heavy elements produced in nuclear fusion [Music] in time its outer layers cannot resist the inward pull and the star collapses the crash produces a shockwave that races through the star and obliterates it [Music] in the largest of these dying stars known as collapse ours or hypernova a black hole forms in the collapse matter flowing in forms a disk charged particles create magnetic fields that twist off this disk sending a portion out in high speed Jets [Music] simulations show that the jet is powerful enough to plow its way through the star [Music] in so doing it may help trigger the explosion [Music] the birth of a black hole does not simply light up the universe it is a crucial event in the spread of heavy elements that seed the birth of new solar systems and planets the black hole birth cries that we can now register with a fleet of high-energy telescopes are part of a wider response to gravity's convulsive power [Music] take the gamma-ray burst recorded by the Swift satellite in late March 2011 it came from a normally quiet galaxy in the constellation Draco 3.8 billion light-years away [Music] most gamma-ray bursts fade within seconds or minutes this work lasted four and a half hours scientists concluded that it could not have come from a supernova they proposed instead that a large star had probably been thrown off track during an encounter with another star it moved too close to a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy [Music] this animation shows what happened the black hole tore the star apart and launched a jet from matter that swirled in [Music] the jet happened to be pointed right at Ruth [Music] we can be grateful this blast was so far away and that we are not in the firing line of a supermassive black hole that lies in the center of our own galaxy astronomers have observed giant stars whipped to high speeds by this monster [Music] should one of these stars be thrown off its path it could become prey [Music] the monster will surely let distant observers know of its conquest with a blinding flash that's visible across the universe [Music] [Music] you

Channel: SpaceRip

Views: 604,114

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Keywords: einstein, galaxies, gamma ray, grbs, nasa, fermi, space telescope, high energy, energy, black holes, black hole, hawking, neutron star, supernova, electromagnetic, esa, astronomy, nuclear, cold war, ussr

Id: nz4mOCRveP8

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2019