What is this?

if black holes are invisible, how do they know what they look like? i mean really?

72jacobite, Because what you are seeing are all the other stellar bodies either orbiting it or being pulled into it. the black hole is the thing in the middle that you can't see.

72jacobite, They don't actually have a look... the answer to how and why we know that they exist is that we see the effect a black hole has on the material (stars, matter, light itself) around it, and from there scientists worked backwards from observing the effects of this once-unknown something, to figure out exactly what it is. The matter that circles it (in the same way everything in the cosmos has radial gravity (i.e. the planets going around our sun) that we can see is called the Event Horizon, and eventually when things cross through the inner circle of this horizon is when it experiences gravity so great it is pulled inwards and "destroyed." All matter is converted into pure energy and emitted from the centre of a black hole as gamma radiation.

This would be a depiction of a black hole. Last week, April 2019, scientists revealed the first actual photograph of a black hole. Fascinating stuff. I am not going to get into a debate of science vs religion. This is a game.

I love all the arguments on here. Even though black holes are invisible, the image shows matter around the back whole which makes it visible. So I see the confusion.

RancidBronco37836, "Just a theory?" That's the kind of thing a non scientific person says when they don't understand the subject matter.

72jacobite, the images are always based on several inputs of several readings in lots of specters like radiation, light waves, gravity waves etc etc, and then put together to illustrate. We don't know what the core of the hole consists of but we can see the hole and how it affects space around, much like you would be able to tell there is a hole in your wall, but not knowing what's inside it because it was too dark.

Now there's an actual photograph of a black hole for the first time in history, that scientists spent years working out some super-techical process to get... I think they used groups of powerful telescopes in different places around the earth to all snap the photo simultaneously, which allowed them to finally see inside a black hole up close. Now that it's been proven to work, I believe more telescopes are joining the project which is supposed to enable them to get clearer results next time... I think that's how it worked anyhow, I only skimmed through a technical article about it last month when it happened, I'd encourage anyone interested to look it up for themselves.

OnerousBarbarian2025, "the church"as you call it is just the Catholic religion. Please don't judge all Christians based on what the Catholics do or believe. I would rather believe in God and the Bible and be wrong than not believe and be wrong. Eternity depends on it

adams101313, why are you preaching on a quiz game

light-*traps into a black hole God-powerful

Dezza, zaza

72jacobite, . . . to the human eyes!

Byron Byron, You managed to get me lost at "black hole. . .". Yes, you did so, too!

blackhole/ vortex is the access way for another dimension to another location

one of NASA s typical CGI images of "space". 😆

this is not the accurate image

nice view bruhh

i. like this game 🎯😄

Do they just send people up in space to take a picture, or is it AI?

72jacobite, agree

Dezza, well, if we can't see a black hole, what's in the picture?

72jacobite, 🤔

IconicYodeler75974, bruh

let's not fair I lost my ❤️

Bones, yeah, what's with the vertical line ""upper thru lower""?

One day a black hole will swallow us. Not now. About in a billion years time. Fortunately.

One day that will swallow us.

According to the observation of science, the blackholes absorb all types or colours of light spectrum. So it is a normal fact the blackholes cannot be seen by any materials or scientific equipment. The speed of light is the highest ever speed in the universe but even it can't pass through a blackhole. So it is natural that it would be invisible. So how can scientists make pictures of those things which we can't see or observe? I mean really?

Whg does black hole name is black hole when the black hole is not black????😐😐

this is the scary, when it's close to our planet. we don't know what will happend

I thought black holes are invisible? 🤨🤨🤨

In 2019, scientists photographed the supermassive black hole at the center of the huge M87 galaxy. It was feeding on stars, which made the event horizon visible. It's on NASA.gov.

*an artist's interpretation of a black hole*

it is not invisible

it's black hole.

songbird, I wouldn't want to get into a debate between science and religion. And of course the big one now of religion and government. lol

It looks more like a Quasar to me

Dezza, A sun is basically a black hole.It could kill us that time yet at the moment when it was a star, we needed it so this is peculiar

The last thing I want to explain is how we were able to capture a black hole on camera. Just like the name, we cannot actually see black holes, instead, there are two other ways to prove their existence visually, the first one is that we are able to see the effects it has on the matter around us, meaning you will view stars being ripped apart and things being drawn to it, circling around. The other way (which is how we caught it on camera) is that we are able to see the minuscule rays of light that are not pulled into the black hole. So what we are seeing in the picture is light that is 2.6 Schwarzschild radii away (the light that is just barely grazing the photon sphere)