UPSC CSE MAINS SYLLABUS – GS – 3- Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology and
issues relating to intellectual property rights.
Missing Black hole
- A black holeis a region of space time where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it.
- The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform space
- time to form a black hole.
Missing Black hole:
- A supermassive black hole, which is estimated to weigh up to 100 billion times the mass of the Sun, is seemingly missing, leaving astronomers perplexed.
- Scientists have been looking for the black hole using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, and have so far found no evidence that it is anywhere to be found.
- Not unexpectedly, many social media users have expressed confusion about the black hole’s whereabouts, which is supposed to be at the centre of a far-off galaxy.
‘Recoiling’ black holes:
- When two black holes merge,they release what are known as gravitational waves– invisible ripples travelling at the speed of light, which squeeze and stretch anything in their path.
- As per the theory of gravitational waves, during such a merger, when the amount of waves generated in one directionis stronger than another, the new big black hole can be sent away from the centre of the galaxy into the opposite direction.
- This is known as a “recoiling” black hole.
- So far, though, scientists are yet to find definitive evidence for recoiling black holes, and are still to discover whether supermassive black holes can merge and release gravitational waves.
- As of now, only mergers of significantly smaller black holes have been verified.
Hypothesis – will it be true:
- The black hole is supposed to be located in Abell 2261, an enormous galaxy cluster that is about 2.7 billion light-years away from our planet.
- One light-year is the distance that a beam of light travels in one Earth year, which is 9 trillion km.
- On the scale of the Universe, astronomers measure the distance from stars and galaxies in the time it takes for light to reach us.
- So, when we look at a celestial object, we are looking at how it appeared that long ago in the past.
- Should the hypothesis by the Michigan researchers turn out to be true, it would mean a major breakthrough in astronomy.
Source: ”Indian Express”.
POSSIBLE UPSC MAINS QUESTION:
What are Black Holes and recoiling black holes? Explain their processes.
