• Question: are black holes real

    Asked by 845sptm43 to Christine on 2 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Christine Simpson

      Christine Simpson answered on 2 Mar 2018:

      Definitely- we’ve been able to see a lot of them because they twist the light coming from everything behind them by a huge amount, so we definitely know they’re there.

      In 2015 we also got to see them using gravitational waves at the LIGO experiment when two black holes collided to make a really, really big black hole, and we’ve observed a bunch more since then.

Comments

  • Photo: Ollie

    Ollie commented on :

    I couldn’t agree any more with Christine. Theoretically, as a consequence of the stuff Einstein got up to, black holes MUST exist as they work well with the stuff he came up with. Practically, we can observe the effect that these black holes have on neighbouring stars – since they throw the stars about and make the stars orbit the black hole. We also believe that (since there is an incredible amount of evidence) within our own galaxy, the milky way, there exists a supermassive black hole which is roughly 4 million times heavier than our own sun. It’s kinda cool to think that we are orbiting a black hole right as I type this!