Scientists detect light behind a black hole for the first time

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In a short period of time, astronomers have taken us to black holes more than ever before with unprecedented images of cosmic giants. Now, for the first time, scientists have seen the phenomena happening behind them. As part of this breakthrough, the researchers saw light from the back of a supermassive black hole and picked it up 800 million light-years away.

The recent breakthrough is a “key piece of the puzzle to understanding” how the universe came into being, according to Stanford University astrophysicist Dan Wilkins. Furthermore, it appears to confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity over a century ago.

While studying the bright flares of X-rays emitted by the black hole, a feature known as the corona, the researchers also witnessed faint flashes of light. These were the “luminous echoes” of the flares bouncing off the gas behind the black hole. Einstein first predicted this phenomenon in his theory of relativity published in 1916.

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Wilkins explained, “Any light that enters this black hole does not go out, so we shouldn’t be able to see anything behind the black hole. The reason we can see it is because this black hole distorts space, bending the light and wrapping magnetic fields around itself.”

The supermassive black hole is 10 million times the mass of our sun and is located at the center of a nearby spiral galaxy called I Zwicky 1. An international group of scientists has watched its echoes using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton telescopes and NASA’s NuSTAR. Their findings were published in the journal Nature.

“The color of these flashes, the color of those echoes, as well as the time they were delayed after the original glow told us that these were echoes from the gas hidden from our view behind the black hole,” Wilkins noted. “Some of them will shine again on the gas falling into the black hole, and that really gives us a unique view of this material in its last moments before it gets lost in the black hole.”

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