Black Holes Up Close

Abstract

Recent developments have ushered in a new era in the field of black hole astrophysics, providing our first direct view of the remarkable environment near black hole event horizons. These observations have enabled astronomers to confirm long-standing ideas on the physics of gas flowing into black holes with temperatures that are hundreds of times greater than at the center of the Sun. At the same time, the observations have conclusively shown that light rays near a black hole experience large deflections which cause a dark shadow in the center of the image, an effect predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. With further investment, this field is poised to deliver decades of advances in our understanding of gravity and black holes through new and stringent tests of General Relativity, as well as new insights into the role of black holes as the central engines powering a wide range of astronomical phenomena.

15 pages, 4 Figs; Nature Perspective

References in corpus (10)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole
• Detection of the Schwarzschild precession in the orbit of the star S2 near the Galactic centre massive black hole
• Gravitational Test Beyond the First Post-Newtonian Order with the Shadow of the M87 Black Hole
• Testing General Relativity with stellar orbits around the supermassive black hole in our Galactic center
• The Submillimeter Bump in Sgr A* from Relativistic MHD Simulations
• Observing the Inner Shadow of a Black Hole: A Direct View of the Event Horizon
• Flaring Activity of Sgr A* at 43 and 22 GHz: Evidence for Expanding Hot Plasma
• ALMA and VLA measurements of frequency-dependent time lags in Sagittarius A*: evidence for a relativistic outflow
• Linear polarization in the nucleus of M87 at 7 mm and 1.3 cm