![]() Since they absorb all the light around them, we can't see black holes directly, but the surrounding glowing gas reveals a telltale circular shadow in the central region surrounded by a bright ring. Size comparison of the two black holes M87* and Sagittarius A* - Credit: EHT collaboration One at the center of Galaxy M87 and three years later in 2022 the seemingly tiny one, known as Sagittarius A* at the heart of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way : Some black holes power the brightest known objects in the universe, known as quasars. But not all black holes fit this description, because light can still be emitted from the region outside the event horizon. "Gargantua" seen in the Movie InterstellarĪnd then in 2019, the world was thrilled by the first photos of real black holes using the Event Horizon Telescope. We tend to imagine black holes as black spheres in the middle of space. The 2014 film Interstellar featured a black hole that blew the minds of even seasoned scientists. Within a century of Einstein's theory, the black hole theory was proven and already found its way into pop culture. Later Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking worked on this theory until 2020 a shared noble prize was awarded to Penrose for "the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity". ![]() In 1916 Karl Schwarzschild predicted them to be a theoretically possible solution to Einstein's general theory of relativity, but Einstein himself thought of them as non-physical. Gravity is the ultimate victor in the life story of any star, leaving behind the exotic end states of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Additionally, scientists believe that simulation of unusual states of matter will be an important early application of quantum computing, and there are few more unusual states of matter than those found in the vicinity of black holes.A common misconception is, that Albert Einstein was the first to think about black holes, but in fact, first John Michell in 1783 and later Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1796 suggested their existence for the first time. Stars are the crucibles of heavy element creation, and the chaotic regions of their birth are being understood though long wavelength observations. "One day, we may even be able to use rotating black holes as quantum computers by sending photons on the right trajectory around these ghostly astronomical bodies," Racorean concludes. This topic may seem esoteric, but it could have practical applications. "If we find that the X-ray polarisation changes with distance from the black hole, with those in the central region being least polarised, we will have observed entangled states that can carry quantum information," says Racorean. These will investigate the polarisation of all X-rays found in space, including those emitted close to black holes. ![]() Two space probes with the same mission will be launched around 2022: the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) by NASA, and the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer (XIPE) by the European Space Agency. The final proof will come when the properties of X-rays near spinning black holes are observed, which could happen in the next decade. Thus far, however, this process is only a prediction. "It now seems that the curvature of spacetime around a black hole will play the same role as this apparatus." "Lab-based researchers already use beam splitters and prisms to entangle these properties in X-ray photons and process quantum information," says Racorean. Each of these can encode a qubit (quantum bit) of information, the standard information unit in quantum computing. The photons that make up the X-rays have two properties: polarisation and orbital angular momentum. ![]() Powerful forces acting on accretion disks raise their temperature so they emit X-rays, which can act as carriers of quantum information. Material that gets close to a rotating black hole but does not fall into it will aggregate into a circular structure known as an accretion disk. If the star that forms it rotates, as most stars do, the black hole will also spin. Some may collapse into a point with essentially no volume and infinite density, with a gravitational field that not even light can escape from: this is a black hole. ![]() When stars come to the end of their lives, they can collapse in on themselves under their own weight, becoming denser and denser. The term 'black holes' is widely known, but not everyone knows exactly what they are. ![]()
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