This new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer represents a scenario where a camera - a stand-in for a daring astronaut - enters the event horizon, sealing its fate.
Light famously cannot escape the event horizon of a black hole, leaving astrophysicists to theorize and speculate what it’s like beyond the limits of human perception. Now, NASA researchers take that theorization a step further, in the form of an animation that takes you (the viewer) into the black hole.
Black holes are some of the densest objects in the universe. Light cannot escape their event horizons because the holes’ gravitational pull is so intense.
According to the space agency, an ordinary laptop would’ve taken over a decade to render the animation, but NASA Goddard’s Discover supercomputer completed the task in five days, using just 0.3 percent of its processing power.
The animation, which simulates the view of someone falling into a black hole, demonstrates how the bizarre objects warp light and space as you approach them.