Travelling to a black hole
Black holes are one of the most remarkable phenomena in the universe. But what do they look like? And how can you depict something like this? Researcher Annemieke Verbraeck (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands) is developing a new simulation based on the Hollywood film Interstellar.
They swallow up everything around them and inside there is only the deepest darkness. But they are surrounded by a spectacular light show. Black holes are a fascinating phenomenon in the universe. The mass inside a black hole is so compact that it swallows everything up and nothing can escape from it. Not even light can escape. It therefore does not travel in straight lines and is strongly distorted.
We know what a black hole looks like thanks to an image from April 2019: a dark eye surrounded by a ring of light. The Oscar-winning Hollywood movie Interstellar depicted a black hole in spectacular fashion. The dark eye plays a key role in this sci-fi blockbuster. The black hole provides the main character's spaceship with enough speed to keep flying, so that he can ultimately save humanity. The way this was depicted received tremendous praise both within and outside the academic world. Many scientists worked on the film. One of them was American Nobel Prize winner and astrophysicist Kip Thorne. The depiction of the black hole even resulted in scientific publications.
At TU Delft, researchers have now continued to build on how this area was depicted. Researchers Annemieke Verbraeck and Elmar Eisemann of TU Delft's Computer Graphics and Visualization Group have made several improvements. 'We were able to make the visualisation faster so that the calculations can be performed using an ordinary computer,' says Verbraeck. These are important innovations, which pave the way for displaying a black hole in a museum, for example.
More information:
Contact: Science Information Officer TU Delft Roy Meijer, r.e.t.meijer@tudelft.nl, +31 6 14015008
Provided by Delft University of Technology
