Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.Albert Einstein was right: There is an area at the edge of black holes where matter can no longer stay in orbit and instead falls in, as predicted by his theory of gravity.Using telescopes capable of detecting X-rays, a team of astronomers has for the first time observed this area — called the “plunging region” — in a black hole about 10,000 light-years from Earth. “We’ve been ignoring this region, because we didn’t have the data,” said research scientist Andrew Mummery, lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “But now that we do, we couldn’t explain it any other way.”It’s not the first time that black holes have helped confirm Einstein’s grand theory, which is also known as general relativity. The first photo of a black hole, captured in 2019, had previously strengthened the revolutionary physicist’s core assumption that gravity is just matter bending the space-time fabric.Many of Einstein’s other predictions have turned out to be correct over the years, among them gravitational waves and the universal speed limit. “He’s a tough man to bet against at this point,” said Mummery, a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow in the department of physics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.“We went out searching for this one specifically — that was always the plan. We’ve argued about whether we’d ever be able to find it for a really long time,” Mummery said. “People said it would be impossible, so confirming it’s there is really exciting.” In an artist’s illustration, a black hole pulls material from a companion star, forming a disc that rotates around the black hole before fallin …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnSign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.Albert Einstein was right: There is an area at the edge of black holes where matter can no longer stay in orbit and instead falls in, as predicted by his theory of gravity.Using telescopes capable of detecting X-rays, a team of astronomers has for the first time observed this area — called the “plunging region” — in a black hole about 10,000 light-years from Earth. “We’ve been ignoring this region, because we didn’t have the data,” said research scientist Andrew Mummery, lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “But now that we do, we couldn’t explain it any other way.”It’s not the first time that black holes have helped confirm Einstein’s grand theory, which is also known as general relativity. The first photo of a black hole, captured in 2019, had previously strengthened the revolutionary physicist’s core assumption that gravity is just matter bending the space-time fabric.Many of Einstein’s other predictions have turned out to be correct over the years, among them gravitational waves and the universal speed limit. “He’s a tough man to bet against at this point,” said Mummery, a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow in the department of physics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.“We went out searching for this one specifically — that was always the plan. We’ve argued about whether we’d ever be able to find it for a really long time,” Mummery said. “People said it would be impossible, so confirming it’s there is really exciting.” In an artist’s illustration, a black hole pulls material from a companion star, forming a disc that rotates around the black hole before fallin …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
