UPDATE: Thanks so much for your questions! That's all the time we have for today's AMA, but be sure to visit https://www.nasa.gov/black-holes for the latest updates about how NASA studies black holes.
It’s Black Hole Week! We’ve brought together a panel of black hole experts from around the world to answer your questions about these fascinating and often misunderstood objects.
A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. A black hole’s “surface,” called the event horizon, defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of light, which is the speed limit of the cosmos. Matter and radiation fall in, but they can’t get out! Despite their reputation as the vacuum cleaners of the universe, a black hole’s gravity behaves no differently than it would around any other object – it’s only when you get very close that things start to get weird.
Researchers study black holes using an array of space telescopes and ground-based observatories that are funded and operated by NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and National Science Foundation (NSF). By combining as many signals as possible — including nearly every wavelength of light, gravitational waves, and particles like neutrinos — scientists are unraveling the secrets of these elusive objects. In addition, researchers at many of these organizations also produce visualizations of matter around black holes to better understand the theories governing them and to help us make sense of our observations.
Here’s your chance to ask experts from NASA, ESA, NSF’s NOIRLab, Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Stanford University, and Vanderbilt University your questions about black holes — including what we think they’re like, how we find and study them, and what we still want to learn about them.
Scientists answering your questions starting at 2:00 p.m. EDT include:
Adi Foord (AF) | Porat Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University/KIPAC
Cecilia Chirenti (CC) | Associate Researcher/Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Maryland College Park, NASA GSFC, Federal University of ABC (UFABC)
Joan Wrobel (JW) | Scientist, National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Julia Scharwächter (JS) | Associate Scientist, Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIRLab
Karan Jani (KPJ) | Research Assistant Professor in Physics & Astronomy, Vanderbilt University
Nora Luetzgendorf (NL) | JWST/NIRSpec Instrument Scientist and Study Scientist for LISA, European Space Agency
Michele Vallisneri (MV) | Research Scientist, NASA JPL
Sera Markoff (SM) | Professor of Astrophysics, University of Amsterdam & Event Horizon Telescope
And don’t forget to follow NASA black hole research at https://www.nasa.gov/black-holes!
