Using supercomputer simulations to create a better black hole - BollyInside

Astronomers used an odd tool to decipher what they saw in their historic first image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole: a library of millions of computer models of the black hole.

Using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to capture an image of a black hole, such as Sagittarius A* in the heart of our galaxy, is one of the most difficult tasks any astronomer will ever face.

Chan is an astronomer at Arizona’s Steward Observatory and leads the EHT collaboration’s project to build a library of millions of simulations of black holes, which can then be compared to a picture of the real thing.

The real black hole appeared to be much quieter than the simulations predicted.

“Now, we can learn some new physics and understand our own black hole better.” It would perhaps be hubristic to expect to be able to understand everything about our local supermassive black hole after imaging it just once.

We know that the amount of matter passing beyond Sagittarius A*’s event horizon and feeding the black hole is relatively minuscule — during a news conference revealing the image of Sagittarius A* held in Washington, D.C., on Thursday (May 12), EHT scientists drew an analogy with a human eating only one grain of rice every million years.