Take a tour of supermassive black hole through virtual reality

The outer space is full of mysteries, one of them being black holes. Though science and technology hasn’t still made it to an actual black hole, scientists have made it possible to visit a black hole from within Earth, thanks to growing technology.

Apart from being mysterious, black holes are also considered to be super scary, sucking everything inside its bottomless dark pit. Researchers from Netherlands and Germany came together to build up the world’s first virtual reality simulation of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A*. The simulation takes the person to experience the inside of a black hole, giving a virtual tour of the object.

Video Courtesy: BMC

As described by Daily Mail, the animation shows dust and gas whipping around the edges of Sagittarius A* at speeds up to 90,000km/s. The scientists used a number of recent models of the supermassive black hole to show what it may look like to the naked eye.

By wearing a VR headset, people can take a 360-degree tour and can be used to study the dark, scary objects. “Our virtual reality simulation creates one of the most realistic views of the direct surroundings of the black hole. It will help us to learn more about how black holes behave.

“Travelling to a black hole in our lifetime is impossible, so immersive visualizations like this can help us understand more about these systems from where we are,” said co-author Jordy Davelaar of the study published in Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology.

One of the researchers Heino Falcke expressed that his team’s simulation marked the first step in scientists’ quest to visualize the black hole. “We all have a picture in our head of how black holes supposedly look, but science has progressed and we can now make much more accurate renderings - these black holes look quite different from what we are used to.”

BGR reported, the authors said that their VR simulation can help encourage the general public, including children for taking interest in astrophysics. Falcke also said that there are more interesting things to come in the future, “These new visualizations are just the start, more to come in the future.”