We Have Precise Math That Can Describe How Black Holes Reflect Our Universe

The reflections of the Universe can be described by a set of equations.

The angle of observation with respect to the black hole and the rate of the black hole's spin is what determines the distance from each reflection.

It wasn't just really cool. It could have given us a new tool for probing the environment around these extreme objects.

Sneppen said that there is something beautiful in understanding why the images repeat themselves. It gives us new opportunities to understand gravity and black holes.

Black holes are famous for their extremegravity. Light in a vacuum is not fast enough to achieve escape velocity.

Light can't escape from a black hole's gravity because of the event horizon.

Outside of the black hole's event horizon is an environment that is seriously wack. The space-time is almost circular because of the powerful gravity.

This space has to be followed by any photon entering it. The path of the light seems to have been warped and bent.

At the very inner edge of this space, just outside the event horizon, we can see what is called a photon ring, where photon travel in and out of the black hole multiple times before either falling towards the black hole or escaping into space.

The light from distant objects behind the black hole can be seen multiple times. The effect can be seen in other contexts and is useful for studying the universe.

Scientists have known for a while that the closer you look at the black hole, the more reflections you see.

You need to look 500 times closer to the black hole's optical edge to get from one image to the next.

Second order differential equations were used to quantify the light trajectory. He found a way to explain why the images repeat at distances of e 2 and that it could work for a rotating black hole.

You don't have to get close to the black hole by a factor of 500 when it rotates fast. Each image is only 50, or five, or two times closer to the edge of the black hole.

This is going to be hard to observe, at least any time soon, because of the amount of work that went into the ring of light around Pwehi.

There should be infinite rings of light surrounding a black hole. It's only a matter of time before we're able to get better images, and there are already plans for a photon ring.

One day, the infinite images close to a black hole could be used to study the physics of black hole space-time, as well as the objects behind them.

The research was published in a scientific journal.

The article was first published in July of 2011.