EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

Black holes, how can we detect

them?

Authors: Roy Casero Soler, Alejandro Prieto Juaneda and Andrés Gento
Blanco

Supervisor: Alba Covelo Paz

School: IES Plurilingüe Eusebio da Guarda, A Coruña, Spain

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

Objectives of the project:

➢ Explain what are black holes.

➢ Describe how the black holes interact with the universe.
➢ Differenciate the types of black holes.
➢ Analize how we can observe black holes.
➢ Create a functional interferometer and explain its use.

Abstract

Black holes suppose one of the more extraordinary astronomical bodies of all the
universe due to their way to interact with the space-time and other celestial bodies
around them, nevertheless, this incredibly dense bodies manifested a dilemma for the
scientific community as they were inmensely difficult to observe. However, there are
some methods to detect them with the specific gadget, one of these is the
interferometer, an useful instrument able to receive and later analize gravitational
waves; we performed the creation of one interferometer and explained the results
obtained.

Introduction to black holes

As a simple way to define a black hole, it is any astronomical body whose escape
velocity exceeds the speed of light 1, due to its huge gravitational force, which comes
from its great density. The first definition of a black hole was suggested by John
Michell and Pierre-Simon in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
(1784)2, where they proposed that it could exist a body where the density would be
high enough to attract with a force capable to deny the emision of any light from the
body. At that time, they weren’t referring to what we know today as a black hole, but,
indirectly, they gave rise to the idea of it.

As time passed, the speculations of such an astronomical body dissapeared when the
wave theory of light was developed, which led to think that no gravitational effect
could cause any modification on the propagation of light, nevertheless, the possibility
that these black giants might exist resurrected when the General Relativity 3 appeared
— a theory in which light is submitted to gravity. Taking into consideration the
theories of relativity, black holes are defined as the region of space-time in which the
gravitational potential exceeds the square of the speed of light.

With the theories of relativity on board, we can understand the macroscopic universe
as the fabric of space-time, establishing a connection between space and time, and the
light as a particle and a wave that has a non-variable velocity that can’t be
overwhelmed. Therefore, any existing body will keep moving forward in time no

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matter what, and won’t be able to go faster than the speed of light — this is
graphically represented as a light cone.

In figure 1, a ray of light is emitted from a certain point in space. Assuming c=1
,where c is the speed of light, the light moves 1 unit of space per 1 unit of time, making
diagonal lines with the space-time graph, taking all possible directions where this
matter can go, we can observe in picture 2, that an inverted cone appears above the
hypersurface of the present time, and another one underneath it. The region inside the
cones are all the possible paths where a particle will go or has been, being the future
possibilities the upward cone, the past ones the downward cone and the point where
both converge, the present. As the particle can’t go faster than the speed of light, the
possible paths where it can move through space-time are limited by the interior of the
cones, advancing forward in time as progressing up in the cone, and moving through
space as going right or left.
Furthermore, General Relativity understands gravity, not as a force, but as a
curvature of the space-time produced by a body with mass, hence with density,
modifying the directions of the light cone, altering the time and the space, dilating or
contracting it depending on the observer and the specific curvature, which is directly
proportional to the density of the astronomical body or bodies that produced it. It can
be seen as the bed’s mattress, if you put an object with little mass on the mattress, it
won’t be very affected, but if you place a big one, it will cave in the mattress.

Figure 1: 2D Light cone Figure 2: 3D Light cone

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Orbits of celestial bodies

In the modification of the space-time caused by an object, any moving particle passing
close enough to the astonomical body will have the trayectory modified, depending on
the speed of the particle and the curvature created by the stellar body. This can be
seen as an example in figure 3, where the curvature of the Sun is represented, the
most possibles trayectories, along the particles that directly fall into the Sun, will be
the ones seen in picture 3: On the one hand, we have the particle a, which has enough
speed to overcome the curvature of the Sun. Consequently, its trayectory will be
modified, but it will still move through space without being captured by the curvature
of the Sun. On the other hand, we have the particles c and e, whose speed is high
enough to avoid falling into
the Sun, although so they are
not fast enough to free
themselves from the
gravitatory well of the Sun, so
they will end up rotating
around it and creating what is
called an orbit.

For particles c and e to escape

the curvature of the Sun, they
would need an extra force to
increase their speed enough to
change their trayectories, if
this happens, they will reach Figure 3: Types of orbits in a curved space-time
the escape velocity.

Escape velocity

In all astronomical objects, gravity will attract the matter to its centre, but there is a
possibility that, if certain mobile moves faster than it is attracted by the curvature of
space-time, in that case, it will escape from the gravity field of the planet. The exact
speed an object needs to be traveling in order to escape a celestial body's gravity well
and leave it without further propulsion is denominated escape velocity:

v s=
√ 2 GM
r
4

2
11Nm
G is the universal gravity constant G=6,67×10 2
, M is the mass of the
kg
astronomical object and r is its radius. In the Earth, the escape velocity is 11,2 km/s.
If, instead, that object was on another planet with the same mass as Earth’s but half
its diameter, the escape velocity would be 15.8 km/s.

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

In the case where the escape velocity is exactly the same as the speed of light, there is
no particle capable to escape from the astronomical object. When this happens, the
celestial body we describe is a black hole. To settle on the characteristics of this object,
and assuming it only has mass without rotation or charge, we will introduce the
Schwarzschild radius

Schwarzsichild radius

The Schwarzsichild radius is defined as the distance between the singularity and the
event horizon. The singularity is a point at the epicenter of the black hole where all
the mass is compacted, and the event horizont is the region from which gravity
prevents any particle to escape from this massive bodies. In the situation where a
stellar body reaches this radius, it will be converted into a black hole, where no
particle (even light) will be able to flee from its gravity once it crosses this radius. The
Schwarzschild radius, Rg, can be calculated as:
2GM 5
Rg= 2
c

The Schwarzschild radius for our

Sun is 3 km, which means that
if it had a radius of 3km and the
same mass, it would be a black
hole; for the Earth, the volume
would be about the size of a pea.
With this, we can understand
better the nehaviour of a black
hole.

Figure 4: Trayectory of a body into a black hole

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How does a black hole work?

Black holes are fascinating astronimical bodies where the equations of General
Relativity are taken to their limit.

When a certain particle or body finds itself close enough to a black hole to be affected
by its gravity, the situation becomes the one represented in the figure 4, where we can
see the trayectory of this particle moving into a black hole, which is represented as a
cilinder whose borders would be the event horizon and the singularity is the
zigzagging line in the center. The light cones in figure 4 start the route into the
singularity at the most distant light cone from the centre. At this point the particle
would be moving through time in a vertical line if it keeps at rest in space, safe from
falling into the black hole; the moment when it starts moving towards the black hole,
the light cone would start to curve, and for the particle at reast staying at rest would
mean going in a diagonal trayectory, which ends up in the singularity, as we can see in
the second and third light cone (counting from right to left) . However, we can also see
that the particle could still keep itself away from falling into the black hole if some
external force makes it move in space, creating a new trayectory, represented as the
arrow over the third light cone.

When the particle is moving towards the singularity, at a certain point, the speed
needed to escape the gravitational well will be higher than the speed of light — the
position in space where the particle turns from technically free into condemned to
converge in the singularity. This point is called event horizon, represented by the
fourth light cone with its possible paths, only able to converge in the singularity.
Subsequently, there are represented other four light cones of particles already inside
the event horizon, with their light cones inclined due to the curvature of space-time in
their position, that advancing through time becomes what initially was moving left or
right, and moving through space becomes what at the beginning was advancing
through time. Thus, we can understand why the singularity is considered a moment,
because if we keep moving through time or space there will be an inevitable instant
where the particle collapse into the singularity.

Observing the difference to archieve the same amount of time from the first light cone
in comparison to the consecutive ones we can undesrtand how different bodies have
different experiences. If an object is falling into a black hole, from the outside we will
see it slow down more and more with time as it goes closer to the event horizon. This if
because time goes slowe under the gravitational field of a black hole. The moment
when the object falling into the black hole reaches the event horizon, the observer
outside the black hole will only see an static image of the object, beacuse the photons
reflecting on the object and creating its image won’t be able to return form it, because
they are also being absorbed by the black hole

This is the basic explanation of how a simple black hole works, but there could be
other types of black holes, explained by the No-Hair Theorem.6

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

No-Hair Theorem

The no-hair theorem establishes the three properties of a black hole: the mass, the
electrical charge and the angular momentum. This theorem is a consequence of
general relativity, so it is widely accepted; the name comes from an allegory, picturing
the black hole as a bald head.

The basic property of this astronomical bodies is the mass, without it there is no
chance of existing for this huge devoring beasts. The other two properties determine
how the black hole will interact with the universe. Depending on these properties,
there will be four types of black holes.

The ones with electrical charge, negative or positive, will start attracting any other
particle with the opposite charge. This is because the electromagnetic is way stronger
than the gravitational interaction. They will absorb charged particles until the they
neutralize the black hole’s initial charge, becoming a neutrally charged black hole, but
keeping all the other properties the same. Mathematically, we still need to consider
the electrical charge into the properties of a black hole, even though only neutrak
black holes have been detected experimentally.

The Schwarzschild black hole, only with mass, is the simplest, it is static and
spherical symmetric. Its characteristics have been explained in previous section; the
Reissner-Nordström black hole has mass, electrical charge, it is static and spherically
simetric; the Kerr-Newman black hole depends on the mass, electrical charge and
angular momentum, it is stationary and axisymmetric; and the Kerr black hole only
posses mass and angular momentum, it is stationary and axisymmetric.

 Schwarzschild
 Reissner-Nordström
 Kerr-Newman
 Kerr

Figure 5: Types of black holes

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

Taking into account this properties, the different solutions of Einstein’s equations to
form a black hole in equilibrim as a final state leads to a new equation for the distance
where the event horizon is located :

r +=M + √ M 2−Q2−a 2 7

Where M is the mass, Q is the electrical charge amd a is the angular momentum.
From this formula we can see that the properties of the black hole must satisfy:

Q2+ a2≤M 2

When this condition is not met, the black hole would only have a lonely and naked
singularity represented as an asymptotic line. In the real universe, such odd things
should not exist.

Kerr Black Hole

As it was explained before, black holes with electrical charge would be neutralized in
the real universe, and the simplest black hole with only mass (no charge nor angular
momentum) was the basis of the theory of this astronomical bodies. However, if we
add angular momentum, we introduce, not only more parts to the anatomy of the
black hole, but also more ways to affect the space-time around this celestial body.

In this variety, the rotation of the black

Figure 6: Anatomy of a Kerr Black Hole
gravitational well if a strong enough force with opposite direction interacts with the
particle.
hole also produces a rotation of the space-
time around it, provoking that any particle
that enters its gravitational field will gain
over time more velocity, as it orbits around
the black hole. Therefore, the photons,
which pass along the black hole without
going inside the event horizon will have
their trayectory even more curved than
before, producing an oval shape in these
black holes. As a particle gets closer to the
black hole it will accelerate with time,
until it reaches a speed impossible to be
overcome, rotating inevitably in the same
direction in which the black hole rotates,
but with the possibility to escape from the

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

If a particle falls into the black hole, the process would still reach the point of no
return, the Inner Event Horizon, but differently from the Schwarzschild black hole —
someone could hypothetically avoid the singularity as it is now a place in the space
and not a moment in time. Unfortunately, this is hypothetical, because what keeps the
singularity away from being an instant in time is the fact that this black hole is stable,
but the absorption of any particle would disturbe this equilibrium, returning the
singularity into a moment in time.

The existance of these black holes is merely theorical, but the main explanation for
their formation is the death of a star which was already spinning.

Life cicle of a black hole

Fist, we have the , there are a few hypothesis for this, the two more known resolutions
explains, in one of them, that in the comence of the universe, when the aceleration of it
was at a huge velocity in comparation to the one we have nowdays, close to the time of
the Big Bang, some matter started to acumulate in some point given of space, with
this matter acumulated the acelarition of the universe was deeply retain in that
certain region, however, the universe kept growing with that points withan incredible
high gravitation force, what we reffer now as a black hole; the other describes the
process where a star with a determined mass converts into a black hole through out
it’s death.

When a star burns through all of its fuel (all the hydrogen of its nucleus is fusioned in
helium), the object collapse, or fall under itself. For smaller stars (about 3 times the
solar mass), the new core will become a star or a white dwarf star. But when a bigger
star collapses, it continues to compress and, if it reaches its Schwarzschild radius,
creates a stellar black hole.

Figure 9: Dying Star Figure 8: Supernova

Figure 7: Simulation of the
During their life they feed itself with stars, planets,
shadow of a black hole
photons and wherever they can, even other black holes, but
they are not forever, or at least for the theory made by Stephen Hawking, the
Hawking Radiation8, this is a non-proved theory which will be explained later.

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This tipes of black holes are relatively small, but incredibly dense. They pack quite 3
times the mass of the sun into the diameter of a city. This results in a crazy amount of
gravitational attraction pulling on objects around the black hole. Stellar black holes
then consume the dust and gas from their surrounding galaxies, which keeps them
growing in size.
According the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 9, "the Milky Way
contains a couple of hundred million" stellar black holes.
There are also supermassive black holes. These enormous black holes are millions or
maybe billions of times as massive as the sun, but they are about the same diameter.
Such black holes are at the middle of just about every galaxy and their gravity affect
all of the objects of the galaxy, including the Milky Way (Sagitario A) .
Scientists aren't certain how such large black holes spawn. Once these giants have
formed, they gather mass from the dust and gas around them, allowing them to grow
to even more enormous sizes.
Supermassive black holes could also be the results of hundreds or thousands of small
black holes that merge together. Another option is that supermassive black holes could
arise from large clusters of dark matter10. This is a substance that we are able to
observe through its gravitational effect on other objects; however, we don't know what
dark matter is composed of because it doesn't emit light and can't be directly observed.
There are also intermediate11 ones. Before they were discovered, scientist thought that
they didn’t exist but in 2014 astronomers found an intermediate black hole in an
espiral galaxy. They have between 80-130 solar masses.

At the theorical end of the black hole, it emits some particles and energy in form of
radiation that we might could receive, but it is merely theorical and this radiation is
too low to be observed, but there are other observations to prove by a practical way
that black holes are real .

How can a black hole be observed?

The Black holes attract photons to the centre (singularity) and the others are expeled
far away. This makes a black hole invisible, but there are some methods to observe it.
With a powerful telescope you could appreciate how a lot of stars and other bodies are
revolving around “nothing”, what would guide to a deductive demostration of them;
but there is another method to discover black holes, this is the studying of the orbits of
some stars in Sagittarius A*, where an invisible body with a huge mass (a black hole
by deduction) creates several orbits. This is ubicated in the centre of the Milky Way.
Many scientist studied the speed of different stars. S2 12 was one of the stars that they
saw during 10 years and astronomers calculate that it spends 16 years to go round the
black hole, and on the other hand the Sun spends between 5 225-250 million years.

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

Figure 10: S2 Orbits

Another methods to observe black holes are based on observation of this astronomical
body when it interacts with other celestial bodies. One of them is via the caption the
emited electromagnetic energy when the black hole devoures other bodies, because as,
for example, a planet with a huge mass starts to get broken up as the atoms from the
planet separates one from each other, liberating a great amount of energy. An
accretion disc forms from the parts of what remains of the planet that keeps splitting
up around the black hole, this disc is very visible due to all the electromagnetic energy
produced by it, permitting us to observe the black hole creating this structure; a
practical example of this method is the first picture taken of a black hole at april 19,
2019.

Figure 12: Simulation of gravitational waves

Figure 11: First picture of the accretion
disc
Moreover, we can use another method to observe this hugely dense celestial body
through the gravitational waves that are generated when two black holes fuse into an

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

unique bigger one, this can be explained because of how the curved space-times of both
black holes interact with each other until this astronomical bodies combine, releasing
this strong waves that displace all over the universe until they loses enough potential
to dissapear with the displacement, arriving into us to detect them very weak, but still
detectable with the right instruments, which we are going to be explained afterward.

What are gravitational waves and how can we detect them?

Gravitational waves13 are ripples in the space-time caused by a very strong process
between two massive objects, they were predicted in the general relativity. The
gravitational waves that we usually detect come from the collision of two black holes,
they can be also produced by a supernova and the collision of two neutron stars. In
1974, two astronomers discovered a binary pulsar. They believed that they could emit
this unkown waves. They studied the changing of the orbit of the stars to predict the
Einstein’s theory. Eigth years later their measurements were extremly similar as the
predicted results of the relativity. This interesting predictions of the Einstein’s theory
can be detected and analized with an interferometer.

What is an interferometer?

Interferometers are devices used to measure gravitacinal waves, as mentioned earlier.

They consist in a laser that goes through a beam splitter and then it is reflected in two
mirrors and projected to a detector. The interferometer is perfectly calibrated so that
the two laser beams that hit the detector are forming a perfect dot, or depending on
the calibration on the light waves there is the possibility of not seen any light at all.
When a gravitational wave reaches the detector it decalibrates it and we can notice a
variation in the light, this is because of the contraction of space in the arms of the
interferometer.

The most important interferometer is LIGO (laser interferometer gravitational-wave

observatory). They have two identical interferometers separated 3000km away, this is
useful because this way we can determine the direction of the gravitational waves and
the distance from the artronomical body that produced them. One is in Handford
obsevatory and the other one is in Livingston observatory. Each interferometer arm
measures 4km.

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EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

Figure 13: LIGO's interferometers

LIGO’s interferometers consists in a destructive interference — a type of interference

caused by superposition of two light waves with a completly opposite frequency. This
way we only see the laser when a gravitacional wave is afecting theese devices. These
are the detections of a gravitational wave

Ilustración 1: LIGO's measurements

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Experiment

We decided to make an interferometer ourselves as an experiment. As the one that we

were capable of doing ourselves is handmade and not very large and precise it is not
appropriate to measure gravitational waves, but it
is still very useful to see the interferences and
understand how would it react if it was more
precise and in the case a gravitational wave
appeared.

The materials we used:

• A laser.
• A laser beam.
• 2 mirrors.
• A lens.
• A white box to project it.

1. We started by calibrating the laser beams

and getting the distances right.

Figure 14: Making of the

interferometer (measuring the arms)

2. Once the interferometer was calibrated we

aproached the lens to see the final proyection better.

Figure 15: Making the interferometer (amplifying the result

with a lens) 14
 EAAE Catch A Star Black Holes

3. And the final step

was equilibrating
the highs of the
components to leave
the interferometer
working on its own

Figure 16: Handmade Interferometer

Here we have a good image of the laser projected on

the box. We can clearly appreciate lines of an
destructive interference in the dot produced by the
beams. This lines are the points where both
frequencies are completly opposite, if the precision of
the device were better, like the ones in LIGO, there
would be absolutly nothing proyected on the box,
unless a gravitational wave were taking place. This
proves that the device works.

Figure 17: Lines of destructive

interferences in the final result

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Figure 18: Supervisor and authors of the proyect

And this is a final picture with the group and the succesful interferometer

Webgraphy
GRAVITY WAVES:
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw

S2 ORBITS:
https://earthsky.org/space/star-s2-s0-2-single-milky-way-monster-black-hole

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https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/milky-way-rotation#:~:text=At%20our%20sun's
%20distance%20from,the%20center%20of%20the%20galaxy.

ESCAPE VELOCITY:
https://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/space-environment/2-whats-escape-
velocity.html

NO-HAIR THEOREM:
https://physicsworld.com/a/black-hole-is-hairless-reveals-analysis-of-gravitational-
waves/#:~:text=The%20no%2Dhair%20theorem%20is,head%20with%20few%20defining
%20features.

file:///C:/Users/Roy/Documents/black_holes.pdf

LIFE CICLE OF A BLACK HOLE:

https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html

INTRODUCTION TO BLACK HOLES/ ORBITS OF CELESTIAL BODIES/

SCHWARZSICHILD RADIUS/ HOW DOES A BLACK HOLE WORK?/ HOW CAN A
BLACK HOLE BE OBSERVED? :
file:///C:/Users/Roy/Documents/black_holes.pdf

WHAT IS AN INTERFEROMETER?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxExuoEZV1k&feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEP-EP9JfXI

IMAGES:
Portrait

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1 Speed of light: 300000 km/s
2 Philosofical Transactions of the Royal Society: Worked made by John Michell and Pierre-Simon
3 General relativity, Einstein’s most famous work.
4 Escape velocity, https://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/space-environment/2-whats-escape-
velocity.html.

5 Swchazschild radius,https://www.britannica.com/science/Schwarzschild-radius. Formula based in the escape

velocity one.
6 No-hair theorem, deduced about the Einstein-Maxwell ecuations.
7 Event horizon formula
8 Hawking radiation, https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/01/this-is-why-well-never-detect-
hawking-radiation-from-an-actual-black-hole/
9 Astronomy obsrvatory in Massachusetts
10 More information abou dark matter: https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy
11 Article about intermiate black holes: https://astronomy.com/news/2019/07/what-are-intermediate-mass-black-holes
12 Article about S2: https://earthsky.org/space/star-s2-s0-2-single-milky-way-monster-black-hole
13 Gravitational waves: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw