Black Holes and the Electromagnetic Spectrum

Hello everyone!

So, in our previous post, we covered a brief introduction to black holes. In this post, I will cover more about the black hole; light and matter and how they are affected by black holes.

The electromagnetic spectrum includes a wide range of light waves, some that we can’t see. Some of the non-visible types of waves are radio waves, microwaves, infrared rays and X-rays. Figure 1 shows the length of the waves and more details. Because a lot of the light waves are absorbed into a black hole, it is the absence of those light waves and the bending of the others that let scientists detect the location of black holes. 

Figure 1: The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Follow this link to find out more about the splitting of the light waves. It is an activity that anyone can do in a classroom.

The term used to describe the process by which an object would be stretched and ripped apart by gravitational forces on falling into a black hole is called spaghettification. This is because its gravitational pull is so strong it would streatch matter out like pasta. As this is being done, the light waves are being streatched out as well, so the object would change colour.

The answers to last posts questions are:

1. V4641 Sgr and is 1600 light years away.
2. Yes, they can get no larger than 50 BILLION times the mass of our sun.
3. No
4. Spaghettification
5. Red

Research Questions:

1. Who discovered infrared radiation and when?
2. How did this person discover infrared radiation?
3. What type of radiation does the Spitzer Space Telescope pick up?
4. How many days since its launch?
5. What are NASAs 2 current running Gamma radiation space telescopes?

Q: How do astronauts serve dinner?
A: On flying saucers

Enjoy :)

Emily