12 of the most exciting black hole developments from 2023

2023年12个激动人心的黑洞研究进展

Black holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the universe. Yet scientists can learn plenty about black holes by examining their environments, the conditions their intense gravity generates, and the jets of matter they blast out at near light speed.

黑洞是宇宙中最神秘的物体之一。然而，科学家可以通过研究它们的环境、它们产生的强烈引力条件以及它们以接近光速喷射出的大量物质来了解黑洞的相关信息。

Here are the most impressive, extraordinary and shocking black hole stories of 2023.

以下是2023年最令人印象深刻、非同寻常、令人震撼的黑洞故事。

In March, researchers revealed that they had found what may be one of the most massive black holes ever discovered. The cosmic titan sits at the heart of the elliptical galaxy Abell 1201 BCG, located 2.73 billion light-years from Earth, and the galaxy itself is in a massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 1201.

今年3月，研究人员透露他们可能发现了有史以来最大的黑洞之一。这个宇宙巨人位于椭圆形星系Abell 1201 BCG的中心，距离地球27.3亿光年，而该椭圆星系本身位于一个巨大的名为Abell 1201的星系团中。

The Abel 1201 BCG black hole is believed to have a mass equivalent to 32.7 billion suns and was discovered through the effect of its gravitational influence on space.

人们认为，Abel 1201 BCG黑洞的质量相当于327亿个太阳，因其对空间的引力影响而为人们所发现。

"This particular black hole, which is roughly 30 billion times the mass of our sun, is one of the biggest ever detected and on the upper limit of how large we believe black holes can theoretically become, so it is an extremely exciting discovery," study leader James Nightingale, a physicist at Durham University in the U.K., said in a statement.

这项研究的负责人、英国杜伦大学的物理学家詹姆斯·南丁格尔（James Nightingale）在一份声明中说：“这个特殊的黑洞，其质量大约是我们太阳的300亿倍，是我们所探测到的最大黑洞之一，也是我们认为理论上黑洞所能达到的最大极限。可以说，这是一项非常令人振奋的发现。”

For many years, scientists have pondered how supermassive black holes reach such tremendous sizes. This is particularly challenging when supermassive black holes with millions or billions of times the mass of the sun are discovered in the early epoch of the universe, when they would not have had time to feed on matter or even merge with other black holes enough to reach such titanic masses.

多年来，科学家们一直在思考超大质量黑洞是如何形成如此巨大的规模的。在宇宙早期发现具有数百万或数十亿倍太阳质量的超大质量黑洞时，这个问题尤为具有挑战性，因为它们没有足够的时间来吞噬物质，甚至没有足够的时间与其他黑洞合并形成这么大的质量。

"It's like seeing a family walking down the street, and they have two 6-foot teenagers, but they also have with them a 6-foot tall toddler," John Reagan, a research fellow at Maynooth University who was not involved in the research, told Space.com.. ”

一位未参与该研究的梅努斯大学（Maynooth University）研究员约翰·里根（John Reagan）对Space.com.说：“这就像看到有一家人走在街上，他们有两个6英尺高的青年孩子，但还有一个6英尺高的蹒跚学步的孩子"。

In August, astronomers discovered evidence of how this process may get a head start, finding "heavy seeds" of black holes with masses around 40 million times that of the sun in the universe just 400 million years after it began. These so-called outsize black hole galaxies are believed to form directly from massive clouds of gas and dust, rather than from dying stars, saving billions of years on the path to supermassive status.

今年8月，天文学家发现了黑洞的形成可能提前开始的证据，他们在宇宙形成仅4亿年后就发现了质量约为太阳4000万倍的“重种子”黑洞。这些所谓的超大质量黑洞星系被认为是直接从巨大的气体和尘埃云中形成的，而不是由死亡的恒星形成的，因此在形成超大质量的过程中节省了数十亿年的时间。

In October, astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole binary system in the aftermath of two merging galaxies. At just 90 million light-years away, it's the closest pair of supermassive black holes to Earth yet discovered.

10月，天文学家在两个星系合并后发现了一个超大质量黑洞双星系统。该系统距离地球只有9000万光年，这是迄今为止发现的离地球最近的一对超大质量黑洞。

The black holes have masses 54 million times that of the sun and 6.3 million times that of the sun, respectively. Currently, they orbit each other at a respectable distance of 1,600 light-years. But in around 250 million years, they will spiral together and merge, just as their parent galaxies did 1 billion years ago, creating a daughter supermassive black hole with a combined mass of around 60 million solar masses.

这两个黑洞的质量分别为太阳的5400万倍和630万倍。目前，它们在1600光年外的轨道上相互绕行。但大约2.5亿年后，它们将旋转到一起并完成合并，就像它们的母星系在10亿年前所做的那样，形成一个子系超质量黑洞，其总质量约为太阳的6000万倍。

As black hole mergers occur, they set space-time ringing with tiny ripples called gravitational waves, which were first predicted in Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity.

当黑洞开始合并时，它们会产生名为引力波的微小波纹，这是爱因斯坦在1915年的广义相对论中首次预测到的现象。

What Einstein didn't predict was that gravitational waves would one day be detectable here on Earth. This detection of space-time ripples got a major boost in October, when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) got an upgrade that will push beyond the so-called "quantum limit," allowing it to detect even smaller undulations in space from even more distant black hole mergers.

爱因斯坦无法预测到的是，引力波有一天会在地球上被探测到。今年10月，激光干涉引力波天文台（LIGO）进行了升级，将推动其超越所谓的“量子极限”，使其能够从更遥远的黑洞合并中探测到更小的空间波动，这为探测时空涟漪提供了重大推动力。

"We can now reach a deeper universe and are expected to detect about 60 percent more mergers than before," LIGO lab researcher Wenxuan Jia told Space.com. "The upgrade also increases our chances of detecting sub-stellar mass black holes in the universe. The latest experimental upgrade will benefit our detection of astrophysical signals in nearly every way."

"我们现在可以探测到更深层的宇宙，预计比以前能多检测到约60%的合并事件。"LIGO实验室研究员贾文轩告诉Space.com网站。"这一升级也增加了我们在宇宙中探测亚恒星质量黑洞的机会。最新的实验性升级将在几乎各个方面都有益于我们对天体物理信号的探测。"

In June, NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer caught the echoes of an outburst from our galaxy's supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Sgr A* is believed to have belched this high-energy light around the turn of the 19th century, and scientists caught its echo in the form of X-rays shining from dense molecular clouds of gas surrounding the center of the Milky Way and birthing new stars. The 200-year-old burst of radiation is believed to be the result of a chunk of an asteroid, a gas cloud or a star venturing too close to Sgr A* and being shredded by the immense tidal forces generated by the supermassive black hole's intense gravity.

今年 6 月，NASA 的成像 X 射线偏振探测仪捕捉到了银河系超大质量黑洞人马座 A*（Sgr A*）爆发的回声。据信，人马座 A* 在 19 世纪之交喷发出这种高能量的光线，科学家们捕捉到了它的回声，这种回声以 X 射线的形式从围绕着银河系中心、孕育着新恒星的稠密气体分子云中闪耀出来。据信，200 年前的辐射爆发是大块小行星、气体云或恒星过于靠近 Sgr A*，被超大质量黑洞强大引力产生的巨大潮汐力撕碎的结果。

In April, the first-ever image of a black hole, dubbed the "fuzzy orange doughnut" because it is notoriously blurry, got a major makeover thanks to AI. To improve the sharpness of the image, researchers used a supercomputer running a machine-learning technique called principal-component interferometric modeling (PRIMO). This allowed them to fill in the gaps missed by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) when it captured the first image of the black hole in 2019 and to slim down the glowing ring of the supermassive black hole to learn more about it.

今年 4 月，有史以来第一张黑洞图像--因其出了名的模糊而被称为 "模糊橙色甜甜圈"--在人工智能的帮助下得到了重大改造。为了提高图像的清晰度，研究人员使用了一台超级计算机，运行一种名为主成分干涉建模（PRIMO）的机器学习技术。这使得他们能够填补事件地平线望远镜（EHT）在 2019 年捕捉到第一张黑洞图像时遗漏的空白，并缩小超大质量黑洞的发光环，以了解更多关于它的信息。

"PRIMO is a new approach to the difficult task of constructing images from EHT observations," Tod Lauer, an EHT member and NOIRLab researcher, said in a statement. "It provides a way to compensate for the missing information about the object being observed, which is required to generate the image that would have been seen using a single gigantic radio telescope the size of the Earth."

"PRIMO是一种新的从EHT观测中构建图像的方法，"EHT成员和NOIRLab研究员Tod Lauer在一份声明中说。"它提供了一种方法来弥补关于被观察物体的缺失信息，这是使用一个像地球一样巨大的单口径射电望远镜生成图像所必需的。"

In November, researchers studied the black hole Messier 87 and its jets to see how they release energy.

11月，研究人员研究了黑洞梅西耶87及其喷流，以了解它们如何释放能量。

This energy isn't coming from within the black hole; the boundaries of black holes, called event horizons, prevent anything from escaping. Instead, the spinning of the black hole twists up magnetic fields, which slow its rotational speed, and then launches highly collimated jets of material that the team described as "million-light-year-long Jedi lightsabers."

这种能量不是来自黑洞内部;黑洞的边界被称为事件视界，阻止任何物质逃逸。相反，黑洞的旋转扭曲了磁场，从而减慢了它的旋转速度，然后发射出高度准直的物质射流，该团队将其描述为“百万光年的绝地光剑”。

"If you took the Earth, turned it all into TNT, and blew it up 1,000 times a second for millions and millions of years, that's the amount of energy that we're getting out of M87," said team member George Wong, a researcher at Princeton University.

"如果你把地球全部变成TNT炸药，然后在数百万年的时间里每秒引爆1000次，这就是我们从M87中释放出的能量，"普林斯顿大学研究员、团队成员乔治·黄（George Wong）说。

In April, a collimated blast of energy emerging from M87's supermassive black hole became the first black hole jet to be directly imaged.

4月，从M87超大质量黑洞中发出的一束聚焦能量成为首个被直接成像的黑洞喷流。

The image shows for the first time how the base of the jet connects to matter swirling around the supermassive black hole and gradually being fed to it.

该图像首次展示了喷流的底部是如何与绕着超大质量黑洞旋转的物质相连，并逐渐被送到黑洞中的。

"We plan to observe the region around the black hole at the center of M87 at different radio wavelengths to further study the emission of the jet," team member Eduardo Ros, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said in a statement. "The coming years will be exciting, as we will be able to learn more about what happens near one of the most mysterious regions in the universe."

"我们计划以不同的无线电波长观察M87中心黑洞周围的区域，以进一步研究喷流的辐射情况，"马克斯·普朗克射电天文研究所的科学家、团队成员爱德华多·罗斯（Eduardo Ros）在一份声明中说。 "未来几年将会很令人兴奋，因为我们将能够更多地了解宇宙中最神秘的地区之一附近发生的事情。"

In March, astronomers watched for the first time as the jets launched from the active heart of a galaxy powered by a feeding supermassive black hole switched direction and pointed straight at Earth.

今年3月，天文学家首次观测到，由进食的超大质量黑洞提供能量的一个活跃星系中心喷出的喷流改变了方向，直指地球。

The galaxy, PBC J2333.9–2343, located around 656 million light-years from Earth, had been seen emitting jets but had appeared to fall quiet until firing up again and realigning its jet by 90 degrees to point at Earth. The team behind the observation described this as "a very exceptional case of jet reorientation."

这个星系位于距离地球约6.56亿光年的地方，之前观察过它发出喷流，但似乎已经平静下来，直到再次活跃起来并将喷流重新调整了90度，指向地球。观察团队将这一现象描述为“一个非常特殊的喷流重定向的例子”。

In February, the EHT collaboration revealed observations of the supermassive black hole-powered blazar at the heart of the galaxy NRAO 530. The blazar represents the most distant object the EHT has ever imaged.

今年2月， EHT合作组织公布了对银河系中心超大质量黑洞驱动的耀变体NRAO 530的观测结果。这个耀变体是EHT迄今为止拍摄的最遥远天体。

"The light that we see traveled toward Earth for 7.5 billion years through the expanding universe, but with the power of the EHT, we see the details of the source structure on a scale as small as a single light-year," Maciek Wielgus, an EHT collaboration team member and a researcher at the Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said in a statement.

"我们看到的光在宇宙膨胀的过程中，穿越了75亿年的时空才到达地球。但是借助EHT的力量，我们能够看到源自结构的细节，其尺度小至单个光年，" EHT合作团队成员、普朗克射电天文学研究所的研究员Maciek Wielgus在一份声明中说。

Scientists knew that supermassive black holes are messy eaters, but they didn't realize that black holes may have light diets because they "recycle" a lot of the material they fail to consume.

科学家们知道超大质量黑洞是胡吃海塞的食客，但他们没有意识到黑洞可能也享受清淡的饮食，因为它们“回收”了很多它们没有消耗的物质。

In November, astronomers discovered material engaged in an intricate dance around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Circinus Galaxy, located around 13 million light-years away.

去年11月，天文学家在距离我们1300万光年远的Circirus星系中心的超大质量黑洞周围发现了一种复杂的物质。

They found that the central black hole feeds on only around 3% of the material that falls toward it and the energy it generates pushes the rest away, meaning it is a much lighter eater than previously thought. That doesn't mean this matter keeps its distance, however; much of it falls back to the central supermassive black hole in an arrangement almost akin to a water fountain.

他们发现，中央黑洞只吞噬了向它坠落的物质的大约3% ，而它产生的能量将其余物质推开，这意味着它的食量比以前认为的要小得多。然而，这并不意味着这些物质保持距离；其中大部分物质以类似喷泉的方式回落到中央超大质量黑洞附近。

In April, astronomers used the Gaia spacecraft to discover what seemed to be the closest black holes to Earth. Designated Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2, the black holes are located 1,560 and 3,800 light-years away, respectively.

今年4月，天文学家利用盖亚宇宙飞船发现了距离地球最近的黑洞。这两个黑洞分别被命名为盖亚BH1和盖亚BH2，距离地球1560光年和3800光年。

But just a few months later, scientists discovered that there may be several black holes in the Hyades cluster, which, at just 150 light-years away, would make them 10 times closer than Gaia BH 1.

但就在几个月后，科学家们发现Hyades星团中可能有几个黑洞，它们距离我们只有150光年，比盖亚黑洞1近10倍。

These two, or possibly three, black holes could be even more remarkable because they might not be in the dense star cluster at all but were ejected from the Hyades 150 million years ago to wander the Milky Way alone.

这两个，或者可能是三个黑洞可能更加引人注目，因为它们可能根本不在密集的星团中，而是在1.5亿年前从毕星团中喷射出来，独自在银河系中游荡。