Astronomers discover light behind black hole for the first time

Astronomers have for the first time detected light behind a black hole deep in space. The telescope detected bright X-ray gleams coming out of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy 800 million light years from Earth, which is relatively normal, according to British newspaper The Guardian. Researchers were studying a feature known as a “corona” – or “halo” – but telescopes also picked up unexpected “light echoes”. These extra flashes were smaller, later, and different in color than the incandescent glow. The discovery confirms Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, in which the gravitational pull of black holes bends light rays around them, giving scientists a first glimpse of what is behind them. In this context, Roger Blandford, co-author of the research published in the journal Nature, said that “fifty years ago, when astrophysicists began to speculate on the behavior of the magnetic field near a black hole , they had no idea that one day we may have techniques to directly observe this and see Einstein’s general theory of relativity in action.
Stanford University astrophysicist Dan Wilkins said that “any light that enters this black hole does not come out, so we shouldn’t see anything behind the black hole,” adding that “the reason why we can to see it is that this hole is black distorts space, bends the light and envelops the magnetic fields around them.