M87*

About:

• This black hole is calculated to be 6.5 billion times the Sun’s mass and is 55 million light years away from the Earth.
  
  
• The discovery set the world of astronomy on fire and also found a mention in the “popular information” section of the announcement of the Nobel Prize in physics for 2020.
  
  
• Now, a paper published in The European Physical Journal C brings in an alternative explanation for the compact object that was imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope.
  
  
• The authors say it (M87*) is not necessarily a black hole but could even be a “naked singularity with a gravitomagnetic monopole.”
  
  

Background

• When stars much more massive than the Sun reach the end of their lives, they collapse under their own gravity, and the product of this collapse, most astronomers believe is a black hole.
  
  
• A black hole has two parts: At its core is a singularity – a point that is infinitely dense, as all the remnant mass of the star is compressed into this point.
  
  
• Then there is the event horizon – an imaginary surface surrounding the singularity, and the gravity of the object is such that once anything enters this surface, it is trapped forever.
  
  
• Not even light can escape the pull of the singularity once it crosses the event horizon. That is why, we cannot see the singularity at the heart of a black hole but only see points outside the event horizon.