Can you see a black hole?

Answer 1

Even if a black hole were located in the nearest star, it would take quite a few hundred years in the fastest rocket ship to reach it, so you can be absolutely certain that no human has ever gotten anywhere near a back hole.

However the concept is even more fundamental than that. Actually "black holes" are only a mathematical construct. They may not even exist. It is true that phenomena have been observed that could be a black hole, but they could also be conceivably huge neutron stars, since our best telescopes could not usually resolve them in either case since they either one would be too small. It is one of those concepts that probably never will be resolved by we little ants down here (or perhaps I should say "up here" from the black hole's perspective), since either one would be too small even if light could escape if they were located in other galaxies. So they will remain imaginary mathematical hallucinations in the minds of astronomers.

Answer 2

Yes and no. A black hole is a place where gravity is so great that nothing, not even light itself, can escape the pull of gravity there. As a result, it cannot be seen directly. It can, however, be seen by its effect on nearby stars, which will orbit around it. It may also be seen because of what is called gravitational lensing. That's a situation where a star or other light-emitting object is "behind" the black hole and the light is "bent around" the black hole because of the gravitational effects of the black hole. It (the black hole) actually bends spacetime around itself to "reroute" the light. It may also be possible to observe the black hole by virtue of the action at its event horizon. Light and higher energy electromagnetic radiation will be generated there by particles of matter being accelerated into the black hole itself. But you'd need to be close to see this. A link can be found below.

Answer 3

No one's ever seen one, but that certainly doesn't mean they don't exist. In fact, even if you could "see" one, a bare little black hole parked on the table in front of you, you wouldn't actually see it anyhow. The reason they're known as black holes is that even light cannot escape their gravity -- you would see a round blackness, but your eyes wouldn't actually be recording any information directly from it.

As to whether or not they exist, well, in my estimation they're about as well-proven, both through observation and calculation, as something like quantum tunneling. No one's ever "watched" an electron suddenly appear on the other side of an energy barrier that it shouldn't be able to climb -- really, it's a phenomena that, if you could see it would be indistinguishable from honest-to-dog magic -- but we've measured the results of such a thing happening so often and regularly that we now use it in, among other things, extremely popular and useful electron microscopes.

So the short answer is, to the absolute best abilities of virtually everyone working on the problem: Yes, Virginia, there is a black hole....or maybe a few hundred billion of them.

Answer 4

Because the gravity in a Black Hole is so extreme that even light itself cannot escape, no one will ever actually "see" the black hole itself, and nobody ever has, so far.

However, the effects of the black hole ARE visible farther away. Like water swirling around a whirlpool, gas around the black hole will be accelerated to nearly the speed of light from the force of gravity. That speeding gas causes heat and radiation that can be detected, and has been.

In the constellation Cygnus, there is an x-ray source which is almost certainly a black hole, and several other suspected black holes have been identified by the radiation emitted by the gas before it falls in.

Answer 5

No. A person could not be near a black hole and survive. The nearest black hole to earth is 1,600 light-years away. If you could travel at a speed of 354 million miles an hour, it would still take you over 1,600 years to get there.

Answer 6

By their effects: like an 'invisible person' they can be seen by how they affect other things around them. Foot prints in the sand? A wobble in the orbit of a star. Ashes blown onto their skin? A nearby star feeds the black hole debris. Objects move in the air? A star slowly disappears into 'nothing.' A lot of times in science, it's not what you see that it is important, it's what you can't.

Answer 7

No. The event horizon of a black hole is usually quite small compared to other objects in space, generally no more than a few tens of miles wide. Since it does not emit any form of light, such a thing is impossible to see across interstellar distances.

Answer 8

Because light doesn't escape black holes they aren't directly visible. However, effects around them can indicate their presence, including gravitational lensing, highly luminous relativistic polar jets or equatorial accretion disks.

Answer 9

You can't.

In fact, black holes are invisible because they are made up of dark matter (Dark Matter is invisible and is extremely hard to find one.)

THAT'S why.

Answer 10

It will be hard to see it because of the darkness of space, but it gravitational lensing would make it fairly easy to see. this is what it might look like: