360 Video: NASA Simulation Plunges Into a Black Hole

This new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer represents a scenario where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — enters the event horizon, sealing its fate. This version is a 360-degree video that lets viewers look all around during the one-way trip.

Goddard scientists created the visualizations on the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation.

The destination is a supermassive black hole with 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun, equivalent to the monster located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. To simplify the complex calculations, the black hole is not rotating.

A flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called an accretion disk surrounds the black hole and serves as a visual reference during the fall. So do glowing structures called photon rings, which form closer to the black hole from light that has orbited it one or more times. A backdrop of the starry sky as seen from Earth completes the scene.

The project generated about 10 terabytes of data — equivalent to roughly half of the estimated text content in the Library of Congress — and took about 5 days running on just 0.3% of Discover’s 129,000 processors. The same feat would take more than a decade on a typical laptop.

Music credit: “Tidal Force,” Thomas Daniel Bellingham [PRS], Universal Production Music

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center /J. Schnittman and B. Powell
Producer: Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Visualizer:Jeremy Schnittman (NASA/GSFC)
Science writer: Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park)
Computer support: Brian Powell (NASA/GSFC)
Editor: Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)

Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

[helereign]

Finally, my main childhood question has been answered.

[hellotherehehehehaw]

Can't believe I am alive at this point of time

[aorg]

Needs more Matthew McConaughey hollering in it.

[Sandstorm]

"Hey, you! You're finally awake."

[stinkyyyk]

I've always wanted to see this, thank you NASA folks

[TaranJHook]

This was more anxiety inducing than I thought it would be

[vaalha]

Now we need an updated Interstellar edition.

[loveforthes]

That was fun but I don’t want to actually do that 🥺

[chionwolf]

I have to admit, part of me expected to get Rickrolled.

[kevinschafer]

That's exactly what I see everytime I fall asleep while watching a movie.

[KebragradII]

Респект оператору, надеюсь он достиг сингулярности прежде, чем его спагеттифицировало

[jvdos]

0:31 MICHEL DONT LEAVE ME HERE MICHEL!

[obamablogs]

This music makes it less scary to watch but this video still terrifies me nonetheless

[양익서-gj]

이렇게 보면 블랙홀은 랜덤머신같은데 우리가 감지할수있는 힘들이 그렇게 많지 않아서 유클리디안처럼 보임.사실은 소수의 원리처럼 규칙성을 찾기 힘들정도의 소용돌이일거라고 생각함.

[cmtri]

It's not a simulator, it's a simulation

[TheSleepSteward]

I have absolutely no idea what I just saw and yet there's something horrifying about how just... Impossible to grasp looking at that is.

[TheLwi]

Actually inside of event horizon is not dark at all. You can see everything what left behind you, as light CAN go in (just can not get out)

[MoreisMor]

So, it gets black. Who'd have thought that?

[sourkoyote]

Time? Bended.
Light? Bended.
Gravity? Bended.
Hotel? Trivago.

[glennmorgan]

I really appreciate this concept, but I'd appreciate higher resolution even more. 😊