7 minute read
THE EDGE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
from FlyNamibia May 2024
Why we study black holes
Black holes are mysteries in space that bring us to the edge of our knowledge. Curiosity and science take us beyond that edge. The Africa Millimetre Telescope (AMT), to be built in Namibia, will help us answer the big questions in life, according to professor Heino Falcke and student Vikapita Ilonga.
Professor Heino Falcke is an astrophysicist at Radboud University in Nijmegen (The Netherlands). He studies black holes and high-energy elementary particles and co-founded the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of telescopes that created the first-ever images of black holes. To improve these images, the Africa Millimetre telescope is intended to make for a stronger network and provide a better picture of this great mystery in space. Nothing escapes from a black hole, not even light. Also, black holes are lightyears away from our planet. And yet, the EHT managed to create an image of a black hole.
Glued to the TV
As a child, Falcke dreamt of being an astronaut. When Apollo 15 was launched in July 1971, and reached the moon, he was glued to the television screen. Even at his young age (5) he knew something very big was happening. After several years, however, due to a light trembling of his hands he let go of his great dream of travelling to space. “Astronauts need to be perfect. And since I am not perfect, like most people, I decided to keep studying the universe from down here,” he says. That turned out pretty well – Falcke has come a very long way in his research.
Astronaut
Vikapita wants to be an astronaut. “Not a female astronaut, or an African astronaut. I just want to be an astronaut. I want to be among the stars, to venture where only few people have been”, says Vikapita Ilonga, also known as Vii. She is 20 years old and she has known what she wants in life since she was a little girl. “Everybody has been to Italy, Greece and the oceans these days. Hardly anyone has gone beyond our atmosphere. It’s my internal drive to always figure out more, past the point where nobody knows.”
Curious kid
Born in Windhoek, raised in Omingernyeu and Gobabis, Vii now studies astronomy at UNAM. She moved house 23 times and therefore finds it hard to stay long in one place. “When I was a kid, we were never financially stable, but we got by. My mom spoiled me, somehow”, Vii smiles. Some would say spoil, others would say meeting the needs of an extremely curious kid. Her mother works for the Ministry of Internal Relations and Cooperation. Her father chose Vii’s name and then left his family. Vikapita means “everything comes and goes”.
Investigating
“When I was younger I didn’t know physics was a subject,” she recalls. “I just assumed everybody was investigating everything all the time. As a kid, I was shy and I held conversations in my head all the time, wondering where the wind came from and where it was going. And I didn’t know how an animal breathes but I wanted to know why the air comes out hot. The more I know, the more I get bored with one thing and want to learn about other matters.”
Falcke says, “I always ask: ‘why?’ and ‘why not?’. Sometimes something seems impossible, until you try to do it in a different way. In astronomy, so much is yet to be discovered. The universe is almost infinite and so very big. I might not travel to space as an astronaut, but as an astronomer I travel to remote places to visit telescopes on mountain tops. The connection with the universe is almost tangible when I look up at the night sky”.
Like-minded people
“Now that I am studying at UNAM I am meeting new friends and like-minded people who also study the cosmos,” Vii says. “I see them going through the same processes as I do. Also, the availability of more information and the possibility to find answers at the library are pretty cool.” She used to have a student loan, but for this year she had to sell some livestock to continue studying at university. To pursue her big dream of space travel, Vikapita wants to stay on board of the AMTteam. She is also thinking about getting her pilot’s license, because it might bring her closer to being an astronaut. “With all that experience I should get closer to making my dream come true,” she reckons.
Most extreme phenomenon
As a co-founder of the EHT, the global network of telescopes, Falcke is one of the scientists who was involved in creating the images of black holes – including Sagittarius A* in the centre of our own galaxy. “A black hole is the most extreme phenomenon in the universe, since it’s literally a hole in time and space,” he says. “At the event horizon, the place where stars fall into the black hole, all our theories in physics collapse. They just don’t make sense anymore – and that is very interesting!” Falcke mentions that if you would pour ten buckets of water into a black hole, it would create enough energy for a small but densely populated country like The Netherlands for a whole year. “That’s quite bizarre, I would say. And well, we do have the water… but not the black hole. But maybe we should be glad about it, since it’s pretty dangerous as well.”
Hereafter
Black holes are some kind of hereafter, says Falcke. “If you could go into them and survive, you could talk – but your words would never come out. It shuts you down from the world. Black holes form the edge of our knowledge.
The Africa Millimetre Telescope that we are building in Namibia, will contribute to our knowledge of black holes. It will be an important link in our global network of telescopes. And also, this radio telescope will tell us so much more about the activity in the universe. When you look up to the night sky, it seems so peaceful up there. But the truth is that there is a lot going on! We can’t see it with the naked eye, but stars are exploding and black holes are being formed – and all of these molecules create clouds of dust that we can’t see, but our radio telescopes can. And since all life once started from dust, I think it’s important to find out as much as we can. To know where we came from is one of the biggest questions in life.”
Pioneers
“Space is the next frontier for humanity,” Vii agrees with Falcke. “Sailing across the seas was a big thing once and space is the next, I guess. Black holes are a collective mystery: we just don’t know much about them. We have opportunities to figure them out and that is so exciting –anything is possible when it is not proven any other way. Namibia being part of the investigation of a mystery this big is just… wow. I imagine people looking back on us, 400 years in the future from now, and they will say we were pioneers, like we look at what Columbus did in the past. At first, people called him crazy, but in the end he paved the way for so many opportunities.”
