Everything about black holes is extreme.
They are extremely massive, with such a strong gravitational pull that not even light can escape from them. Physicists believe they are created when a giant star — far larger than our sun — expends so much of its fuel that it can no longer maintain a temperature high enough to keep it from collapsing under its own weight.
“These monsters are very complex, and very far away from us,” said Dr. Alex Konopelko, Pittsburg State University physics professor.
Which is good, because black holes tend to eat up everything around them. The gases and other materials the black hole is consuming form a spiral structure called an accretion disc.
“We can see this structure and detect the different kinds of radiation that escape from the disc,” Konopelko said.
He is part of a group of astrophysicists who are studying these intriguing objects. And last fall their research efforts had two strokes of good fortune.
For one thing, he and his colleagues were awarded a $140,000 grant from NASA to study black holes.
“NASA said, ‘Send us ideas and proposals and if they are interesting, we’ll support the research’,” Konopelko said. “I applied, my idea was kind of interesting, so they gave us money.”
Their second break came from the sky, specifically from a remote but energetic object known as Mrk 421, located in the constellation Ursa Major.
The process of the black hole’s feeding causes huge amounts of energies around the accretion disc.
“Finally, after some time, a lot of energy will be released in jets, and we can detect the radiation of a jet,” Konopelko said. “But these objects are randomly distributed in space, and radiation from jets is kind of sporadic. We want to catch one of these in a flaring state.”
In November his group caught Mrk 421 in a flare. The idea is to study this phenomenon across a wide spectrum of energy distribution, from high to low.
NASA’s space-borne observatories are crucial for gathering data, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Others in Konopelko’s group include Paul Smith at the University of Arizona, who is gathering optical data, and Abe Falcone at Penn State University. He has also involved a good number of students in the process as well.
“It’s very good for students,” Konopelko said. “They learn a lot.”
He said that he spends much of his time teaching, but devotes part of his time to research.
“This is a small university, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do research,” he said. “Research is part of our business.”
His interest in space started early. He watched a lot of movies about space research while growing up, and was a Star Trek fan. But there are serious reasons for studying black holes. Konopelko said that black holes are one of the best things to study to learn about how the universe evolved — and how it will continue to evolve in the future.
“Human beings want to understand the universe and their part in it,” he said. “Also, at the back of our brain, we think that we might be able to do something useful with our knowledge.”
He noted that, if humans could understand the processes that go on in and around black holes, and model them on earth, they might possibly be used as an important energy source.
“Atomic and nuclear research was silly, basic research in the beginning,” Konopelko pointed out. “Now we have nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.”
A native of Russia, Konopelko spent many years in Germany before coming to the United States from Heidelburg three years ago. He spent one year as a research assistant at Purdue University before coming to PSU.
“I love everything here,” he said. “PSU is like a large, very friendly family, and it’s a great opportunity for me to be here. I get to do what I love to do and get paid for it.”
PITTSBURG —
