Alex Lupsasca Scientists to Watch | Science News

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A mysterious ring of light is thought to surround every black hole, and Alex Lupsasca wants to glimpse one for the first time. The tendril-thin halo, called a photon ring, has the power to reveal secrets from the black hole’s edge. Black holes are regions of the universe where spacetime is warped so dramatically that nothing can escape. Physicists predict that particles of light, or photons, can graze the edge of the black hole without falling in. These photons orbit the black hole one or more times before breaking away. This light makes up the photon ring. Spotting the photon ring could help test physicists’ theories about these mysterious objects, and whether any alternative explanations could account for them. “Seeing this photon ring and confirming that it’s really produced by orbiting photons would be ironclad, definitive proof that the object that we’re looking at really is a black hole,” Lupsasca says. Lupsasca, a theoretical physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, is t

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