The Virtual Black Hole: VR In Astrophysical Applications

Virtual reality was something of a dream back in the 2000s, and now in 2018, it’s creating dreamlike experiences for us all to enjoy. Today, Virtual Reality is being used in a varied set of applications ranging from gaming to healthcare. Now researchers at Radboud University are using 360-degree VR to bring deep space experiences to earth!

The best thing about virtual reality is that it can bring any entity, no matter its size or shape, in a virtual form, enabling users to manipulate or work with it in any way that they require. The researchers went for something remains elusive for the science world – the supermassive black hole that is present in the very center of our galaxy – The Sagittarius A8.

To scale it down to a virtual representation is no simple task as just creating a virtual model of a black hole isn’t enough. When the model is created, it should behave like a black hole when variables are changed around it.

“Our virtual reality simulation creates one of the most realistic views of the direct surroundings of the black hole and will help us to learn more about how black holes behave. Traveling to a black hole in our lifetime is impossible, so immersive visualizations like this can help us understand more about these systems from where we are.” Said the corresponding author, Jody Davelar.

From this statement, it’s clear what the researchers did and its single brilliant. If they could not get to the black hole, they bring the black hole to them. To get an almost real rendering of the black hole, researchers put together a series of images of a black hole from astrophysical models.

The final rendering is just a sight to watch as the black hole shimmers and shines with orange shade gases swirling around it against the starry space backdrop. These innovations again make the case for the effectiveness of VR in the fields of science and research.

The researchers hope to use this model for educational as well as research purposes.