Today, astronomers around the world are making new discoveries studying the vastness of space. One such astronomer teaching at the University of Alabama has made major progress in studying black holes and has documented for the first time, a star being torn apart by a black hole.  That black hole is a thousand times more massive than our sun.

Are black holes dangerous?  Should we worry about what is out there?  Should we care that black holes exist? Talk about looking at the big picture!  By doing research millions of light years into space. A hunger for knowledge is what made Galileo look to the stars with an early telescope.  It’s what made Copernicus challenge his church’s view that the earth was the center of the universe.

Dr. Jimmy Irwin is an astronomer, a researcher, one of only a handful of scientists who study black holes.  He said, “People love black holes, they want to talk about them all the time.  They have almost a natural fear of black holes.  They have the assumption that a black hole’s gonna suck them in.”

Dr. Irwin assures that won’t happen.  But black holes are massive in size and create massive gravitational forces.  

Using observations from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory in California and The Magellan Telescopes in Chile, Irwin discovered remnants of a dense stellar object being ripped apart by a black hole.  He discovered that light of importance some 65 million light years from earth, meaning the visible light left its source 65 million years ago.

Dr. Irwin patiently explained his research, and why it’s important.  “This all begins, whether it’s wanting to know how to create a more efficient super computer or wanting to understand the universe around us.  It all stems from wanting to have knowledge and hopefully this type of results that astronomy gives to the public will stimulate interest in the younger generation to go on and accomplish the types of advancements that we want in our society for future generations.“

It is the vastness of space that Dr. Irwin says presents the biggest and most complex challenges in space exploration and space travel.  Remember he’s studying data from 65 million miles away.

He uses this example to help us understand the vastness of it all:  Imagine the sun is the size of a grapefruit in the center of Washington D.C.  On that scale, our entire solar system would extend outward only a few blocks. The next closest star, Proxima Centauri, would be in San Francisco, California.

Dr. Irwin believes we’re not alone. “There’s a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and there’s at least a hundred billion galaxies in our universe and if each of those stars has a handful of planets, I find it inconceivable that this is the only star that has a planet with life on it.“

Dr. Irwin said we earthlings tend to think we’re more special than we might be.  “I look at us as a very insignificant species, living on an insignificant planet, going around an average star, in an average galaxy in an average part of the universe.  I see us as no more than a speck of dust in astronomical terms.“

Dr. Irwin was studying something entirely different when he came across this major breakthrough.  He said that’s another strong reason to keep looking skyward,  “Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, I think is important.  People love hearing about astronomy.  They love to hear what Hubble is looking at.  If it inspires children to have an interest in astronomy or any other science, we’re talking about future generations down the line of having a love of science and a quest for understanding the universe around us.“