Could you help our scientists uncover the mysterious world of invisible black holes?<\/p>\n
Become a Black Hole Hunter and you\u2019ll be taking part in scientific research that has the potential to reveal more about one of space\u2019s most intriguing aspects.<\/p>\n
All you will need is a smartphone, tablet or other computer, some guidance on how to spot the tell-tale clues, and a bit of time.<\/p>\n
By volunteering to take part in this online citizen science project, you\u2019ll be assisting Dr Hugh Dickinson from The Open University (OU) and Dr Matt Middleton and Adam McMaster from the University of Southampton, with their research into elusive black holes.<\/p>\n
Dr Hugh Dickinson, Lecturer in Astronomy at OU, said:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re really excited to see the launch of this new Black Hole Hunter project. Using the amazing data from the TESS satellite means that there\u2019s a good chance that one or more citizen scientists will be able to spot one of the elusive gravitational lensing events that we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dr Middleton<\/strong><\/a> said:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBlack holes are invisible. Their gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape, making them incredibly hard to see, even with specialist equipment. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBut that gravitational pull is also how we can detect them because it\u2019s so strong that it can bend and focus light, acting like a lens that magnifies light from stars. We can detect this magnification and that\u2019s how we know a black hole exists.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe know our galaxy is teeming with black holes, but we\u2019ve only found a handful. You could help us change that.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Volunteers will be asked to search through telescope data and indicate anything that could reveal the presence of a black hole.<\/p>\n Adam added: <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAnyone of any age can do this, and you don\u2019t need to be an expert to take part. All you really need is an interest in space and as little or as much time as you can give for looking at the graphs and helping us spot the patterns that could reveal a black hole. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYour work will directly contribute to real scientific research and you\u2019ll be helping to make the invisible become visible.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Black Hole Hunters previously analysed data from a ground-based telescope but the project is moving on \u2013 and up. It\u2019s relaunching with a new set of data to analyse from a space-based telescope, called TESS. To get involved go to Black Hole Hunters.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Could you help our scientists uncover the mysterious world of invisible black holes? Become a Black Hole Hunter and you\u2019ll be taking part in scientific research that has the potential to reveal more about one of space\u2019s most intriguing aspects. All you will need is a smartphone, tablet or other computer, some guidance on how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":20428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[861,1525,1640],"class_list":["post-24561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-mct","tag-faculty-of-stem","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}