Students from Peñalolén were amazed by the wonders of a trip to a black hole

Students from the Alcántara School of Peñalolén participated in an interesting talk on the origin of black holes and an educational workshop on exoplanets organized by CATA to enhance their interest in science.

Within the framework of extracurricular activities, the Biology teacher of this establishment, Moira Díaz, summoned a large number of students interested in learning more about astronomy, to join the presentation of the person in charge of Contents and Dissemination of the Center for Astrophysics and Related Technologies, CATA, José Utreras.

The talk “Journey to a black hole” covered from its origin in the Theory of Relativity to the confirmation of the existence of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies; focusing on the deformation that occurs in space-time, from the gravity generated by giant stars or black holes themselves.

The students were also surprised by interesting data, such as the fact that it is estimated that there are more than 100 million stellar black holes in the Milky Way alone.

“The invitation was open to third and fourth grade students and we had a lot of attendance. One tends to think that they are a bit reluctant, as if they are not very interested, but it was really noticeable that they were very interested in the subject and they even surprised me with some of the things they knew or the depth of the questions. I also think that the way in which the CATA astronomers gave the talk was very good, because they made an interesting and understandable presentation. It is a difficult subject to understand many times, and I think it was attractive for them as well”, commented teacher Moira Díaz.

With animations and videos the students were able to approach the experience of falling into a black hole, what it would be like to see and feel the gravity of a black hole merger up close, how they can dull the brightness of a galaxy and how we could use them as time machines to travel to a very distant future, but without the possibility of returning to our time “It was very interesting, because for me it is a very unknown subject. At the beginning it sounded very abstract, but, as the examples were given, it was understood and it is fascinating what exists out there that one cannot imagine. I am also very interested in knowing how they came to know that, all the experiments, all the studies and mathematics, which I also like very much”, said Candela Pérez about this talk.

Meanwhile, Cristóbal González, told that among his future options is to study astronomy, so he really enjoyed this activity. “They passed on the information in an exceptional way. I really like these topics, as well as doing further research on the creation disk, and other astronomy events such as the singularity. I thought it was spectacular for someone who is interested in the subject.”

The meeting at the Alcántara School continued with a workshop on exoplanets, where eighth grade students randomly created their own planetary systems based on a red, yellow or blue star and saw the consequences that this configuration gave to each of their planets. In this way they were also able to understand how special our own solar system is. This activity was directed by José Utreras and Catalina Vargas, Master’s student in Astronomy at the University of Chile and member of CATA.