Black holes, Einstein, Nick Saban and the power of the human mind | GARY COSBY JR.

Just over a week ago, astronomers announced that they had been able to photograph the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. The Event Horizon Telescope project presented a somewhat fuzzy image, which shows a doughnut-shaped blob of light with a dark hole in the center. 

To see this black hole, which astronomers termed the Milky Way’s gentle giant, required a great deal of work over a period of years to produce the image. Scientists had been aware of a source of radio noise at Sagittarius A-star since 1973. They had calculated that Sagittarius A-star had to be a black hole, but the technology did not exist to create an image of it.  

In fact, as you might imagine, a black hole is rather hard to photograph. In fact, it is impossible because black holes do not permit even light to escape from their gravitational attraction. What scientists have captured is an image of super-hot plasma rapidly revolving around the black hole’s event horizon, that point on the rim of the black hole that, once crossed, draws everything, even light, into the core. The image was captured by combining data from different telescopes around the world to produce the composite.  

As remarkable as this proof of our galaxy’s black hole is, it probably won’t have an impact on your daily life. Nothing changes at the gas pump, the supermarket or your workplace because of this discovery, so for many people, this is only a cool diversion, a scenic overlook on the road of life.  

What impressed me was the idea that this discovery provides another piece of evidence that proves Albert Einstein's’ remarkable General Theory of Relativity, which he proposed in 1915. I am not smart enough to understand all of Einstein’s theory, probably not even much of it, but what I do find fascinating is that he postulated all of this completely in his head long before much of it could be seen or experimentally proven.  

His theory was so incredibly revolutionary it is one of the most important things to have ever happened in science. He dreamed it up in that amazing brain of his and somehow, more than a hundred years later, we are still proving him correct over and over and over.  

The human mind is truly strange and amazing. For instance, a physicist named John Wheeler, a man who was a contemporary of Einstein’s and actually attached the name “black hole” to what Einstein had shown was possible, has a theory that human observation might actually play a role in the creation of physical reality.  

Scientists have known almost since the invention of Quantum Mechanics that scientific observation changes the behavior of the things observed. If you get the chance, read about the famous double slit experiment. That will blow your mind. The basic concept is if scientists attempt to measure something like the behavior of a photon, it will react a certain way, but if they remove the measuring instruments it behaves entirely differently. It’s a bit like kids at play. They play according to the rules as long as mom is watching, but the minute her back is turned they revert to chaos.  

William Wooters, a former student of Wheeler’s said in an interview with Discover Magazine, "You may ask whether the universe really existed before you start looking at it. That's the same as the Schrödinger cat question. And my answer would be that the universe looks as if it existed before I started looking at it. When we look at the universe, the best we can say is that it looks as if it were there 10 billion years ago."  

I have taught my children this basic concept: Your perception is your reality. If you perceive things to be a certain way, you can bet your last dollar that will be your experience. It is very like that double slit experiment I referenced earlier. For most people, their perceptions form a barrier, which encloses their lives and prevents them from living beyond what is easily perceived.  

Effecting real change in our lives, our family, community or nation, requires something of an Einsteinian effort. We must see something with our mind’s eye that, perhaps, cannot yet be seen or proven, then pursue this new reality with great effort. Alabama’s football coach, Nick Saban, would say we must do what it takes to be successful. What may be his greatest achievement is that he takes young men and shows them that they can be more than what their perceptions to that point had allowed them to be.  

Therein lies the power of a visionary mind, be it Einstein, Saban or you. When someone sees a thing in his or her mind and then lays out a clear vision for others to follow, he or she is breaking down the walls of perception, of reality, allowing others to move to a new place, a place beyond the limits of their own self-imposed reality.

Maybe the photographic proof of that  black hole's existence really does have an impact on our lives after all. 

Gary Cosby Jr. is photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.