This may explain the natural touch and excitement of us as humans when we see photos of black holes. Condensed in this picture is a great trajectory of human beings finding their place in the world, a look at their own present, and a distant place that transcends the mediocre and triviality.
commentator of Yangtze Daily Li Xing
The keyword "black hole" will flood the screen. I didn't expect it, but it was not surprising.
This is the first black hole photo in human history. Xinhua News Agency (Photo provided by the Event Horizon Telescope Project Team)
This hard-won black hole "photo" has mobilized the participation and cooperation of top scientific research resources around the world. It is a typical modern scientific achievement. It is no exaggeration to say that the first release of black hole photos is a historical moment of questioning the sky in the name of all mankind. It is obviously due to the charm of science and intelligence that black holes have become "Internet celebrities", but I believe there is still a deeper and more original motivation.
As a cutting-edge field of modern physics and universe research, the black hole is actually pursuing an eternal ultimate question, that is, where exactly the world we live comes from and where will it go.
16th century universe: perfect, uniform, and clear hierarchy
Continuous exploration of the universe, that is, the process of human beings understanding themselves, thinking and exploration of this process is one of the most grand and profound ideological activities of human beings. Human understanding of the universe is constantly evolving, and this path of human concepts and thoughts is tortuous and bumpy, sometimes even accompanied by bloody storms. In fact, modern science was born in the revolution in the field of astronomy.
Nicolah Copernicus
Whether it is an academic figure or the general public, as long as it is not completely unbaptized by modern civilization, people living in the 21st century will inevitably have different understanding of the world than in the past. Before the revolutionary "heliocentric theory" was proposed by the astronomer Copernicus in the 16th century, Europeans had always believed that they lived in a limited and hierarchical universe centered on the earth, and the earth was considered the master of all celestial bodies. Drawing back to the universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy , it is full of metaphysical imaginations of images such as "perfect" and "uniformity", and has long unified the Western world of thought in the strong religious colors of the Middle Ages.
Newton
Newton's era: Time passes evenly, irreversible, and has nothing to do with space
Whether it is the geocentric theory or the heliocentric theory, it is still far from the picture of our universe today, but this is an important step for human beings to "go away" from the theological universe. In the era of Sir Isaac Newton , although the "Hand of God" was still the first driving force of the Newtonian universe, an accurate universe that strictly follows mathematical principles can no longer rely on God to operate on its own. As the culmination of theory of classical mechanics, Newton truly began to think about the essence of time and space.
The evolution of the cosmic view of modern people is not difficult to understand because it is mainly based on empiricism. In short, it means understanding the world from actual observation without being separated from daily experience.
The displacement of the sun, moon and stars in the sky. Through observation records and basic mathematical tools, medieval astronomers can already accurately calculate the planet's trajectory and find some bugs that cannot be explained by existing theories. The change in cosmic theory occurred under multiple factors of the development of society and astronomy. The Copernican Revolution was obviously closely related to the Renaissance thoughts and the Reformation movement that swept across Europe at that time.
When theology no longer constitutes a substantial obstacle to the development of cosmic theory, the relationship between time and space has become the most important topic in modern cosmic research and the key to many cutting-edge fields.
Albert Einstein
Before Einstein proposed the theory of relativity, in Newton's absolute view of space and time was independent of each other, time passed evenly, irreversible, and had nothing to do with space. This is also the premise of classical mechanics.Because classical mechanics can accurately solve most macroscopic low-speed motion problems and is also in line with the intuitive feeling of daily experience, it was once considered to have reached the limit of physics.
"black hole" represents modern cosmology , which goes beyond the scope of empirical understanding
After Newton, the threshold for a detailed and precise understanding of the universe became higher and higher. After the 19th century, after the foundation of physics such as electromagnetics and thermodynamics, human scientific and technological development also entered the stage of Big Bang. Tools such as non-European geometry, quantum mechanics, and even string theory have rediscovered many "abnormal" phenomena that have been ignored and unobserved, providing a powerful solution to the new cosmic theory.
The modern universe theory represented by black holes has expanded the vision of human beings looking up at the starry sky to a vast space and time with a scale of tens of millions of light years. The complex relationship between time and space has subverted human past cognition and imagination, and a world far beyond experience has opened a mysterious door to human beings.
From simple ancient myths to the first time black holes reveal their true faces, the world in the human mind has undergone earth-shaking changes. This process is a history of science, philosophy and theology explaining the world, and it is also a history of human thought that understands itself. Looking back on this history, the courage to seek knowledge and the light of wisdom are particularly impressive, and it also witnesses the constant pace of human cognition and exploration. This may explain the natural touch and excitement of us as humans when we see photos of black holes. Condensed in this picture is a great trajectory of human beings finding their place in the world, a look at their own present, and a distant place that transcends the mediocre and triviality.
[Editor: Liu Si]
