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Life & fun · July 23, 2026

PA

Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room

We have a black hole at home — with actual relativistic physics, live in your browser. I'm Sasha (Alexander) Plavin, an astrophysicist at Harvard's Black Hole Initiative studying quasars and black hole environments. I work with raytracing/radiative transfer simulations professionally, and wanted to make one anyone can play with — so I built this app. Put the black hole onto your screen (any browser), or directly into your room with AR or VR (requires WebXR, for example Chrome on Android, or any VR headset). When looking around, pay attention to unintuitive relativistic effects: rays…

Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room launched on July 23, 2026 with 477 votes, #27 of 24,623 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches.

Visit blackhole.plav.in ↗Alternativestop 1% of July 2026

In plain words

This browser-based application displays a physically accurate black hole visualization using real relativistic physics. Created by an astrophysicist at Harvard's Black Hole Initiative, it allows users to view the black hole on any screen or place it directly into their physical space using AR or VR technology. The simulation demonstrates relativistic effects like light bending around the black hole and Doppler boosting, which alters brightness based on viewing angle. Users can zoom out to observe fast jets where these effects are most pronounced, and see markers indicating other viewers' positions in real time.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

We have a black hole at home — with actual relativistic physics, live in your browser. I'm Sasha (Alexander) Plavin, an astrophysicist at Harvard's Black Hole Initiative studying quasars and black hole environments. I work with raytracing/radiative transfer simulations professionally, and wanted to make one…

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