I bet you didn't know that, until today, black holes have only been a topic of astrophysical theory. That theory being a dead star, so massive and dense already, can "collect" so much space junk and become super-massive to a point where its density & gravity are so great even light photons cannot escape its pull. Astrophysicists further theorized that all galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their center, which is what dictates the structure of the enormous disk of matter surrounding it (often filled with billions of stars). A black hole has never been imaged because, you know, it's black. Oh, and they are really fukcing far away; the nearest having thought to be about 5 million light years out at the center of our own Milky Way. So to see something like this, with its miniscule footprint in the sky, you'd need a telescope about the size of Earth.
200 brilliant scientists, collectively the Event Horizon* team, figured out a way to do it, and today they released the first ever image of a black hole. They did so by coordinating to the millionth of a second 8 radio-telescopes at various points on the globe and then started staring at far away galaxies. One finally came up gold, turning exactly the way they needed it to...54 million light years away. This is truly an incredible day of human achievement. You may be wondering why they didn't just look for the one in our own galaxy since it's 1,000x closer. Well, it's also 1,000x smaller, doesn't spin as fast (i.e. consumes less matter), and they'd have to peer through all the nearby gasses and cosmic dust since we're in the same 'hood. However, that one is up next.
Albert Einstein has again been proven correct! In his theory of relativity and its impact on the space-time continuum, he predicted that black holes exist and that their gravity is so strong it, in fact, warps the fabric of space & time (and therefore light) around it. Einstein said gravity was indeed the strongest force in the universe. So strong, in fact, it could bend space & time and even stop photons which are moving at the speed of light. He nailed it.
This image is from the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87). It is 54 million light years from Earth. The mass of this black hole is 6,500,000,000 times the size of our sun.
*The Event Horizon is the orbital distance from a black hole where gravity becomes so strong even light cannot escape it. It is at the edge of the Event Horizon where light rays bend towards the black hole, reaching their point of no return.
Explanation of what you're looking at here in a quick video:
200 brilliant scientists, collectively the Event Horizon* team, figured out a way to do it, and today they released the first ever image of a black hole. They did so by coordinating to the millionth of a second 8 radio-telescopes at various points on the globe and then started staring at far away galaxies. One finally came up gold, turning exactly the way they needed it to...54 million light years away. This is truly an incredible day of human achievement. You may be wondering why they didn't just look for the one in our own galaxy since it's 1,000x closer. Well, it's also 1,000x smaller, doesn't spin as fast (i.e. consumes less matter), and they'd have to peer through all the nearby gasses and cosmic dust since we're in the same 'hood. However, that one is up next.
Albert Einstein has again been proven correct! In his theory of relativity and its impact on the space-time continuum, he predicted that black holes exist and that their gravity is so strong it, in fact, warps the fabric of space & time (and therefore light) around it. Einstein said gravity was indeed the strongest force in the universe. So strong, in fact, it could bend space & time and even stop photons which are moving at the speed of light. He nailed it.
This image is from the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87). It is 54 million light years from Earth. The mass of this black hole is 6,500,000,000 times the size of our sun.
*The Event Horizon is the orbital distance from a black hole where gravity becomes so strong even light cannot escape it. It is at the edge of the Event Horizon where light rays bend towards the black hole, reaching their point of no return.
Explanation of what you're looking at here in a quick video:
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