By Evelyn Dan Epelle
WASHINGTON – How epic it is to have Scientists render the first direct image of a black hole. Situated at the center of the largest galaxy known to man, the Messier 87 is approximately 54 million light-years away.
Revealed at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, and viewed in six other cities around the world over a news conference, the shadow-like image of the black hole includes shiny glitters of matter that envelops it. The image shows the Event Horizon i.e the ‘point of no return’ after which nothing that goes in ever escapes due to the extreme level of gravity.
Thanks to the joint effort of 10 radio telescopes spread across the planet, the Event Horizon Telescope which simulates similarly to a single receiver that is tuned to high-frequency radio waves, captured the center of the black hole where the curvature of time and space permanently diminishes.
All of these features are in alignment with the predictions made by everyone’s favorite scientist, Albert Einstein, whose general Theory of Relativity defines a ‘doughnut-shaped’ black hole. The reveal tosses away doubts of other theorists who have criticized Einstein’s work for over 100 years.
Teams of EHT Astronomers in four continents endured terrible weather conditions and climbed high enough to evade the Earth’s atmosphere, in order to align perfectly to observe the two targeted black holes located in the center of the Milky Way and in M87.
“It hits that human explorer spirit. We got another look into the unknown,” says Feryal Orel, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona and member of the science council for the EHT.
In the end, millions of people all over the world are now informed by Science against the high level of doubt that surrounded the predicted existence of a black hole.
