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Black Hole Picture Captured For First Time in Space 'Breakthrough' (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the breakthrough dept.

Astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe's most enigmatic objects. From a report: The picture shows a halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole, at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55 million light years from Earth. The black hole itself -- a cosmic trapdoor from which neither light nor matter can escape -- is unseeable. But the latest observations take astronomers right to its threshold for the first time, illuminating the event horizon beyond which all known physical laws collapse.

The breakthrough image was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Chile, in an effort involving more than 200 scientists. Sheperd Doeleman, Event Horizon Telescope Director and Harvard University senior research fellow said: "Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe. We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have taken a picture of a black hole." The image gives the first direct glimpse of a black hole's accretion disk, a fuzzy doughnut-shaped ring of gas and dust that steadily "feeds" the monster within. A video stream of the press conference.

4 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Today I learned... by Thelasko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There is a 10 meter telescope at the South Pole that has been in operation since 2007.

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    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    1. Re:Today I learned... by apoc.famine · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The earth-moon L4 and L5 points would be better. That would give us an effective dish size a bit larger than the earth-moon distance, and the scopes could be pointed in more directions. Probably easier to get a scope to as well, as landing is never a trivial endeavor.

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  2. How to interpret the image by Speare · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Veritasium did an excellent summary of how to understand and interpret what you're seeing in the image. Before the image was actually posted, he drew what all the models were anticipating, and you can see a lot of the features he spoke about in the actual image.

    YouTube

    When I saw the movie Interstellar, their image of a black hole seemed really hokey, but there's a reason for the way they drew it and it seems like parts of their conceptualization holds up fairly well.

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  3. Re:Picture of stuff that may be around a black hol by Dragonslicer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it really a picture of a black hole, or is it just a picture of the stuff surrounding something purported to be a black hole?

    If you take a picture of a hole in the ground, is it really a picture of the hole, or just a picture of the stuff surrounding the hole? Do you routinely question the existence of holes in the ground?