'Seeing the unseeable': Scientists reveal first photo of black hole

[webfact]

'Seeing the unseeable': Scientists reveal first photo of black hole

By Will Dunham

 

The first ever photo a black hole, taken using a global network of telescopes, conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, to gain insight into celestial objects with gravitational fields so strong no matter or light can escape, is shown in this handout photo released April 10, 2019. Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)/National Science Foundation/Handout via REUTERS

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Using a global network of telescopes to see "the unseeable," an international scientific team on Wednesday announced a milestone in astrophysics - the first-ever photo of a blackhole - in an achievement that validated a pillar of science put forward by Albert Einstein more than a century ago.

 

Black holes are monstrous celestial entities exerting gravitational fields so vicious that no matter or light can escape. The somewhat fuzzy photo of the black hole at the center of Messier 87, or M87, a massive galaxy residing in the center of the relatively nearby Virgo galaxy cluster, shows a glowing ring of red, yellow and white surrounding a dark center.

 

The research was conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, an international collaboration involving about 200 scientists begun in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole. The announcement was made in simultaneous news conferences in Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo.

 

The image was obtained using data collected in April 2017 from eight radio telescopes in six locations that essentially create a planet-sized observational dish.

 

The team's observations strongly validated the theory of general relativity proposed in 1915 by Einstein, the famed theoretical physicist, to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces.

 

"We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago," said astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Harvard & Smithsonian.

 

Black holes, phenomenally dense and coming in various sizes, are extraordinarily difficult to observe by their very nature. A black hole's event horizon is the point of no return beyond which anything - stars, planets, gas, dust and all forms of electromagnetic radiation - gets swallowed into oblivion.

 

The M87 black hole observed by the scientific team resides about 54 million light-years from Earth and boasts an almost-unimaginable mass of 6.5 billion times that of the sun. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

 

"This is a huge day in astrophysics," said U.S. National Science Foundation Director France Cordova. "We're seeing the unseeable."

"It did bring tears to my eyes," Cordova added.

 

The existence of black holes was first predicted in 1916. Most galaxies are thought to have a supermassive black hole at their center.

 

RING OF LIGHT

The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult. The scientists looked for a ring of light - super-heated disrupted matter and radiation circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon - around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is known as the black hole's shadow or silhouette.

 

The scientists said Einstein's theory correctly predicted that the shape of the shadow would be almost a perfect circle. With M87, it deviated from perfect circularity by less than 10 percent.

 

"We found literally the proverbial hole in the middle of this galaxy, and to me that is just stunning," said astrophysicist Dimitrios Psaltis of the University of Arizona, the EHT project scientist.

 

Einstein's theory also was validated by another major astrophysics achievement announced in 2016, the detection of gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime, arising from two black holes that smashed together.

 

"Science fiction has become science fact," University of Arizona astronomy professor Daniel Marrone said.

 

"The image has this exquisite beauty in its simplicity," said CfA astrophysicist Michael Johnson, the project's imaging coordinator. "It is just a fundamental statement about nature. It's a really moving demonstration of just what humanity is capable of."

 

The project has also targeted another black hole - Sagittarius A* - situated at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. Scientists expressed optimism about getting a picture of that one, perhaps within a year. Sagittarius A* possesses 4 million times the mass of our sun and is located 26,000 light-years from Earth.

 

Streaming away from M87 at nearly the speed of light is a humongous jet of subatomic particles, though that was not captured in the photo.

 

The researchers estimated that the observed shadow of M87 is roughly 2-1/2 times larger than the actual size of the black hole's boundary - the event horizon - due to light bending because of the extreme gravitational forces. They think the event horizon measures just under 25 billion miles (40 billion km) across, about three times the size of Pluto's orbit around the sun.

 

The project's researchers obtained the data using radio telescopes in the U.S. states of Arizona and Hawaii as well as in Mexico, Chile, Spain and Antarctica. Since then, telescopes in France and Greenland have been added to the global network.

 

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler, Paul Simao and Alistair Bell)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-04-11

[leeneeds]

I will be long dead when they figure out where the inside of the black hole goes, a worm hole to another universe would be incomprehensible to my small mind, 

still to be alive for the moon landing and hopefully the near future Mars landing,

truly amazing what humans can figure out in the cosmos, 

Thank you science.

[metisdead]

A troll post has been removed. 

[Tug]

Very cool and that Albert Einstein is sure standing the test of time!

[Geoffggi]

Could be an advert for dunking donuts ....

[losworld]

Einstein often gets more credit than he deserves. 

 

In 1916, Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein’s general relativity equations to determine the radius of an object whose escape velocity would exceed the speed of light. However, Einstein himself claimed that the possibility of a black hole was nothing more than a mathematical curiosity—an interesting prediction of general relativity, but not an accurate depiction of reality. Not until the mid-twentieth century, when neutron stars were discovered, did astrophysicists begin to seriously consider whether objects as compact as black holes could actually exist.

[owl sees all]

4 hours ago, leeneeds said:

I will be long dead when they figure out where the inside of the black hole goes, a worm hole to another universe would be incomprehensible to my small mind, 

still to be alive for the moon landing and hopefully the near future Mars landing,

truly amazing what humans can figure out in the cosmos, 

Thank you science.

The black hole leads to another dimension.

 

Mr G said to Neil Armstrong; "when will man walk on the surface of the sun?"

"People will never be able to walk on the sun; far too hot."

"Couldn't people go in the winter when it's colder."

 

Do you really think humans have walked on the moon? Mr Armstrong didn't even know about the sun.

[metisdead]

Some more troll posts have been removed. 

[blazes]

Humbling stuff.  Makes all our sub-lunary narratives (Trump, idiot Dems, May becoming October) seem just so much fluff....

[Odysseus123]

It's absolutely marvellous..but no different than seeing the glories of nature...

 

I remember being crammed into a school assembly hall to see the moon landing (?a thousand )

 

We thought we could do anything in those far off days..

[GreasyFingers]

If M87 was 54 million light years from earth, what has been observed was 54 million years ago. Black holes might be like dinosaurs, they existed once upon a time but not now.

[blazes]

51 minutes ago, car720 said:

Black holes in an empty space that gobble everything up and give nothing back.  Sounds like any one of my ex-wives. 

 

Two of mine...

[puipuitom]

6 hours ago, owl sees all said:

Do you really think humans have walked on the moon? 

In the middle of the Cold War... Soviet and other "radio dishes" following the Apollo, to, on the moon and back. You really think, one Soviet scientist would be silent if he/she discovered sometnig n was wrogn the the origin of that signal ? ?

Also remind the several instruments left on the moon, and still in use, for instance the laser reflector many students still use the measure the distance moon-earth… You think, all keep silent when that thing woudl not be there.. ? ? 

[Captain_Bob]

"The person that finds her gets to name her right?" 

 

 

[wpcoe]

Slightly off topic, but I just flew into New York yesterday (10 October 2019) and late in the evening was channel surfing on the TV and landed on the SCI (Science) channel with a documentary about black holes and they already had this news, including the photo.  According to the photo caption in the OP, the info was released that same day.  Talk about being up to date.  I'm used to science re-run documentaries from 5 to 10 years ago on cable TV channels in Thailand.

 

The OP article says:

 

17 hours ago, webfact said:

Black holes are monstrous celestial entities exerting gravitational fields so vicious that no matter or light can escape.

which is not technically correct, according to the program I watched.  It said black holes come in varying sizes down to possibly including (theoretical at this point) "micro black holes" which are too small to be seen by the human eye.

[steven100]

I always wondered .... if you shot an arrow into space and it had the power to just continue on forever how far would it go .....  how far is it to the edge  ???

[ExpatOilWorker]

1 hour ago, steven100 said:

I always wondered .... if you shot an arrow into space and it had the power to just continue on forever how far would it go .....  how far is it to the edge  ???

There is no edge. Since the universe was born from a singularity and all space in the universe is constantly expanding, thanks to dark energy, no matter where you start in the universe, it will always appear you are about 14 billion light years from the "edge" of the visible universe.

[ExpatOilWorker]

1 hour ago, wpcoe said:

 

 

The OP article says:

 

which is not technically correct, according to the program I watched.  It said black holes come in varying sizes down to possibly including (theoretical at this point) "micro black holes" which are too small to be seen by the human eye.

Really tiny black holes should evaporate due to Hawking radiation, but there is about 100 million black holes in the Milky Way alone.

[steven100]

1 minute ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

There is no edge. Since the universe was born from a singularity and all space in the universe is constantly expanding, thanks to dark energy, no matter where you start in the universe, it will always appear you are about 14 billion light years from the "edge" of the visible universe.

but ...  there has to be an edge or a wall or something ....

nothing goes forever, there's no such thing as forever .......  it just ain't possible, it's not a true meaning ... forever is like, never stops ..... so it is really hard to think the darkness never ever stops.

[sandrabbit]

 

40 minutes ago, steven100 said:

but ...  there has to be an edge or a wall or something ....

nothing goes forever, there's no such thing as forever .......  it just ain't possible, it's not a true meaning ... forever is like, never stops ..... so it is really hard to think the darkness never ever stops.

possibly it's like flying in a straight line around the earth, you come back on yourself. it's also proven now that it's an infinite universe expanding and so ultimately there won't be any star trek and being able to travel between galaxies. 

 

40 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Really tiny black holes should evaporate due to Hawking radiation, but there is about 100 million black holes in the Milky Way alone.

but from what can be observed it seems every galaxy is rotating around a supermassive black hole. I think black holes were first identified because they would emit x rays which don't have mass and I think the first one detected was Cygnus X1 ( a Rush song as well).

[ExpatOilWorker]

It is a big space out there.

 

 

[ballpoint]

1 hour ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

It is a big space out there.

 

 

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

 

"This is the Universe.  Big, isn't it?"

 

Douglas Adams.

[dick dasterdly]

12 hours ago, steven100 said:

but ...  there has to be an edge or a wall or something ....

nothing goes forever, there's no such thing as forever .......  it just ain't possible, it's not a true meaning ... forever is like, never stops ..... so it is really hard to think the darkness never ever stops.

As a child I used to hypnotise myself when going to bed and trying to get my head around the universe/time and the like (i.e. how can there be no beginning and no end).

 

I came to the conclusion that our brains aren't 'wired' to understand these things.

 

Having said this, I can recall reading an excellent book (unfortunately it was many decades ago, so I can't recall the name of the book), and also seeing an excellent TV programme that did make it more 'understandable'.

[ballpoint]

12 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

There is no edge. Since the universe was born from a singularity and all space in the universe is constantly expanding, thanks to dark energy, no matter where you start in the universe, it will always appear you are about 14 billion light years from the "edge" of the visible universe.

Correct that we can only ever see 13.8 billion years away, but, due to expansion, the observable universe has a 46.5 billion light year radius.  It's been calculated that, if the inflation theory is correct, its actual size is 10²³ x that, and growing.

 

As for the arrow question, the universe is expanding, and accelerating, at a faster rate than any arrow, (and, at some point, even light), can travel.  Therefore, even if there is an "edge", the arrow will never reach it.  If you prefer to think of the universe as equivalent to the 2D surface of a sphere, but in 3D, so you can travel in any direction and never find the edge, then the sphere is expanding at such a rate that its circumference is increasing at a faster speed than you can travel, so you will keep on going and never get back to your starting position.

 

Stephen Hawing had a good answer to "What's outside the universe?"

"What's north of the north pole?"

[ballpoint]

26 minutes ago, ballpoint said:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

 

"This is the Universe.  Big, isn't it?"

 

Douglas Adams.

Here's an illustration of that.  Go out at night, pick a blank bit of sky and hold your hand out at arms length away.  This is a photo from the Hubble telescope of a region of space that would be covered by your little finger nail. 

 

Every spot of light, except for one, is a galaxy.  Every galaxy, if it has a similar number of stars to the Milky Way, has 100 Billion stars (based on the calculated mass of the Milky Way, and how many solar masses that equates to).  No matter which direction the camera is pointed, it will see something similar.

 

I love these science threads!

 

 

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 10:08 AM, leeneeds said:

I will be long dead when they figure out where the inside of the black hole goes, a worm hole to another universe would be incomprehensible to my small mind, 

still to be alive for the moon landing and hopefully the near future Mars landing,

truly amazing what humans can figure out in the cosmos, 

Thank you science.

IMO the entire universe goes down a black hole and a new "big bang" starts the whole thing over again, for ever and ever and ever and ever …………………………………..

I wonder if there are some government wonks wondering how they can impose new taxes to stop a black hole sucking planet earth to oblivion?

[thaibeachlovers]

2 hours ago, ballpoint said:

Correct that we can only ever see 13.8 billion years away, but, due to expansion, the observable universe has a 46.5 billion light year radius.  It's been calculated that, if the inflation theory is correct, its actual size is 10²³ x that, and growing.

 

As for the arrow question, the universe is expanding, and accelerating, at a faster rate than any arrow, (and, at some point, even light), can travel.  Therefore, even if there is an "edge", the arrow will never reach it.  If you prefer to think of the universe as equivalent to the 2D surface of a sphere, but in 3D, so you can travel in any direction and never find the edge, then the sphere is expanding at such a rate that its circumference is increasing at a faster speed than you can travel, so you will keep on going and never get back to your starting position.

 

Stephen Hawing had a good answer to "What's outside the universe?"

"What's north of the north pole?"

Sooo, if the universe is expanding, it must have originated at a single point. The question then, is what created the big bang, and how was there a load of dark matter in the nothingness.

If it wasn't created, where did it come from?

Another question is, if our universe is like an expanding ball, are there other expanding universes and will our expanding universe collide with other expanding universes? 

 

 

It's been calculated that, if the inflation theory is correct, its actual size is 10²³ x that, and growing.

Surely then, some planets must exist at the "edge" of the universe, so if one was on one of those planets, one could look outwards and see no stars at all?

[ExpatOilWorker]

19 hours ago, sandrabbit said:

 

possibly it's like flying in a straight line around the earth, you come back on yourself. it's also proven now that it's an infinite universe expanding and so ultimately there won't be any star trek and being able to travel between galaxies. 

 

but from what can be observed it seems every galaxy is rotating around a supermassive black hole. I think black holes were first identified because they would emit x rays which don't have mass and I think the first one detected was Cygnus X1 ( a Rush song as well).

The circular Universe. Certain people in Thailand are actually world leaders in this particular field of science; they are so far behind the curve, it appears they are in front.

[Prissana Pescud]

20 hours ago, steven100 said:

but ...  there has to be an edge or a wall or something ....

nothing goes forever, there's no such thing as forever .......  it just ain't possible, it's not a true meaning ... forever is like, never stops ..... so it is really hard to think the darkness never ever stops.

I was always told that an infinite number is to think the biggest number you know and add one. lol

Infinite space can not ever be reached. It is expanding so fast and as such has no edge. 

Apparently, it may all just fade away into infinity or collapse back on itself.

No one knows. 

But making statements that are not supported by physics such as "there is no such thing as forever"

marks the finite belief you have and other intellects that are those that got science where it is today.

One book attempts to explain in laymans terms is Bill Bryson  "A short history of nearly everything"

[WeekendRaider]

a picture of a 50 million year old.... whatever. sounds exciting as well as movies that depict we and aliens can travel at huge multiples of the speed of light. but... there are only 4 terrestrial planets.... in the at all ever knowable universe, and only 2 are large cored and have greenhouse atmospheres. with the greenhouse part explaining many things, such as why we left the trees 8 million years ago and where all of our food and air comes from, stuff like that. black holes are not even interesting. and green house gases also explain some other stuff. but a black hole... wow!!!