An international scientific team has unveiled a landmark achievement in astrophysics: the first true image of a black hole.
© Image | Google
Chinese space experts hailed the event as a milestone and said it is the most direct evidence of the existence of the black hole.
The EHT is a consortium of more than 200 scientists that has been in the works for about two decades.
© Image | Google
It’s a truly international endeavor; funding over the years has come from the U.S. National Science Foundation and many other organizations in countries around the world.
Correlating and calibrating the data was tricky. And the team took great care with this work, given the momentous nature of the find.
The EHT team has used this megascope to study the two supermassive black holes for two weeklong stretches to date — once in April 2017 and again the following year. The new imagery comes from the first observing run.
© Image | Google
For one thing, each night of observing generated about 1 petabyte of data, resulting in such a haul that the team has to move its information from place to place the old-fashioned way.
The EHT project has two main goals, Psaltis said:
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to image an event horizon for the first time ever;
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to help determine if Einstein’s theory of general relativity needs any revisions.
© Image | Google
The new results should also help scientists get a better handle on black holes, he and other researchers said.
The contributions in this arena could be significant.
This image, which gave the masses a glimpse of our planet as it really is — a lonely outpost of life in an infinite sea of darkness — is widely credited with helping to spur the environmental movement.
Seeing a picture of the black hole or its silhouette, anyway — “is the stuff of science fiction,” Harrison said. And we’ve seen just the project’s first few photos, she added: “They’re only going to get better.”
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SOURCE |TIME, The Guardian, Global Times
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