"If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow - something predicted by Einstein's general relativity that we've never seen before, explained chair of the EHT Science Council Heino Falcke of Radboud University, the Netherlands.
The presence of these objects affects their environment in extreme ways, warping spacetime and super-heating any surrounding material. "This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers."īlack holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with enormous masses but extremely compact sizes. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian. "We have taken the first picture of a black hole," said EHT project director Sheperd S. The EHT is the result of years of international collaboration, and offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe predicted by Einstein's general relativity during the centennial year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory. The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster.
This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.