First real image of black hole unveiled
- 5 years ago
The first ever photo of a black hole has been unveiled by scientists in Chile.
For more on this and other news around the world, let's turn to Hong Yoo…
Considering this black hole is millions of light years away,... how were they able to capture the image?
Well Mark, an international scientific team used a global network of telescopes to see the black hole, an un-seeable cosmic mystery that has never been visualized before because its gravitational fields are so strong that no matter or light can escape.
The research was conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope project that begun in 2012 to try to observe the immediate environment of a black hole using a global network of Earth based telescopes.
Take a listen to what the project director said when they released the photo:
"We now know that a black hole that weighs 6.5 billion times what our sun does exists in the center of M87. And this is the strongest evidence we have to date for the existence of black holes. And it is also consistent - the shape of this shadow - to the precision of our measurements with Einstein's predictions."
More than 200 researchers participated to combine the power of eight radio telescopes around the world using Very-Long-Baseline-Interferometry which creates a virtual telescope around the same size as the Earth itself.
Astrologists say they now have an entirely new way of studying the general relativity of black holes and it's just the beginning of more great discoveries to come.
For more on this and other news around the world, let's turn to Hong Yoo…
Considering this black hole is millions of light years away,... how were they able to capture the image?
Well Mark, an international scientific team used a global network of telescopes to see the black hole, an un-seeable cosmic mystery that has never been visualized before because its gravitational fields are so strong that no matter or light can escape.
The research was conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope project that begun in 2012 to try to observe the immediate environment of a black hole using a global network of Earth based telescopes.
Take a listen to what the project director said when they released the photo:
"We now know that a black hole that weighs 6.5 billion times what our sun does exists in the center of M87. And this is the strongest evidence we have to date for the existence of black holes. And it is also consistent - the shape of this shadow - to the precision of our measurements with Einstein's predictions."
More than 200 researchers participated to combine the power of eight radio telescopes around the world using Very-Long-Baseline-Interferometry which creates a virtual telescope around the same size as the Earth itself.
Astrologists say they now have an entirely new way of studying the general relativity of black holes and it's just the beginning of more great discoveries to come.