This year, some great achievements were made in the field of science and one such thing was the first-ever image of a black hole and its event horizon. This enigmatic phenomenon has mesmerized and confounded scientists and researchers for decades and more work is being done to understand it better.
To capture the image, a huge telescope was made by connecting seven observatories located in different parts of the world, which helped in stitching together the image of a black hole. It proved the existence of event horizons and Einstein’s theory.
The image focused on a galaxy, M87 whose heavyweight and size made it easy to study. The gases moving around it were slower than those of others and its brightness remained consistent. For another black hole Sagittarius A, which is located in the center of the Milky Way, there is a need to develop a movie as it changes its appearance very quickly as compared to M87’s black hole.
EHT (Event Horizon Telescope) team member Katie Bouman, a data scientist at Caltech, says that it can be done by breaking up the observations made in a night into different parts and then joining them together. But due to the lack of enough information and data, it is extremely hard to do that.
So, the team is developing other methods that can eliminate the gaps and breaks and provide information on how the black hole moves forward in time. This can help to understand in-depth, the structure and workings of a black hole. The black hole of M87 may also get a movie. Astrophysicist Kazu Akiyama says, “Our observations provided good evidence that M87 is actually changing [within] the timescale of a week.” The changes may also disclose about its rotation and spinning of magnetized plasma.
A great discovery
In the earlier part of 2019, scientists revealed the first-ever direct image of one of the most mysterious things in the universe, the black hole, which was previously unseen and considered to be non-observable. The supermassive black hole seen in the image released is a halo of dust and gas tracing the outline of the accretion discs of the monster body in the core of Messier 87 galaxy, some 55 million light-years away from the earth. The phenomenon itself–a trapdoor from which nothing and absolutely nothing can escape– it is considered that black hole cannot be seen and only the shadowy edges of hot swirling clouds of gas, destined to be sucked in by the monster, are visible.
The breakthrough image was unveiled by a team of more than 200 scientists working on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio telescopes spread from locations in Spain, Chile, Antarctica and other parts of the world. These images will bring revolution in our understanding of one of the most mysterious things in the universe.
Also Read: EXTREME BLACK HOLE AGAIN VINDICATES EINSTEIN
