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Scientists who captured the very first images of a black hole have just received a great reward for their epic feat.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team, which earlier this year has unveiled photos of the supermassive black hole in the heart of the M87 galaxy, won the annual $ 3 million Breakthrough Fundamental Physics award, announced today the Breakthrough Prize (September 5).
"It is an incredible feat for us, and being recognized in this way brings us back to the truth – how does it affect others," said Sheperd Doeleman, director of the EDH, based at the University of Toronto. Harvard University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center.
Video: This is our 1st real photo of a black hole
Related: First historical images of a black hole show: Einstein was right (again)
The EHT project, which has been in preparation for two decades, connects eight radio telescopes in Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Antarctica and elsewhere in the world to form a virtual instrument the size of the Earth. Doeleman and colleagues use this megascope to watch two supermassive black holes: the M87 behemoth, which houses about 6.5 billion times more mass than the Earth's sun, and the supermassive black hole in the heart of our world Milky Way. This latter object, known as Sagittarius A *, is compared to M87, weighing only 4.3 million solar masses.
By the way, Sagittarius A * is about 26,000 light-years from Earth and the black hole of the M87 is 53.5 million light-years away from us.
The goal is to draw the contours of these two black holes in image the event horizon of each, the famous "point of no return" beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape. (It's impossible to photograph inside a black hole unless you're there yourself.)
On April 10, the EHT collaboration announced that it had managed to photograph the M87 black hole, thus revealing its achievement in a series of press conferences and six articles published in scientific journals.
EHT images have opened an entirely new field of investigation, allowing researchers to probe previously inaccessible exotic domains. And the photos also captivated the laity; The images made headlines around the world and appeared above the fold, on the front pages of almost every major newspaper.
This project has "resonated beyond science because it was ambitious," Doeleman told Space.com.
"We set our goals, and we answered the most important questions: ask the question of what is the nature of a black hole.How does it work?" he added. "And then we said," Can we imagine to answer these questions? "And we just did not take no for an answer."
Doeleman and his team are far from being finished. They are still working on the image of Sagittarius A *, for example, which would give scientists a glimpse of the very different type of supermassive black hole.
The collaboration also plans to integrate more radio dishes in the EHT network in the near future, improving vision of the megascope. With about 20 components, said Doeleman, EHT should be able to capture supermassive black hole films, which would better understand the behavior of these objects over time.
These new additions will be ground-based instruments in the short term. But researchers would like the network to eventually have space antennas. Items out of the Earth would greatly increase the power and potential of the ISE, said the team members.
"We only saw the beginning," Doeleman said.
It will share the $ 3 million breakthrough price equally with the other 346 members of the EHT team whose names appear on one or more of the six articles published on April 10. Scientists will be honored on Nov. 3 at NASA's Ames 2020 Breakthrough Award Ceremony. Silicon Valley Research Center.
The ceremony will also honor the recipients of the innovative $ 3 million Life Science (four awards this year) and Mathematics (one prize) annual award, as well as recipients of the US $ 3 million Special Award in Basic Physics .
This last prize goes to Sergio Ferrara, Daniel Freedman and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen for the development of the very influential Supergravity theory.
The groundbreaking science and math award was created in 2012 by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Yuri and Julia Milner. The $ 3 million prize is the richest in science. In comparison, each 2018 Nobel Prize is equivalent to 9 million Swedish kronor, or about $ 1 million at current exchange rates.
The Breakthrough Award also recognizes early career researchers with $ 100,000 New Horizons awards. Six awards of this type were won this year, including three in physics and mathematics. You can read about all the winners of this year here: https://breakthroughprize.org/News/54
Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life, "Over there"(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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