First black hole photographed by humanity baptized with the official name



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The first black hole photographed by humanity that caught the world's attention this week was officially dubbed "Powehi".

The name comes from the University of Hawaii and the language teacher Larry Kimura, according to a school press release. For those who wonder why this honor went to the University of Hawaii, the state houses the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the submillimeter network, both of which are part of the Event Horizon Telescope network.

Related: Check out the very first picture of a black hole captured by astronomers

"Powehi, which means" dark source embellished with endless creation, "is a name taken from Kumulipo, the primordial song describing the creation of the Hawaiian universe," reads the release of the university.

"The po, dark and deep source of endless creation, is an underlined and repeated concept in the Kumulipo, while wehi, or wehiwehi, honored with embellishments, is one of the many descriptions po in the song. "

Kimura added that it is "great to be able, as Hawaiians today, to be able to bridge the gap that separates its long-standing traditional identity to that" precious "one. legacy for our lives today. "

Related: An alumnus of the University of Michigan helps to discover the first image of a black hole

NASA reported Wednesday (April 10th) that scientists had obtained an image of the black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy, highlighted by a hot gas emission swirling around it under the influence of a high gravity near its horizon of events.

The image shows "the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87, an elliptical galaxy located some 55 million light-years from Earth.

NASA defines a black hole as "an extremely dense object, from which no light can escape". Everything that passes its point of no return will be consumed, "never come back", while the "unimaginably strong gravity" of the black hole takes root. .

"This is an incredible achievement from the Event Horizons Telescope (EHT) team," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, in a press release. "Years ago we thought we had to build a very large space telescope to image a black hole.

"By operating radio telescopes around the world together as a single instrument, the EHT team has achieved this, decades in advance."

The Horizon Event Telescope is defined as a "global network of eight ground-based radio telescopes" that are assembled as part of an international collaboration. It was designed for the purpose of capturing images of a black hole.

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