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Brussels / Bonn – For the first time, astronomers managed to record a black hole.
The image of the "Event Horizon" telescope network, which shows a dark point in front of a fuzzy light ring, was presented simultaneously at six press conferences worldwide.
Until now, there were only illustrations of black holes. The recorded specimen is the extremely mbadive black hole located at the center of the 87 Messier galaxy, 55 million light-years away.
In order to be able to identify enough details at this gigantic distance, the researchers compiled eight individual observatories on four continents to form a super-telescope. "The results give us for the first time a clear vision of a supermbadive black hole," said Anton Zensus, director of the Bonn Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy. There, the radio telescope data involved were combined.
Photo gallery
Because of their extreme mbad, black holes can not even escape the light and are therefore virtually invisible. However, before entering a black hole, the material heats up extremely, then shines brightly, as shown by this characteristic red glow in the photo taken now.
This photo confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity in the most extreme conditions of the universe, said Karl Schuster, director of the Institute of Radioastronomy in the Millimeter Range (IRAM) , involved in the campaign of observation.
Around a black hole, a disc of gas and dust forms on which a new material swirls in the spatio-temporal esophagus. This material rotates faster and faster, becoming extremely hot because of friction and shining. The telescopes photographed the black hole in front of this so-called accretion disk, "like a black cat on a white couch," explained the company Max Planck.
With the observations also presented in the journal Astrophysical Journal, researchers hope to answer many basic questions, including: Do black holes look expected? "To be honest, we were surprised at how much the observed dark spot is the structure predicted by our computer simulations," says Zensus.
The experimental breakthrough opens the door to a host of new observations that could reveal unknown details of cosmic gravity traps, Schuster said. "In the future, we also want to examine the dynamics of vortexed material, basically you want to make a film of it."
information
Black holes are places of extremes. The mbad is so compressed in them that nothing escapes them. Even the light does not penetrate to the outside. Black holes are virtually invisible – which gave them their name.
How can we observe black holes? Although they themselves are invisible, they betray themselves as to the matter that they ingest. Due to its extremely strong acceleration, the material falling into a black hole heats up to millions of degrees Celsius, then shines brightly. This characteristic glow makes it possible to visualize the telescopes.
Black holes are probably from almost every size of the cosmos – from the simple mbad of our sun to billions of solar mbades. They can, for example, come from calcined giant stars that, at the end of their existence, collapse under their own gravity into a black hole. The minimum mbad that a star must have is not clearly understood by astrophysicists.
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