Astronomers present the first shot of a black hole in space – human and German

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 ring of light, was presented Wednesday at six press conferences around the world.

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.

Eight telescopes on four continents

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.

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.

Confirmation for Einstein

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.

A breakthrough

The observations are also presented in the journal Astrophysical Journal, the 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 explore the dynamics of incoming material – basically, you want to make a film of it."

What's a black hole?

Black holes are among the predictions of general relativity established by Albert Einstein about a century ago. In them, the mbad of billions of suns is compressed to a point. Due to the immense gravitation, even the light can escape from the direct environment, hence its name. Black holes, for example, can occur when burned giant stars collapse under their own weight.

A black hole itself is also invisible to the best telescopes. Drawings based on general relativity often show a black circle with a brilliant ring. The inside of this ring marks the horizon of events, in English "event horizon", which gave its name to the project. There is the place around a black hole through which light can escape. You only photograph the bright ring around the black hole.

Hot accretion disk

Many black holes start to change the subject. But this question does not fall directly into the black hole. Instead, it accumulates on a spinning disk faster and faster, much like the water from a hot tub flows out of the tub. In this so-called accretion disc, the material heats up to millions of degrees by mutual friction and brightens brightly before disappearing forever into the gravity monster's throat.

This graph represents a star swallowed by a black hole, leaving behind a red X-ray tail. (Mr.Weiss / NASA / Chandra / AP / dpa X-ray Observatory)

Although black holes have an unimaginable mbad, they are very small. For example, a black hole with the mbad of our earth would be as big as a cherry. In addition, the black holes are very far apart: the center of the Milky Way is located at 26,000 light-years, M87 at 55 million light-years away. A light year is the distance traveled by light in a year. And these two candidates still have the greatest horizons of events seen from Earth. However, you can not build a telescope that can detect details of the event horizon at this distance.

Eight telescopes on four continents

The researchers combined eight radio telescopes on four continents. This creates a virtual supertelescope whose diameter is as large as the earth. This virtual event, Horizon Telescope, gives a detail detail that could be used to read a Berlin newspaper in New York.

The NASA photo of November 30, 2013 shows the spiral galaxy M81 with a supermbadive black hole. NASA Esa Jpl Caltech / NASA / dpa

Radio waves are like the electromagnetic waves of visible light, they only have a much longer wavelength. Their advantage is that they are not so swallowed by gases and dust. Black holes are usually surrounded by large amounts of gas and dust, so the event horizon can only be located with radio waves.

Many questions about black holes are not yet clear, about the way the material swirls exactly in the throat. Or why, in some black holes, some of this material is thrown into a focused beam before reaching the event horizon. Such knowledge also affects the image that astrophysicists currently have of our universe. (AP)