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Posted on 24 Apr 2019
Peter L. Galison, professor of history of science at Harvard, collaborator of the Horizon Event Telescope (EHT), said the scientists had proposed theoretical arguments in favor of black holes as early as 1916. This is however that in the 1970s that researchers supported the theory by observing: extremely dense areas of matter. Scientists announced in 2016 to have detected, for the first time, gravitational waves. In the opinion of many, they had been caused by the merging of black holes and were therefore proof of their existence.
This image marks the culmination of years of work by a team of 200 scientists from 59 institutes in 18 countries. The project, which also included scientists from the Harvard Black Hole Institute, is based on data collected from eight telescopes between Hawaii and the South Pole. To build this image numerically, EHT's team of astronomers created the equivalent of a planet-sized lens by integrating data from all the telescopes in the project, 4,000 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope.
Scientists had long struggled to capture the photograph of a black hole – a region of space with a gravitational attraction so strong that even light could escape it. The image revealed Wednesday is composed of a bright orange ring on a black background.
This particular elliptical galaxy, M87, has a jet that emanates from the vicinity of the black hole, said Abraham "Avi" Loeb, founding director of the Black Hole Initiative and chairman of the Harvard astronomy department, of the galaxy in which the hole was found. "What you see, is the shadow of the black hole on the bottom of the hot gas emission at the base of the jet."
Astronomers have speculated that the black hole M87 would have reached its gigantic size by merging with several other black holes. The M87 is the largest and most massive galaxy in the near universe. It is thought that it was formed by the fusion of a hundred or so smaller galaxies. The large size and relative proximity of the black hole in the M87 has led astronomers to think it might be the first black hole they could actually "see".
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"Make sure that this system consists of at least eight to ten different telescopes, all completely different, working together with receivers and data logging systems, and especially clocks – atomic clocks – or everything, if you want to think about it, in synchronism. was an incredible technical feat, "said Jonathon E. Grindlay, professor of astronomy at Harvard.
He stated that he did not think that it would have been possible to generate this image a decade ago, given the sophisticated technology needed to handle the five petabytes of data – the equivalent of 5 million gigabytes – involved in creating the image.
Galison said that he thought the unveiled image would provide more convincing evidence of the existence of black holes for the public than some of the more technical data. "It's amazing to be able to say, it's the black hole, the size of our solar system, and its size, and its mass of six and a half billion suns," he said.
Andrew E. Strominger, 1977, professor of physics and deputy director of theory at the Black Hole Institute, said that he viewed the image as the culmination of decades of research.
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"[The black hole] was an object that must have existed 100 years ago, "he said. "And the fact that it took us a hundred years to get a clear picture of them is not a measure of how slow and slow scientists are. It is a measure of the magnitude of the problem and the precision and depth with which we understand the universe around us. It's something I thought about all my scientific life, and now I've seen it, "he added.
Although Loeb stated that the image was certainly historical, it largely corroborated his team's earlier predictions of how to define a black hole if digitally rendered. "So the surprising result is that there is nothing surprising," Loeb said.
This first image has generated such enthusiasm among the public because black holes are a cultural phenomenon imbued with metaphor and mythology, according to Galison. "There is something paradoxical, intriguing, scary and stimulating to the imagination about black holes," he said.
Harvard scientists say they believe new discoveries are still on the horizon. "There are real questions about destruction, about what's inside a black hole, and so on, about the fact that we could reach the very edge – or even probe – with this Event Horizon telescope, "said Strominger.
The Daily Galaxy via Harvard Crimson and EHT
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