This week, scientists will photograph a black hole for the first time



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Last callLast Call is Takeout's online watering hole where you can chat, share recipes and use the comments section as an open thread. Here is what we read / watched / listened to at the office today.

Please join me for taking a break from the food to admire the vastness of our universe. The news that astronomers will photograph Wednesday morning a black hole for the first time is not just a science story. Yes, it's science, radio telescopes and Einstein's equations, but it's also a moment for all of us to take a break and let our mouths open. We humans are going to see a black hole for the first time.

It's so good. By The New York TimesAstronomers working with the Event Horizon telescope are expected to release the first images of a black hole that we have seen on Wednesday at 9:00 am ET. Questions arise as to whether the black holes are rotating, what shape they have and if they will spit out "fireworks energy lights". One of the black holes to be photographed is in the center of our own galaxy, The Milky. Way, and has a mass equivalent to that of 4.1 million suns. There is no way to not find this amazing in a deep and cosmic way.

Even failed scientists can not contain their emotions.

"Yes, I'm really excited to see this picture!" Said Daniel Holz, a professor and researcher in astrophysics and cosmology at the University of Chicago. Time by email. "It's not really rational, because I know that mathematics works and the theory has been tested thoroughly. But it would still be an image of the real thing, closely and personally. It's super cool. "

This is, to quote the astrophysicist doctorate, super cool.

Journalist Dennis Overbye, writing for the Time, summarizes both the scientific and philosophical milestones that Wednesday's images should offer in one of the most beautiful paragraphs I've read recently: "In such shadows are dying the dreams of physicists, the time is getting ends, space-time, matter and light disappear in the primordial. they spring from nothing and the ghosts of Einstein and Hawking mingle with history and memory. For the first time, astronomers will look into the pipes of eternity. "

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