Will we actually see the event horizon of a black hole next week?

The European Southern Observatory has announced that next week, astronomers are preparing to make a major announcement regarding the Horizon telescope by Event on the supermassive black hole Sagitarius A *, which is expected to publish the very first image of the event horizon of a black hole.

Capture the event horizon?

In April 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) attempted to capture an image of the events horizon of the supermassive black hole Sagitarius A * (Sgr A *) located in the middle of our galaxy, surrounded by a Thick shroud of dust and gas. .

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To accomplish this feat, scientists had to essentially install a network of radio telescopes around the world to coordinate their efforts to create a virtual radio telescope with a width of 300,000 km.

Using so-called very long base interferometry (VLBI), EHT can increase the resolution of the radio telescope network once they are directed to the same target, in this case Sgr A *.

The telescopes recorded data for several days and collected 1,000,000 Gb of data from telescopes as far away as Antarctica, to the point that it was faster to send the hard drives in treatment laboratories in the United States and Germany than to try to download them. via an Internet connection.

The first "revolutionary" result of this work will be finally announced on April 10 at 1:00 pm UTC, at 9:00 am EST, while the event itself will be broadcast live.

What the Horizon telescope event saw from Sagitarius A * Already

The preliminary results of the ISE were published in an article [PDF] in The astrophysical journal earlier this year revealed some surprising new information about Sgr A *. Sgr A * has about 4 million solar masses and is surrounded by thick layers of gas and dust from space that would normally disperse any radiation coming from the other side, strongly deforming the image and obscuring our previous efforts to exceed it .

Now, using VLBI, the researchers are able to correct the interstellar scattering produced by the thick wall of material surrounding the supermassive black hole and provide a clear picture of the immediate area around Sgr A *. Preliminary images of the immediate area around Sgr A * showed a very symmetrical morphology for the object and a surprisingly small source of radio waves and other radiation from the object.

When a star or other material is consumed by a black hole, it is first torn by the scanning forces of incredible gravity around the event horizon. The energy generated by this material brewing actually makes that a large part of the material is not actually consumed but is thrown into space by very narrow jets at a speed close to that of the light of the poles of the black hole.

This process, violent and very high energy, produces many radio waves that follow the path of the jets. In the case of Sgr A *, the source of radiation from the object is actually quite small, suggesting one of two possibilities.

"This may indicate that the radio show is produced in an infiltrating gas disk rather than by a radio stream," said Sara Issaoun, PhD candidate at the University of Nijmegen, Oslo, and senior author of the article. this would make Sagittarius A * an exception to other radio-transmitting black holes. "

"The alternative," she adds, "could be that the radio jet almost points to us."

We will have to wait until next week to find the answer to this question, but no matter what is revealed, it will probably be one of the most significant events in the history of science.