Heena Sharma Blog

Black holes are long-time superstars of science fiction. But their Hollywood fame is a little strange given that no-one has ever actually seen one – at least, until now. If you needed to see to believe, then thank the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which has just produced the first ever direct image of a black hole . This amazing feat required global collaboration to turn the Earth into one giant telescope and image an object thousands of trillions of kilometres away. As stunning and ground-breaking as it is, the EHT project is not just about taking on a challenge. It’s an unprecedented test of whether Einstein’s ideas about the very nature of space and time hold up in extreme circumstances, and looks closer than ever before at the role of black holes in the universe. A black hole is a region of space whose mass is so large and dense that not even light can escape its gravitational attraction. Against the black backdrop of the inky beyond, capturing one is a near impossible ta...

Using a global network of telescopes to see “the unseeable,” an international scientific team on Wednesday announced a milestone in astrophysics - the first-ever photo of a black hole - in an achievement that validated a pillar of science put forward by Albert Einstein more than a century ago. Black holes are monstrous celestial entities exerting gravitational fields so vicious that no matter or light can escape. The somewhat fuzzy photo of the black hole at the center of Messier 87, or M87, a massive galaxy residing in the center of the relatively nearby Virgo galaxy cluster, shows a glowing ring of red, yellow and white surrounding a dark center. The research was conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, an international collaboration involving about 200 scientists begun in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole. The announcement was made in simultaneous news conferences in Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and...