The image - revealed during a Wednesday (April 10) morning press conference in Washington D.C., per The New York Times - depicts luminous gas swirling around a supermassive black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, within the constellation Virgo, some 55 million light-years away.
Scientists have created history by capturing the first-ever image of a black hole event horizon, which holds the key to one of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos.
This effectively creates a virtual telescope around the same size as the Earth itself.
Black holes are monstrous celestial entities exerting gravitational fields so vicious that no matter or light can escape.
The project cost $50 million to $60 million, with $28 million of that coming from the National Science Foundation.
The unveiling at the nation's capital took place nearly exactly a century after Albert Einstein became famous for his theory of general relativity, which led to a new conception of the cosmos where space-time could bend, expand, or even disappear into a black hole forever.
A simulated illustration of a black hole shows the turbulent plasma in the extreme environment around a supermassive black hole. "Something I've been working on for many, many years, trying to build a physical model of a black hole environment and predictions, and the opportunity to study the hearts of black holes is fantastic".
Ranked Kupcho leads by one at Augusta National Women's Amateur
Fassi, who started one shot behind, took her first lead with a pitch over the mounds to 2 feet for birdie on the par-5 eighth. Jennifer Kupcho of Wake Forest won the Amateur when she shot 5-under on Saturday to finish 10 strokes ahead of Harford.
That mass, by the way, is 6.5 billion times that of Earth's sun.
The project may help scientists struggling to marry together two apparently incompatible pillars of physics: Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics.
"What we're seeing is light from the stuff that's falling into the black hole", said Gammie, a member of the Event Horizon Telescope Science Council. And today, they shared their impressive image with the world.
Black hole has always been a subject of human curiosity.
Broderick said that the image proves that supermassive black holes are "analogous in important ways" to smaller black holes, which are better understood by scientists.
"What we saw were the edges of the black hole".
All the previous images of the black hole shared by NASA and other scientific bodies were mere illustrations. That is right despite black holes being absolutely crucial to our understanding of the way the solar system has formed humans have never actually laid eyes on one of these regions of spacetime with strong gravitational effects.
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