Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole to Have its Picture Taken

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Black holes have long been theorized, ever since Einstein's Theory of General Relativity predicted them over 100 years ago. However, they have never been seen and could only be detected by indirect means such as the motion of stars and the intense radiation given off by infalling gas and dust. This matter is typically heated to millions or even billions of degrees due to the friction caused by it's compression as it swirls down into the black hole, hence the radiation given off is very intense indeed and can easily be detected by telescopes on Earth, although crucially, not imaged.



In fact, by definition, black holes cannot be seen, since nothing can escape them, not even light. However, their outline can be seen against a background of glowing matter, such as a hot accretion disc orbiting around them. The outline, also called the shadow is actually the event horizon, the point at which gravity is so strong that the escape velocity exceeds that of light, which is why a black hole is black and nothing, not even light, can escape it.

Viewing the shadow of any black hole has been out of the reach of astronomers so far, because the technology has been too primitive. Even five years ago, the suggestion of directly seeing the shadow would have been out of the question. However, technology has moved on and the Milky Way's black hole has the largest apparent size of any black hole, as seen from Earth, which is deemed to be just large enough to be photographed directly with a very special telescope.

In fact, a single telescope of a suitable size would be about the size of our planet, which isn't possible to build. Therefore, the Event Horizon Telescope project has been founded, which will use 50 radio telescopes dotted around the globe, which will work together to make a virtual telescope the size of the Earth. Doing this, will give sufficient resolution to finally see the black hole's shadow. However, so many resources, time, effort and money would not be spent just to take pretty pictures. The telescope array will be able to test Einstein's very well tested and verified Theory of Relativity in the most extreme environment in the universe, around a black hole, where spacetime is massively warped, which should either confirm it even further, or show up flaws in it. If flaws are found, then it will have huge repercussions for physicists and will lead to the formation of new theories in time, or updates to Einstein's theory.



Some vital statistics for our Milky Way's supermassive black hole:

Mass: 4 million solar masses (it's really, really heavy!)
Size: event horizon fits within Mercury's orbit
Distance: 26,000 light years
Location: centre of the Milky Way
Apparent size: same as that of a grapefruit on the moon as viewed from Earth

The project's website is at: http://eventhorizontelescope.org

The telescope pictured is the submillimeter telescope on Mt. Graham, AZ. Copyright: University of Arizona, T. W. Folkers, photographer

Source: uanews.org