Scientists await first black hole image, expected Wednesday
A first-ever image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy is expected to be released Wednesday — giving astrophysicists hope that visual evidence of Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity might be at hand.
The Event Horizon Telescope project — an international array of telescopes aligned with the specific purpose of capturing an image of the “supermassive” Sagittarius A* black hole — is expected to make the announcement and release the image April 10 in Brussels. A press release is touting “a groundbreaking result from the EHT.” The science press is interpreting that to mean the long-awaited image of a black hole.
“I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. “We’re seeing the most extreme conditions in nature. A place where space and time are torn apart. It’s almost a mythical region.”
McDowell said the expectation is that there will be evidence that light bends the closer it gets to a black hole.
“If you see those features, it is proof that Einstein is right again in a very slam dunk kind of way,” McDowell said. “It’s a mic drop for Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.”
“It’s a huge deal,” McDowell said. “We’ll be seeing where the action is happening.”
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/04/05/scientists-await-first-black-hole-image-expected-wednesday/
A first-ever image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy is expected to be released Wednesday — giving astrophysicists hope that visual evidence of Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity might be at hand.
The Event Horizon Telescope project — an international array of telescopes aligned with the specific purpose of capturing an image of the “supermassive” Sagittarius A* black hole — is expected to make the announcement and release the image April 10 in Brussels. A press release is touting “a groundbreaking result from the EHT.” The science press is interpreting that to mean the long-awaited image of a black hole.
“I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. “We’re seeing the most extreme conditions in nature. A place where space and time are torn apart. It’s almost a mythical region.”
McDowell said the expectation is that there will be evidence that light bends the closer it gets to a black hole.
“If you see those features, it is proof that Einstein is right again in a very slam dunk kind of way,” McDowell said. “It’s a mic drop for Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.”
“It’s a huge deal,” McDowell said. “We’ll be seeing where the action is happening.”
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/04/05/scientists-await-first-black-hole-image-expected-wednesday/
