We have known about black holes for quite some time now. From a region of space that has a gravitational field so strong that nothing can escape it, to a giant dark, endless pit that only our favorite sci-fi heroes can escape. For years we have been fantasizing and creating our own images of what we think black holes look like. Dark, sucking abysses that swallow up everything and everyone, and even swirly, merciless, rainbow pools of darkness that suck up entire worlds. However, we no longer have to come up with our own image of black holes because a professor's ideas have finally become reality.
Professor Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, originally proposed the idea. He says that the black hole is larger than the size of our entire solar system. He also says that the black hole has a mass 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. Astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration finally revealed the first picture of a black hole on April 10, 2019. The black hole lies in a galaxy known as Messier 87. For 10 days, 200 scientists worked to point the telescopes at M87 and scan it. The picture might be a bit hazy, but seeing as it was taken from 55 million lightyears away, people all over the world are amazed by the photograph.
Sources: space.com; bbc.com; nationalgeographic.com
Comments