The first-ever image of a black hole is finally revealed, and it's massive

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     For a long time, scientists were able to prove mathematically that an object called a black hole could exist in the universe. Yet there was no actual evidence of it to support this hypothesis. On April 10, 2019, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope have finally released the first-ever image of a black hole located at the center of a massive galaxy called M87. This is a breakthrough in astrophysics and in the history of science because not only it proves the existence of black holes as predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, but it exactly matches our computer simulations of what we thought a black hole might look like.

A breakthrough in modern science

     The black hole image released by EHT is in a galaxy so far away from us. This galaxy is 55 million light-years away from Earth. In other words, the light detected by our telescopes from Earth had already left the M87 galaxy 55 million light-years ago. A light-year is equivalent to the distance that a beam of light can travel in one year. Thus, 1 light-year is equal to 5.8786×10^12 miles or to nearly 6 trillion miles —given the constant speed of light of 186,000 miles per second. To make it possible to capture such far object, scientists needed an Earth-sized telescope. Obviously, this is not doable, so they have created a virtual telescope by combining eight radio telescopes from different locations around the globe. A 29-year-old scientist Katie Bouman was behind this brilliant achievement. She wrote the algorithms that made it possible to collect the messy data from different telescopes and process an image from it. It's very inspiring to see her doing what many other scientists couldn't do. Katie Bouman deserves credits for her great accomplishment because it will tell us more about our universe as we learn more about black holes. Her name will always be remembered as the scientist who proved that once again Einstein's predictions were right.





The discovery of black holes

     I want to back and explain the origins of the idea of the existence of black holes and how it brought us to this new discovery. In 1915, Albert Einstein introduced the concept of gravitational lensing which describes the behavior of light in space. When light is traveling through space, it can bend as it comes across a dense object such as our sun. As the light bends, it creates a ring of bright light appearing to surround the sun. An observer might think that this source of light represents the true location of a star near the sun. But, that star is actually located behind the sun. The image of the star got bent and went around the sun. Throughout the process of developing his theory of general relativity, Einstein calculated the correct value of the light of the stars bending around the sun. This was only possible after he came up with the revolutionary idea that redefined the notion of gravity. Back in the seventeenth century, everyone thought of gravity as Isaac Newton had defined it. A strange force acting on objects in the heavens. Instead, Einstein comes up with a new dimension he called space-time that curves the fabric of space enabling heavy objects to shape the area around them based on their mass. Any small object falling in the nearby area of these objects falls into an orbit. That's why the Earth and all other planets in our solar system orbit the sun.

What's a black hole?

     The name itself black hole might be misleading for those who don't know what a black hole is. Think of a black hole as an object that has a spherical shape. It is a region of space-time exerting a dense gravitational force on itself, so strong that no object could escape from it. Not even light, the fastest known thing in the universe. Black holes could exist in different locations in space depending on their sizes. A small black hole could form after the death of a big star that collapses on itself. For a star to become a black hole it must be at least 3 times the mass of our sun. So, don't worry, our sun will never turn into a black hole and suck us all in it. Black holes could also be found at the center of a supermassive galaxy like the M87. The image released by EHT shows a bright yellow and red light in the shape of a spinning disc around the event horizon. That's the dust and star stuff that is being heated up by the gravitational pull of black hole.

Composition of a black hole

     Black holes have 2 main components: the event horizon which represents the boundary of the spherical shape of the black hole and at the center of it we find something we call the singularity. The gravitational pull at the singularity is so powerful that strange things start to happen, time stops altogether. This has been proven with mathematics by many scientists and astrophysicist including Steven Hawking. If you go through the singularity, assuming you don't die instantly, from your perspective time will seem to run so fast. From an outside viewer, time stops for you so you don't appear like you are moving at all. As you fall into the black hole, you will experience strong gravitational pull that will stretch your feet and break your body apart into little tiny shreds. Then those parts will get divided equally at a microscopic level just like in a cellular division phase. This will keep going until all the cells and particle of your body melts into hot plasma and disappears into the unknown. Scientists have a term for this, they call it "spaghettification". My favorite scientist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote a whole book about this process called book "Death by black hole".

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