Today, Wednesday, April 10, the first-ever photo of a black hole in space has been released. The black hole is at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy that is 55 million light years away from Earth. The image was taken by scientists using the Event Horizon Telescope.
The black hole, which was photographed by scientists using the Event Horizon Telescope, is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun.
A black hole is a region of spacetime that has such strong gravitational pull that nothing, including light, can escape from it.
The idea of a body of mass could have such a strong gravitational pull that even light could not escape was originally theorized by astronomical pioneer John Michell in November 1784.
The theory was furthered in the early 1900s when famed scientist Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity.
During a press conference, Harvard University astronomer Shep Doeleman said that the new black hole image has “exposed a part of our universe we’ve never seen before.”
The Black Hole was discovered by scientists using the Event Horizon Telescope, which is a project that consists of a global network of radio telescopes and combines data from several very-long-baseline interferometry stations around the planet.
Black holes have long been fodder for science fiction, appearing in movies such as Interstellar and Event Horizon. Speaking of science fiction, Twitter users were quick to point out that the Black Hole resembled the Eye of Sauron from The Lord Of The Rings fantasy series.
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