Black Hole Picture Revealed for the First Time
Source: New York Times
Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had seen the unseeable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and dense that not even light can escape it.
Weve exposed a part of our universe weve never seen before, said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at Harvard University who directed the effort to capture the image, during a Wednesday news conference in Washington, D.C.
The image, of a lopsided ring of light surrounding a dark circle deep in the heart of the galaxy known as Messier 87, some 55 million light-years away from here, resembled the Eye of Sauron, a reminder yet again of the power and malevolence of nature. It is a smoke ring framing a one-way portal to eternity.
To capture the image, astronomers reached across intergalactic space to a giant galaxy in Virgo, known as Messier 87. There, a black hole about seven billion times more massive than the sun is unleashing a violent jet of energy some 5,000 light years into space.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/science/black-hole-picture.html
Kind of Blue
(8,709 posts)Soxfan58
(3,479 posts)Thanks for posting.
onit2day
(1,201 posts)RKP5637
(67,111 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Calista241
(5,586 posts)Golden Raisin
(4,609 posts)of a glazed donut or a bagel. Seriously, an amazing photo.
KPN
(15,646 posts)durablend
(7,460 posts)Doesn't look anything like that photo
From the article:
Nor do scientists know what ultimately happens to whatever falls into a black hole, nor what forces reign at the center, where according to the math we know now the density approaches infinity and smoke pours from Gods computer.
colorado_ufo
(5,734 posts)EOS
gldstwmn
(4,575 posts)marble falls
(57,106 posts)and took a photo.
Home of the burnt orange donuts:
Apple Fritter
(131 posts)You send them the black hole image with this image and BAM --- 50 billion added to the funds. Trump will try to eat it off the page.
marble falls
(57,106 posts)Apple Fritter
(131 posts)HubertHeaver
(2,522 posts)Six months later I was 230 and growing.
I live near Houston now.
marble falls
(57,106 posts)calimary
(81,322 posts)One of the Great One-Liners of the Day, marble falls!
You had me at Apple Fritter.
orangecrush
(19,572 posts)marble falls
(57,106 posts)orangecrush
(19,572 posts)eggplant
(3,911 posts)Talitha
(6,593 posts)FakeNoose
(32,645 posts)The author uses terms and analogies that we can all understand. It's quite interesting and educational.
Thanks!
eggplant
(3,911 posts)If you check out the rest of his blog, you'll see a ton of articles that are geared towards the layperson but without dumbing down the science.
*Also a quick plug for our alma mater, Bard College at Simon's Rock (simons-rock.edu). A strong liberal arts education makes it possible to bridge the gap between the technical and the understandable.
Apple Fritter
(131 posts)I stayed in there for ten minutes trying to figure it out. They did a great job kind of explaining how they did it and how they have to look at these things in different wavelengths like gamma or infrared. I didn't really understand how they got the picture yet but I know they are working on better quality and more telescopes. I also guess each black hole has it's own challenges because they change. It so complicated. Yo government give them $$$$ for this.
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)Gives me the willies. The literal abyss.
calimary
(81,322 posts)That does describe it well.
NeoGreen
(4,031 posts)...center of a black hole?
Cold War Spook
(1,279 posts)has theorized that a black hole may lead to another universe. My question is, does it lead to another universe that was already in existence or when a black hole is created does it create another universe?
BeyondGeography
(39,374 posts)Yeah, I stole that.
Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)yaesu
(8,020 posts)kaotikross
(246 posts)gldstwmn
(4,575 posts)HubertHeaver
(2,522 posts)Blue Owl
(50,427 posts)47of74
(18,470 posts)rurallib
(62,423 posts)Whoa Nelly that's a long ways out there.
The vastness of the universe is so humbling.
gldstwmn
(4,575 posts)brooklynite
(94,598 posts)Link to tweet
/photo/1
Sapient Donkey
(1,568 posts)Stays the same even if we manage to leave this planet and even our solar system over the next hundreds of years.