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The First Black Hole Image - George Spornic - 04-11-2019

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873592

The first picture of a black hole has been released to the public today, April 10th 2019, and so marks a historical day in astrophysics. The image itself was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array of telescopes that have a network connecting them, and the black hole found in the M87 galaxy measures at 40 billion kilometers, has a mass 6.5 times that of the Sun's and is 500 million trillion kilometers away from us. Professor Heino Falcke described the "monster" as being "larger than the size of our entire Solar System". He realized back in 1993 when he thought of the idea that a certain type of radio emission that the black hole emits could be detected by telescopes on Earth, and after 20 years of persuading, his research project was funded by the European Research Council. I am quite surprised as to how similar a real-life black hole actually is to depictions of black holes or Hollywood's version of black holes because the depictions of many theoretical ideas or objects in movies that Hollywood shows are usually inaccurate. I believe there is still room for improvement on the picture quality - it's funny actually, to think of all of these world-class telescopes that can probably refine an image to the very last pixel produce an image that looks like an android phone took the picture - however it's still wonderful to witness the new feat that science has shown us. I would not be surprised if Falcke will receive a Nobel Prize, in fact, I'd be disappointed if he didn't since he contributed greatly towards our understanding of the vast universe.


RE: The First Black Hole Image - SuhaanaSaini - 04-22-2019

It is interesting to me as ever since I learned how to read I have been invested in articles and books about space and technology. It is astounding to me how far technology takes us and this will definitely be a huge step towards what we know about the black hole. Furthermore, the post refers to how Einstein was once again correct. This would mean that his more than a century old theory of general relativity, which refers to gravity as a consequence of warping space-time would be supported.
I believe that with this image, the public interest has definitely increased because it poses many questions about existence. I think that there should be more funding for space exploration and research and the interest in turn I feel will most likely improve further funding for research. Of course, this image supports Einstein's theory but I am curious as to how you suppose that this picture has improved our knowledge of prior physics? What are your opinions on supplying more funding for research regarding space?