Over four nights in April 2017, eight different radio-wave telescopes across the globe fixed their gazes on a single infinitesimally small point—the black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy (M87*). Around 55 million light-years from Earth, M87* and the hot plasma surrounding it create only a minuscule smudge on the night sky. To resolve an image from that distance would require a 13,000-kilometer telescope—roughly the diameter of Earth. Alternatively, the researchers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Project stitched together an Earth-sized telescope using a set of radio-wave telescopes distributed around the globe. These telescopes were synchronized…
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Check out this audio journey into the center of a supermassive black hole posted to Science You Can Bring Home To Mom’s new YouTube Channel! Transcript and sources below. Transcript: [Intro Music] A Journey to the Center of a Black Hole by Sav Miller I don’t know about you, but personally, I want to be thrown into a supermassive black hole when I die. I haven’t gotten around to putting it in my will—I still have to work out all the legal details—but consider this a formal declaration of how I would like to be laid to rest. In fact,…
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