Scientists are about to capture the first image of a cosmic black hole

With a system of 9 radio telescopes located in many parts of the world, scientists will for the first time in history capture the image of the supermassive black hole located in the center of the Milky Way galaxy . After bonding, these nine glasses will form "a super telescope" with the size of the Earth, thereby helping scientists observe the event horizon of black holes through swirling vortices. around its edges.

Called Sagittarius A * , the supermassive black hole located in the center of our galaxy is about 4 million solar masses, but only about 44 million kilometers in diameter, about 63 times the diameter of the Sun. . This size figure is very small compared to the mass of the black hole, thereby pushing its material density to extremely high and this is also the characteristic of the cosmic black hole.

But also because the size is so small, the observation becomes extremely difficult at a distance of 26,000 light years from Earth. For example, the difficulty is like you stand on Earth and want to see a CD on the Moon. However, according to Professor Feryal Ozel, a member of the research team said: "We are about to succeed. The device preparation phase is complete, the detector has been set and the research is done. "The theory is finished. Now there are a few more challenges to be overcome that are able to capture the image of the black hole. We believe that it will be fully observed in 2017."

Anything going through the event horizon will not be able to escape the attraction of the black hole.

The event horizon is a boundary that separates the black hole from the rest of the universe. Anything going through the event horizon will not be able to escape the attraction of the black hole. Around the event horizon, there are a lot of gas compressed by gravity and very flexible by the black hole's magnetic field, so it is also very complicated to observe these clouds. Therefore, the team decided to use radio waves to observe the event horizon because they were less scattered by surrounding materials.

Professor Ozel added: "We have tested millions of simulations with various settings to test the gas observation method. And in all cases, we think the 1.3mm wavelength is the best choice to observe the event horizon ". On the other hand, our atmosphere completely passes that wavelength so it can be observed from the Earth.

And the purpose of photographing the event horizon of the black hole? Not only will the first time produce a picture through which scientists will have more conditions to study the effect of black holes on space , thus verifying Einstein's general theory of relativity and increasing Intense understanding of the universe.