Spending $ 19 million to get the first picture of black hole history

Astrophysicists argue that a giant black hole exists in the middle of the Milky Way. It is supposed to be 4 million times bigger than our Sun, but although it is so big, we will never be able to see it. However, this will soon change. The European Research Council has approved a budget of 14 million euros (US $ 19.3 million) for fabricators of BlackHoleCam , a project that uses radio telescopes and supercomputers to try demonstrate the existence of black holes.

Photo: Nasa.gov

The name BlackHoleCam seems to be misleading to readers. Because in fact this system cannot directly capture black holes, it instead uses event horizons to hopefully confirm the existence of black holes. The concept of event horizon - a phenomenon predicted by Einstein - is the inner boundary of space-time near a singularity, all kinds of matter, if under this limit, including electromagnetic waves (including light) cannot go beyond to reach the observer. According to Space.com's report, the Milky Way's black hole will "betray" its event horizon by creating a "shadow" through waves of bright radio waves emitted when gas is sucked into the black hole.

The BlackHoleCame project will use a method called Very Long Baseline Interferometry , when many observatories - including the new ALMA telescope system in Chile - focus on one object , collect data then transmit it through a supercomputer. The BlackHoleCam researchers also work closely with the Event Horizon Telescope, a US-led group, and also use the very long Baseline Interferometer to implement these. efforts.

To observe a large object like a black hole, we need to use something that is about the size of a planet to be able to see it. Space.com said, using the extremely long Baseline Interferometer, BlackHoleCame will turn the earth itself into a huge virtual telescope. Hopefully the BlackHoleCam project will be successful so we have the opportunity to witness the image and confirm the existence of black holes, an "attractive" object in the field of space research.