Next year , uranologist will attempt something that has never been done before . They will try to shoot a black maw , but not just any black hole : Sagittarius A * – the supermassive fateful golf hole at the nub of the Milky Way .
The project is called theEvent Horizon Telescope(EHT ) , and links nine radio scope from across the world ( let in Chile , Spain , and the U.S. ) that will act as a unmarried scope the size of Earth . The gigantic scope will be able-bodied to reckon at the event horizon of a black hole . The team hopes to see gas swirling around the event horizon boundary .
Sagittarius A * has a mass equivalent to 4 million Suns , but it is not as bighearted as you might think : Its diam is44 million kilometers(27 million naut mi ) , about 63 times the radius of the Sun . Its diminutive size of it is what makes the observations complex . It is 26,000 light - old age away from us , so it has an apparent sizing in the sky of looking at a CD on the surface of the Moon from Earth .
" We ’re almost there . The phasing in of the pawn has been done , the liquidator are in place and the theoretical employment has been done , ” said Professor Feryal Ozel , EHT team fellow member , speaking toBBC News . " There are quite a few challenges that need to be get over to take a pic of a black hole – it ’s something that ’s passing belittled in the sky . But what we ’re hop for is a full regalia observation in former 2017 . "
The upshot horizon is the bounds that separate the interior of the black hole from the rest of the universe . Anything that crosses the effect horizon ca n’t escape the pull of the black golf hole . Around the event horizon , there ’s a destiny of gas being compact by gravitation and excite bythe black hole ’s magnetic study , make observations complicated . The team decided to observe the event horizon using radio receiver waves because they would be scattered less by the hem in textile .
" We ’ve run upwardly of a million pretence , for many different configurations of what that throttle might front like . And in all cases , we recollect that the 1.3 mm wavelength is the right choice to see down to the upshot horizon , " added Ozel , who discussed the task at the227th meetingof the American Astronomical Society .
The team is confident that the gas on the effect horizon shines precisely at that wavelength , which is great news as our ambiance is transparent at that wavelength .
The observation is choke to be of import for more than just a exposure . By studying how the supermassive black hole affects spacetime , the team will be able to try Einstein ’s theory of relativity theory like never before .
[ H / T : BBC News ]
