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9am US eastern tomorrow, there will be a series of press conferences from the people behind the Event Horizon Telescope. The "telescope" is actually a collection of hardware scattered across continents and islands, with the data from each site being merged by computers to create the equivalent of an instrument with a diameter the same as the distance between its furthest parts (which currently seem to be Greenland and the South Pole). It was put together specifically to image the environment near a black hole.
While black holes trap light, the matter near them is ramped up to very high energies by the intense gravity, and emits copious amounts of light at various wavelengths. By imaging this matter, we can figure out its structure, and thus learn more about the forces that create that structure. Initial targets for observation are the supermassive black holes in the Milky Way and some of our neighboring galaxies.
The collaboration is being extremely tight-lipped about what's going to be revealed tomorrow. But the US' National Science Foundation will be live-streaming the press conference on YouTube, so you can find out just as soon as most other people. Details here:
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=298155
While black holes trap light, the matter near them is ramped up to very high energies by the intense gravity, and emits copious amounts of light at various wavelengths. By imaging this matter, we can figure out its structure, and thus learn more about the forces that create that structure. Initial targets for observation are the supermassive black holes in the Milky Way and some of our neighboring galaxies.
The collaboration is being extremely tight-lipped about what's going to be revealed tomorrow. But the US' National Science Foundation will be live-streaming the press conference on YouTube, so you can find out just as soon as most other people. Details here:
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=298155
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