Radio astronomers have recently turned their attention to a patch of pure nothing in a distant galaxy that is home to a giant black hole. This black hole has the gravity of 6.5 billion suns and is located at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, which is approximately 50 million light-years away from Earth. The black hole spits high-energy particles from its center.
In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope network of radio telescopes produced the first-ever image of a black hole, which showed a fuzzy doughnut of energy. This image was created by the glowing radiation produced by doomed matter circling the dark door to eternity.
Last month, a subset of the same team used artificial intelligence to analyze the original data and generated a sharper image. This new image showed a thinner doughnut of doom surrounding an even blacker center.
A third group of astronomers has now harnessed a different global web of observatories, including the Global Millimeter VLBI Array and the Atacama Large…
2023-04-26 15:08:10
Link from www.nytimes.com