Next week a big announcement is expected about black holes. The news will focus on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) fixed on Sagittarius A * – the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
“Due to the importance of this result, we encourage satellite events in the different ESO Member States and beyond,” the press release reads.
While it’s not clear exactly what the researchers are going to reveal, there was a lot of speculation that it might be the first ever photograph of the event horizon of a black hole.
For several years now, the telescope looks into the very heart of our galaxy, trying to photograph “Sagittarius A *”. This is not so easy to do, since black holes are literally invisible, absorbing any electromagnetic radiation. This means that any optical, radio and X-ray telescope is not able to detect them.
Nevertheless, in theory, one can see the border of a black hole, which is called the event horizon.
The telescope of the event horizon is a whole network of powerful radio telescopes at various points on Earth aimed at Sagittarius A *. Since the beginning of this project, radio telescopes have collected an enormous amount of data, and the only way to transfer them was to write to industrial hard drives that were transported by air.
And now, having analyzed all this information, European scientists seem to have discovered something quite remarkable, with which they want to share with the public…
