Several years have passed since the Telescope of the Event Horizon (EHT) published the famous first image of a black holetaken in 2017. The photo has yes doquestioned by some researchersbut the EHT last year published a second image of the black hole M87*, taken in 2018. The new photo not only validated the original, but once again corroborates the Einstein’s general relativity theory.
The largest radio telescope. To obtain the image of the black hole in the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, we needed to build a radio telescope about 10,000 kilometers in diameter. Since the land has a diameter of 13,000, the EHT took a more reasonable path: Extract data from different receptors, telescopes and radio antennas from all over the world and combine them by interferometry.
The EHT produced 250 Petabytes of information in a one -week interval. It took a couple of years to process all the information and publish an image. But first, he added a new telescope to the project (the GLT of Greenland) and took the second image of M87* that saw the light in 2024.
Six years processing. The second image of the black hole M87*, taken a year and ten days after the original, in April 2018, took six to process and publish, but it was worth it. On the one hand, proves that 2017’s observations were fine. The Persistence of the size of the central shadow In both images confirms the original estimate of the dimensions of the black hole, dissipating the criticisms about the simulations dependence to calculate this data.
On the other, comparing the two images shows that the ring of matter around the black hole is rotating as expected. The brightest part has moved 30 degrees, which is consistent with the models of the hole.
We are seeing what Einstein predicted. Located 55 million light years from us, M87* is a supermassive black hole in the center of an elliptical galaxy that manipulates the subject with its magnetic fields and expels the one that does not consume at speeds close to that of light.
The image of 2018, like its predecessor of 2017, reflects this tumultuous activity with a bright ring around it. This validates the theory that the diameter of the event horizon, and therefore that of the black hole itself, is intrinsically linked to its mass, framing a central shadow that Albert Einstein’s equations predicted more than a century ago.
Why it looks like a donut. That brilliant donut called accretion disc should be very fine, but we get very dispersed and unemployed. Throughout the trip he has made through space, his light has dispersed by the dust in interstellar space, which leads us to see it in this way.
Despite the dispersion, the image is clear enough to confirm not only Black hole rotation but also the alignment of its rotational axis with a powerful stream of material (“relativistic jet”) that moves away from M87.
The importance of reproducing results. Although it will take six years to arrive, this vindic confirmation the findings of the EHT and is seen as a milestone for global scientific collaboration, in addition to a robust confirmation that we are facing the shadow of a black hole and the matter that orbit it.
Future data analysis will help better understand how magnetic fields and plasma flows within the accretion disc interact.
In the next decade, we could even have videos of the evolution of M87* in time thanks to the next generation program of the EHT (NGEHT), which promises images of greater resolution and a broader range of frequencies. All thanks to the collaboration of observatories from all over the world.
Image | Event horizon telescope
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*An earlier version of this article was published in February 2024
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