By Maddie Callaghan
The theory surrounding black holes, which originated from Albert Einstein has officially been confirmed. Eight ground-based radio telescopes have worked together to capture the shadow cast by a black hole, over 50 million lightyears away. With new technology we can witness the impossible. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) all turned to look at the Messier 87 (M 87) galaxy which is situated over 50 million lightyears away.
Sheperd Doeleman, EHT director said “We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have taken a picture of a black hole.”
The galaxy M 87 is believed to contain the black hole at its core, pulling in all the surrounding matter. The black hole is bigger than our entire solar system. A different image of the galaxy shows a small black hole in the centre with the surrounding stars extremely dense and being pulled into the centre.
The EHT have eight ground-based telescopes placed all over the globe, ranging from volcanoes in Hawaii to Antarctica. These telescopes have the ability to communicate with each other and reach as far as the black hole located in galaxy M 87.
Even Einstein had scepticism surrounding his predictions and his theory of relativity. Which encouraged further research and now this image is the biggest piece of evidence surrounding black holes to date. However, now with this image, it has opened the way for so much more research into black holes and the surrounding matter, it is only the beginning of so much further discovery.
