{"id":906,"date":"2019-04-17T23:03:53","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T17:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/?p=906"},"modified":"2020-02-17T09:56:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T04:26:21","slug":"astronomers-capture-first-image-of-a-black-hole-must-read-for-upsc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/astronomers-capture-first-image-of-a-black-hole-must-read-for-upsc\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole Must Read For UPSC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An international collaboration presents paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Scientists<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\n\tThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) \u2014 a planet-scale array of eight \nground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration\n \u2014 was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated\n press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they \nhave succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a \nsupermassive black hole and its shadow.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tThis breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/em>.\n The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87 [1], a \nmassive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole \nresides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion \ntimes that of the Sun [2].\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tThe EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an Earth-sized \nvirtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution [3]. The\n EHT is the result of years of international collaboration, and offers \nscientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe \npredicted by Einstein\u2019s general relativity<\/a> during the centennial year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory [4].\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t“We have taken the first picture of a black hole,”<\/em> said EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman<\/strong> of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.”<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tBlack holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with enormous masses but \nextremely compact sizes. The presence of these objects affects their \nenvironment in extreme ways, warping spacetime and super-heating any \nsurrounding material.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t“If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we \nexpect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow \u2014 \nsomething predicted by Einstein\u2019s general relativity that we\u2019ve never \nseen before,<\/em> explained chair of the EHT Science Council Heino Falcke<\/strong> of Radboud University, the Netherlands. “This\n shadow, caused by the gravitational bending and capture of light by the\n event horizon, reveals a lot about the nature of these fascinating \nobjects and allowed us to measure the enormous mass of M87\u2019s black \nhole.”<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tMultiple calibration and imaging methods have revealed a ring-like \nstructure with a dark central region \u2014 the black hole\u2019s shadow \u2014 that \npersisted over multiple independent EHT observations.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t“Once we were sure we had imaged the shadow, we could compare our \nobservations to extensive computer models that include the physics of \nwarped space, superheated matter and strong magnetic fields. Many of the\n features of the observed image match our theoretical understanding \nsurprisingly well,”<\/em> remarks Paul T.P. Ho<\/strong>, EHT Board member and Director of the East Asian Observatory [5]. “This makes us confident about the interpretation of our observations, including our estimation of the black hole\u2019s mass.”<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tCreating the EHT was a formidable challenge which required upgrading \nand connecting a worldwide network of eight pre-existing telescopes \ndeployed at a variety of challenging high-altitude sites. These \nlocations included volcanoes in Hawai`i and Mexico, mountains in Arizona\n and the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Chilean Atacama Desert, and \nAntarctica.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tThe EHT observations use a technique called very-long-baseline \ninterferometry (VLBI) which synchronises telescope facilities around the\n world and exploits the rotation of our planet to form one huge, \nEarth-size telescope observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. VLBI allows \nthe EHT to achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds \u2014 enough\n to read a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk caf\u00e9 in Paris [6].\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tThe telescopes contributing to this result were ALMA<\/a>, APEX<\/a>, the IRAM 30-meter telescope<\/a>, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope<\/a>, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano<\/a>, the Submillimeter Array<\/a>, the Submillimeter Telescope<\/a>, and the South Pole Telescope<\/a> [7]. Petabytes of raw data from the telescopes were combined by highly specialised supercomputers hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy<\/a> and MIT Haystack Observatory<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tThe construction of the EHT and the observations announced today \nrepresent the culmination of decades of observational, technical, and \ntheoretical work. This example of global teamwork required close \ncollaboration by researchers from around the world. Thirteen partner \ninstitutions worked together to create the EHT, using both pre-existing \ninfrastructure and support from a variety of agencies. Key funding was \nprovided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the EU’s European \nResearch Council (ERC), and funding agencies in East Asia.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t“We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago,”<\/em> concluded Doeleman. “Breakthroughs\n in technology, connections between the world’s best radio \nobservatories, and innovative algorithms all came together to open an \nentirely new window on black holes and the event horizon.”<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\tNotes<\/strong>\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\n\t[1] The shadow of a black hole is the closest we can come to an image \nof the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light \ncannot escape. The black hole\u2019s boundary \u2014 the event horizon from which \nthe EHT takes its name \u2014 is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it \ncasts and measures just under 40 billion km across.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t[2] Supermassive black holes are relatively tiny astronomical objects \u2014\n which has made them impossible to directly observe until now. As a \nblack hole\u2019s size is proportional to its mass, the more massive a black \nhole, the larger the shadow. Thanks to its enormous mass and relative \nproximity, M87\u2019s black hole was predicted to be one of the largest \nviewable from Earth \u2014 making it a perfect target for the EHT.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t[3] Although the telescopes are not physically connected, they are able\n to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks \u2014 hydrogen masers<\/a>\n \u2014 which precisely time their observations. These observations were \ncollected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each \ntelescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data \u2014 roughly 350 \nterabytes per day \u2014 which was stored on high-performance helium-filled \nhard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers \u2014\n known as correlators \u2014 at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy<\/a> and MIT Haystack Observatory<\/a>\n to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image \nusing novel computational tools developed by the collaboration.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t[4] 100 years ago, two expeditions set out for the island of Pr\u00edncipe \noff the coast of Africa and Sobral in Brazil to observe the 1919 solar eclipse<\/a>,\n with the goal of testing general relativity by seeing if starlight \nwould be bent around the limb of the sun, as predicted by Einstein. In \nan echo of those observations, the EHT has sent team members to some of \nthe world’s highest and isolated radio facilities to once again test our\n understanding of gravity.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t[5] The East Asian Observatory (EAO) partner on the EHT project \nrepresents the participation of many regions in Asia, including China, \nJapan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Indonesia.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t[6] Future EHT observations will see substantially increased sensitivity with the participation of the IRAM NOEMA Observatory<\/a>, the Greenland Telescope<\/a> and the Kitt Peak Telescope<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7] ALMA<\/a> is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan, together with the National Research Council (Canada), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. APEX<\/a> is operated by ESO<\/a>, the 30-meter telescope<\/a> is operated by IRAM<\/a> (the IRAM Partner Organizations are MPG (Germany), CNRS (France) and IGN (Spain)), the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope<\/a> is operated by the EAO<\/a>, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano<\/a> is operated by INAOE<\/a> and UMass<\/a>, the Submillimeter Array<\/a> is operated by SAO<\/a> and ASIAA<\/a> and the Submillimeter Telescope<\/a> is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO). The South Pole Telescope<\/a> is operated by the University of Chicago<\/a> with specialized EHT instrumentation provided by the University of Arizona<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read More important topics Click Here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An international collaboration presents paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87 The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) \u2014 a planet-scale array of eight…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,53,68,63,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-g-k","category-ias","category-ips","category-solar-system","category-upsc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowledgekart.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}