Event Horizon Telescope ready to image Our black hole

Scientists working with the Event Horizon Telescope have said they are ready to image the Event Horizon of our own Super Massive Black Hole this April , they will release the image by the end of this year or early 2018.
The Event Horizon Telescope is made up of an array of 9 radio telescopes located in different countries around the world ranging from Chile to as far south as Antarctica.

There is optimism that observations to be conducted during 5-14 April could finally deliver the long-sought prize. In the sights of the so-called "Event Horizon Telescope" will be the monster black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Although never seen directly, this object, catalogued as Sagittarius A*, has been determined to exist from the way it influences the orbits of nearby stars. These race around a point in space at many thousands of km per second, suggesting the hole likely has a mass of about four million times that of the Sun. But as colossal as that sounds, the "edge" of the black hole - the horizon inside which an immense gravity field traps all light - may be no more than 20 million km or so across.

The scientists certainly have an expectation of what they ought to see, if successful. Simulations rooted in Einstein's equations predict a bright ring of light fringing a dark feature. The light would be the emission coming from gas and dust accelerated to high speed and torn apart just before disappearing into the hole. The dark feature would be the shadow the hole casts on this maelstrom.

"Now, it could be that we will see something different," Doeleman said. "As I've said before, it's never a good idea to bet against Einstein, but if we did see something that was very different from what we expect we would have to reassess the theory of gravity. "I don't expect that is going to happen, but anything could happen and that's the beauty of it."
www.bbc.co.uk...

Hopefully the image will be released in time for Christmas and we will get to view the Milky Way's center .... or something different.

So the image will be of radio waves, not visible light. Thats why they didn't resolve it in the images taken of the region so far...

Ca't wait to see what they come up with...

Event Horizon Telescope, wiki

This is something that excites me to the core.

Any type of imaging from a true black hole is beyond spectacular and I think it defines the human race as we know it. I am eagerly awaiting the results from this viewing and hope that it is something far greater than we ever imagined. 2018 can't come soon enough!


Excellent find!

So black holes arent 2d protections anymore or...
Tune in next week. Science is loose these days.

a reply to: odzeandennz

Perhaps our Super Massive Black Hole is home to another 2d Universe being played out across its surface , and so on.

Stars orbiting a black hole at thousands of kilometers per second.

Mind boggling.

a reply to: odzeandennz


The event horizon could be described as similar to a balloon, in that it is a 2D surface. One equation describes matters as flattening out into tiny Planck size areas that become part of this 2D sphere. Another equation shows matter traveling into the singularity. The Holographic Principle tries to reconcile this apparent paradox by saying both things happen. Matter flattens into the 2D sphere and a hologram continues into the singularity.

It's a bit similar to the paradox of traveling near light speed. In one frame of reference, you are traveling near C and everything is normal. In our frame of reference, the traveler is a statue and the universe ends before they move an inch.

So, both are correct, it's just that one frame of reference never occurs because there is not an infinite amount of time.

a reply to: gortex

I think its really great that the scientists can work together and come up with a concept like this that is just using existing technology in a different way rather than spending god knows how many billions of dollars to create something new to do the same job.

Am i the only one who thinks the OP title sounds dirty and funny?

Must be the time of day here 00:16 am

a reply to: gortex

Astronomers call it Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* (pronounced “sadge A star”) for short, because it’s located (from our point of view) in the Sagittarius constellation. Discovering the Milky Way’s black hole has helped cement the idea that the center of nearly every large galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole. But despite mounting evidence for black holes, we still haven’t seen one directly.
...
Brown named the discovery Sagittarius A*—in atomic physics, the asterisk is used to refer to an atom in its “excited state,” and nothing was as exciting to Balick and Brown as discovering this black hole.
...
[T]he most ambitious project focused on the galactic center is the Event Horizon Telescope, an enormous interferometer made from a dozen observatories stretching from Hawaii to the South Pole. The goal, when it comes online this spring, is to capture an image of Sgr A* with enough resolution to see the event horizon itself.

Air & Space magazine, Jan. 2017 - The First Sighting of a Black Hole.

This article is a great read and highly recommended!

They estimate that Sgr A* is the size of the solar system! That they have linked radio telescopes together I found a cool trick. Nice to see that they are attempting to "see" the event horizon itself!

This will be a major announcement when it hits MSM (actual image)! Glad to see this on ATS first!




a reply to: Annunak1

I think it is the capital "o" in "Our"!!!

UPDATE

Researchers from across the globe have officially begun the process of imaging one of the most camera shy subjects in the galaxy: a black hole.

Or, to be more specific, the edge of a black hole. The project, known as Event Horizons Telescope, started April 5 and will continue until Friday, April 14, with a team of scientists stationed in six observatories across the planet all training their telescopes on Sagittarius A*, our Milky Way’s own local (and massive) black hole.

BostonGlobe.com, April 10, 2017 - How do you take a picture of a black hole? A UMass astronomer explains.

This is the last week for observations! I hope they get a result! I hope it is a bit more interesting than looking at Vantablack where you see no details just a flat hole.

Important subject and I think we need to dive deeper into this, what is the purpose of existence of black holes? They are sucking in matter which is no more useful, are they some kind of universal trashbins or possibly recycling centers, or somekind of wormsholes to another universes? Maybe they are here to remind us of endless possibilities.. Really the possibilities seem to be endless and hopefully the pictures will help us explain more about what is going on in black holes and in the surrounding space. Till then keep the space clear and visions will emerge in the microcosmic unity that is called YOU. Greeting from the event horizon of Sagittarius A*

a reply to: AutonomousMeatPuppet
I always figured that near light speed travel would appear that the traveller would appear to be travelling at the speed of light but when they stopped, the closer to light speed they had travelled, the less time elapsed on board ship. So to them they would consider that they had greatly exceeded the speed of light but the Universe would be so much older.

Stephen Hawking Passes Away
March 15, 2018

On March 14th, the world lost Stephen Hawking, a luminary who inspired many of the scientists working on the Event Horizon Telescope project. Stephen’s work on black holes helped bring them center stage in our efforts to understand the universe. He was aware of the EHT’s goal of imaging a black hole event horizon, having visited the Black Hole Initiative (BHI) at Harvard in April 2016.

The EHT team has been analyzing data collected during our most recent observing campaign, and had hoped to be able to share the results with Stephen. Some EHT members connected our efforts to the Stephen's seminal work on black holes in the article entitled "Seeing a Black Hole Through Stephen Hawking's Eyes", published in The Atlanic.

We send our sincere condolences to his family, and as we move forward with our work, we are mindful of, and deeply thankful for, his legacy of scholarship and spirit of adventure.

EventHorizonTelescope.org, Blog post - Stephen Hawking Passes Away.

Past that, “there’s an even more exciting opportunity on the horizon,” said Broderick. “If you’ll forgive the pun.”

The next horizon — quite literally — should come from the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT, a separate effort now straining to resolve the space-time right around the Milky Way’s central black hole. The EHT team is currently crunching through their data, with hopes to publish at some point in 2019, they say.

quantamagazine.org, Oct. 30, 2018 - Astronomers Creep Up to the Edge of the Milky Way’s Black Hole.

While reading about possible plasma flares near Sgr A* being spotted, (not once, but thrice!), I came across this little piece of information.

Figured a little update and thread bump as science takes time!

a reply to: gortex

This is Prof Hawking's paper on black holes.

arxiv.org...

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Thanks for the update mate.

originally posted by: Annunak1
Am i the only one who thinks the OP title sounds dirty and funny?

Must be the time of day here 00:16 am

I was thinking the same thing. I had a black hole imaged right before my colonoscopy.

Major Announcement Coming

Finally! 1st results of Event Horizon Telescope #EHT will be presented at press conferences April 10, 13:00 UT in Brussels and Washington & in peer reviewed papers. I will be in Brussels with great colleagues & panel. Keep you updated here. www.eso.org... … @ERC_Research

Twitter, Heino Falcke, @hfalcke

Next week! It has been a long wait but what will we see?

Squee!

a reply to: gortex

If Black Holes work as science thinks It proves that life in this Universe is completely random and serves no purpose . These Giant engines randomly travel space devouring anything in their path entire Galaxies can be destroyed and any type of life or civilization along with them No judgement no caring no remorse ..