Posted on 05/12/2022 7:07:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
The supermassive blackhole at the center of SgrA*. (EHT Collaboration)
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Four and a half billion years ago, our pale blue dot was born in the rubble left over from the birth of a star. Since then, we've been locked in a cosmic dance; Earth whirls around the Sun; and the Sun whirls around the galactic center, the dark, mysterious heart of the Milky Way.
Contained in that dark heart, around which the entire galaxy revolves, is a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*, clocking in at around 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun. We've been able to infer its presence, and measure it, based on the movements of objects around it, but never had we seen the object itself.
Never, that is, until now. That image at the top of the screen – looking like a glorious blurry orange donut – is the dust around and shadow of Sgr A* itself, seen by humanity for the very first time, thanks to the hard work of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.
"We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein's Theory of General Relativity," said EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower of Academia Sinica in Taipei.
"These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very center of our galaxy, and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings."
You can watch the press conference live right here, and follow our live blog below, to find out what exactly the discovery is at the same time we do.
VIDEO AT LINK.....................
All times below are in UTC and chronological order. Refresh and scroll to the bottom to see the latest updates. We'll be adding new information every few minutes.
12.40: Okay, the moment has arrived! We're on the edge of our seats and immensely excited to share this huge moment in astronomy with all of you. We'll be updating this blog every few minutes so keep hitting refresh!
12.41: For those who are catching up, here's what we know so far about the announcement. Results are from the EHT, which gave us our first image of a black hole almost three years ago. We also know the results concern our own Milky Way… which suggests that perhaps we're about to see the very first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
If astronomers have managed to produce a direct image of Sgr A*'s event horizon, it will be a historic moment… so make sure you've got snacks and plenty of fluids on hand. You're not going to want to miss this.
12.43: It's not just the fact that this black hole is in our home galaxy that would make this announcement so cool. It's actually an incredibly difficult feat. Sgr A* is about 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun, with an event horizon 25.4 million kilometers in diameter, and is 25,800 light-years away. Trying to image it would be like trying to photograph a tennis ball on the Moon.
12.44: Black holes are extremely difficult to image at the best of times, because they are quite literally invisible, absorbing all electromagnetic radiation. But Sgr A* is even trickier to study because it's obscured by a cloud of dust and gas.
Sgr A* was a major target for the EHT's April 2017 observing campaign. If astronomers have imaged the black hole's horizon, it should appear as a glowing donut. This is the black hole's accretion disk, a ring of gas and dust that gives off radiation as it orbits Sgr A*.
12.45: 15 minutes to go!
12.48: The livestream is filmed out of the headquarters of the European Space Observatory in Germany. But it's being broadcast simultaneously alongside announcements from Washington DC, Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, Tokyo, and Taipei.
In the livestream we'll be hearing from:
Thomas Krichbaum, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Germany
Sara Issaoun, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, US and Radboud University, the Netherlands
José L. Gómez, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), Spain
Christian Fromm, Würzburg University, Germany
Mariafelicia de Laurentis, University of Naples "Federico II" and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Italy
The National Science Foundation announcement from Washington D.C. will feature:
Katherine (Katie) L. Bouman, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Astronomy at Caltech
Vincent Fish, Research Scientist at MIT Haystack Observatory
Michael Johnson, Astrophysicist at Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Feryal Özel, Professor of Astronomy and Physics at University of Arizona
That may sound like a lot, but there are numerous other researchers involved in this work. Suffice to say, this has been a huge, collaborative undertaking.
It's worth noting that all of the scientists listed here work with black holes in some way, shape or form.
12.51: There's a lot of buzz right now from the astronomy community over on Twitter.
After 20 (long) years of preparation, observation and analysis, the EHT results on the black hole at the Milky Way's center will be announced tomorrow! https://t.co/8NDlvv6CfK
— Shep Doeleman (@ShepDoeleman) May 11, 2022 Yep I definitely could not sleep 😬 a few more hours to go! I will be on the European press conference panel to talk about the results, I'm so nervous but so excited, see you there! https://t.co/K1DHwOJGkh
— Dr. Sara Issaoun (@SaraIssaoun) May 12, 2022 Exciting new black hole image coming up tonight. My bet is that it looks like a big orange wibbly-wobbly swirly thing in space. pic.twitter.com/zJ49AINv3y
— Prof. Lisa Harvey-Smith (@lisaharveysmith) May 12, 2022 Here's a breathing view of the center of our galaxy--a mosaic of infrared & radio imagery, artfully combined by @SpaceGeck. And in an hour, we're about to learn a whole lot more about the massive black hole at the center. https://t.co/CQ8sBuOiAg pic.twitter.com/Nw1dGSbKiI
— Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell) May 12, 2022 We can't wait!
12.55: Five-minute warning everyone! Last chance to get those snacks!
12.58: Totally not sweating over here… two minutes to go. We have a countdown! We have music! This is really happening!
13.00: Here we go.
13.01: THIS IS IT! We're really about to meet Sgr A*!
13.02: ESO Director General Xavier Barcons is introducing us to proceedings…
We've been so close to Sgr A* many times before, he says, with telescopes studying the movements of the stars around the galactic center, allowing us to measure the supermassive black hole.
"However, we are yet to see direct visuals of this object," says Barcons. (!!!!)
13.04: Barcons is talking about the 300+ international scientists, lots more support personnel, and eight radio observatories around the world working in collaboration to achieve this groundbreaking result. It's a timely reminder of what we can achieve when countries work together, he adds.
13.05: Here it come! Here's Huib van Langeveld EHT Project Director with the image.
13.06: We are going to be flying into the heart of the galaxy to meet our galactic center, from the plains of Chile where the ALMA telescope is located.
13.07: GASP LOOK AT THAT!!
SgrA blackhole The supermassive blackhole at the center of Sgr A*. (EHT Collaboration)
13.08: Oh wow, this is amazing. To be clear, we can't see the black hole itself – but it's there, in that dark patch in the middle of a disk of glowing material.
13.14: Sara Issaoun of Harvard is now speaking. We now, she says, for the first time, have direct evidence that Sgr A* is a black hole. The dark patch in the center is the shadow of the black hole; around it, hot gas swirls, heated by friction. This gas gives off radio radiation that we can detect.
Its size is about 52 microarcseconds in the sky, equivalent to imaging a donut on the Moon. Since the size of a black hole's shadow is related to its mass, we can use it to confirm that its mass is around 4 million times that of the Sun. This is exactly in agreement with Einstein's predictions from General Relativity!
Sgr A* looks very similar to the first image of a black hole ever obtained, that of M87*, even though the two are very different, and are in very different environments. This tells us that, no matter their size of environment, the space around a black hole is going to be dominated by gravity.
13.17: Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany is now sharing the technical details of this tremendous achievement. It took 25 years to develop and refine the techniques to combine telescopes around the world into one giant, Earth-sized telescope that can achieve the resolution required to image black holes.
The result is an interferometer that is 3 million times sharper than the human eye. For the image of Sgr A*, six terabytes of data were obtained – analysis of this data took several years and required the development of new tools.
13.20: José L. Gómez of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain now tells us in greater detail how the eight telescopes of the Event Horizon Telescope work together to obtain observations.
Sgr A* was so much harder than M87*, though, he says. The region is obscured by dust; and, while the gas around each black hole moves at the same speed, Sgr A* is 1,500 times less massive, which means its gas has a much shorter orbit. This means that the gas was changing on rapid timescales while the observations were being taken.
eso2208 eht mwb (EHT Collaboration)
Above: The EHT Collaboration created the first-ever image (top frame) of Sgr A* by averaging together thousands of images created using different computational methods — all of which accurately fit the EHT data. This averaged image retains features more commonly seen in the varied images, and suppresses features that appear infrequently.
The images were grouped into four classed based on similar features, which you can see at the bottom of the image above. The bar graphs show the relative number of images belonging to each cluster.
13.23: This is the most thoroughly vetted interferometric image ever obtained, alongside the image of M87*.
HE HAS JUST PROMISED US MOVIES OF BLACK HOLES IN THE FUTURE.
13.25: Christian Fromm of Würzburg University in Germany is now stepping up to tell us what the image tells us about Sgr A*.
The team used supercomputers around the world to model black holes. When compared with their models, the image tells us that Sgr A* is rotating, and that we are looking at it face on.
13.27: Mariafelicia de Laurentis of University of Naples "Federico II" and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy tells us that the size of the shadow of Sgr A* is consistent with relativity, as with M87*, even though the two black holes are accreting materials at vastly different rates; Sgr A* a million times less than M87*.
13.29: Studying the environment around a black hole like Sgr A* or M87* will allow us to conduct new tests of general relativity, hoping to find places where it breaks down, says de Laurentis. This can help us try to understand gravity, as well as the role black holes play in our Universe. The best is yet to come!
13.31: This, says Anton Zensus in his closing remarks, is the next level. "We have combined the world's greatest radio telescopes into one Earth-sized camera."
The telescopes involved were:
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) in the Atacama Desert in Chile the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT) the Submillimeter Array (SMA) the UArizona Submillimeter Telescope (SMT) the South Pole Telescope (SPT) Since then, the EHT has added:
the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) in France the Greenland Telescope (GLT) the UArizona 12-meter Telescope on Kitt Peak 13.35: None of this could have been possible without the 300 scientists who worked on this collaboration. "What about Einstein?," asks Zensus. "I rather think he would be ecstatic."
Okay, the liveblog is flicking to a Q&A now, so we'll leave it there, but stay tuned for our full coverage
I expected a photo of Stacey Abrams...
That image at the top of the screen – looking like a glorious blurry orange donut – is the dust around and shadow of Sgr A* itself...12.44: Black holes are extremely difficult to image at the best of times, because they are quite literally invisible, absorbing all electromagnetic radiation. But Sgr A* is even trickier to study because it's obscured by a cloud of dust and gas.
Sgr A* was a major target for the EHT's April 2017 observing campaign. If astronomers have imaged the black hole's horizon, it should appear as a glowing donut. This is the black hole's accretion disk, a ring of gas and dust that gives off radiation as it orbits Sgr A*.
On FR?
This COULD pay off big time. We have programs to watch for errant asteroids that are going to smash earth to smithereens. What could be more important than that?
Well, watching for Black Holes in the neighborhood that could suck us into black oblivion is really important. With enough warning, we could take evasive action and move the solar system away from the danger.
LOL...very nice. Did you just create a new account to make that observation?
Unfortunately, the Event Horizon for Washington DC consumes the entire earth. We all get sucked into it and there’s no escape.
Nah. Silly me. Forget I said that.
Lololol
I thought that was a pretty good film!
Poor guy was dealt such a losing hand, but still enjoys life with a self deprecating sense of humor and turned it into a source of income.
This not a “photograph” in the classic sense. It is a computer generated image made by constructed algorithms that are fed data from the sensing devices on the telescopes on the satellite. Conspiracy? Doubtful. Career enhanching groupthink? Most probably. Good rule in science is not to disparage the skeptics.
Sorry to break it to you, astronomers, but my butt accidentally took that same picture 2 years ago on my phone while it was in my back pocket...
The brightness around the ring varies periodically, like a circular standing wave.
I don’t believe a word of this. Speculation and possibilities. I’m just not buying it.
Don’t the authors realize that per the NYSlimes and AP style guides, that is an African-American hole, not a “Black hole” as that term can be considered racist.
If astronomers have managed to produce a direct image of Sgr A*'s event horizon, it will be a historic moment so make sure you've got snacks and plenty of fluids on hand. You're not going to want to miss this.
12.43: It's not just the fact that this black hole is in our home galaxy that would make this announcement so cool. It's actually an incredibly difficult feat. Sgr A* is about 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun, with an event horizon 25.4 million kilometers in diameter, and is 25,800 light-years away.
I missed this thread yesterday but as it turns out, it fits right in with the post earlier today about David's Lego harp, "A Great Miracle* Happened Here", x 100:
by altester
258 parts =
"Nes Gadol Haya Po"
[נס גדול היה פה]
***
Here's a post from 5/10 which has much of the same imagery, yet predates the reveal of the black hole "photo". Harps, circles with center holes, even time (days) multiplied by 100. Has to do with embracing a new way of looking at things. The life of man (Gen 6:3), of Moses (Deu 34:7): 120 years...
The famous "Riddle of the Sphinx" was a timeline. Those who didn't know the answer were eaten by the Sphinx.
That's interesting because "the Great Sphinx" [הספינקס הגדול] = 413 = the book of life [ספר החיים], and a black hole (chor shachor, חור שחור) is a mega self-referencing, recursive pun, a "chor shechor".
Shachor (black) derives from shachar [dawn, from the alt name for Esther as the ayelet (eyelet) hashachar, the doe(nut) of the dawn]. However, the sh (letter shin) is also the relative pronoun prefix that, which, who, so a black hole can be viewed as a
Chor Shechor
חור שחור
A hole that is a hole
And to think that experts are sure that no light can escape.
= 728, same as marchevet, the hovering verb in Gen 1:2
which involves the redemption of the 288 sparks of divine light.
סּ
FB41
HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH WITH DAGESH
*Regarding the Tablets of the Law:
What was so special about the writing on the luchot, which attracted so much attention?
The gemara in Shabbat (104a), following the implication of the psukim, says that the letters mem and samech stood miraculously. As Rashi (ad loc.) explains, the letters were engraved through and through. Although the insides of those letters were not connected to the rest of the stone, they did not fall.
Ki Nes Gadol Haya Po:
For a great miracle happen here = 30 + 258 = 288
As explained on the earlier post, the seat for the Lego harp of 258 parts is Braille: "for".
1 Sam 16:11. Spin around and have a seat. :)
And God saw the light, that it was good (ki tov).
25,800 light-years away
If I wanted to play with that in relationship to the 288 sparks, I'd need another 3,000 light years. Hebrew-letter-wise, that would be a gimel (= 3) used as 3000, as is done with year-dates.
And on a dreidel (sevivon), the gimel represents the word gadol meaning great or large. A great gimel = 3000.
So far so good. It's all internally consistent.
The rules for the dreidel game say that a gimel up means "You get to take the whole pot!"
Great! The same thing happened to Joseph. Lucky! ;)
it will be a historic moment so make sure you've got snacks and plenty of fluids on hand. You're not going to want to miss this.
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