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Updated:05/04/2022 10:27h
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We are just a few days away from what will clearly be a great scientific announcement. It will be the next day 12 and the protagonists are none other than the scientists of the EHT (Event Horizon Telescope), the same ones that in 2019 surprised the world with the first image of a black hole. Only this time the announcement, which will take place at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in Chile, will have to do with our own galaxy.
The EHT is the fruit of an international effort to create a ‘virtual telescope’ the size of the Earth, something that has been achieved by combining the capabilities of eight large telescopes spread over the entire surface of the planet. For years, project scientists have been studying the heart of the Milky Way, hoping to image Sagittarius A*the enormous supermassive black hole that occupies its center and that has a mass equivalent to that of four million suns.
And judging by the multiple simultaneous press conferences that astronomers are organizing around the world for May 12, everything indicates that they have succeeded. A milestone, of course, that will mark a before and after in the history of Astronomy.
As their name suggests, black holes are invisible, making them extraordinarily difficult to see. What we can see, as happened in 2019, is the ‘event horizon’ of the black hole (hence the name of the EHT), the ‘border’ that, once crossed, does not allow anything, not even light, to come out again.
On that occasion, a spectacular image was obtained of the outline (the event horizon) of the gigantic black hole that resides in the center of the galaxy M87, 55 million light years from Earth and that has an estimated mass of 6,500 million suns. . Around the hole, an orange ring of the material captured by the space monster, which before falling frantically spins around it, so fast that it begins to glow brightly.
‘something innovative’
But in 2019 it was not possible to get an image of Sagittarius A*. And it is that it is much easier to observe the center of a distant galaxy than our own. The reason? Sagittarius A* is surrounded by a dense cloud of dust and gas which makes any observation difficult. If now the EHT team has managed to overcome this difficulty, in just a few days we could also see the image of the central black hole of the Milky Way, with its bright accretion disk rotating around it. A historic moment for science.
The chances that this, and not another, is the content of the ad are not negligible. In fact, in its press release, the European Southern Observatory assures that it will be ‘something innovative’ which is exactly the same expression they used in 2019 before showing the image of M87. But to know for sure, there is no choice but to wait a few days…
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