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Earth Prepares To Snap First-Ever Image Of A Black Hole’s Event Horizon

“Instead of a single telescope, 15-to-20 radio telescopes are arrayed across the globe, observing the same target simultaneously. With up to 12,000 kilometers separating the most distant telescopes, objects as small as 15 microarcseconds (μas) can be resolved: the size of a fly on the Moon.”

One of relativity’s oddest predictions is the existence of black holes, objects so dense and massive that nothing, not event light can escape from them. But that lack-of-escaping is limited to a certain volume of space: that within the black hole’s event horizon. Although black holes have been detected and identified, an event horizon has never yet been imaged. That, however, is likely about to change when the Event Horizon Telescope comes online. Given the general relativistic prediction of the size of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy – 37 microarcseconds – and the resolution of the EHT that spans the diameter of Earth, its event horizon should be visible. Speculations about black holes date back to 1783, and just a few decades after the first black hole candidate was identified, we’re now prepared to directly image one.

Kevin Frayer’s photographs of illegal Chinese steel factories look like postcards from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Thick smoke spews out of tall stacks, steam rises from vast pits, and molten steel flows across the ground like lava. All around, men toil without even basic protective gear.  “It was like stepping back in time,” says Frayer, who spent four days at two steel factories in Inner Mongolia in early November. “The way of working seemed unchanged and unaffected by technology.”