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African Scientists, Tech May Drive Future Black Hole Discoveries

Astronomers have revealed the first image of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The image was produced by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, an international team made up of over 300 scientists on five continents - including Africa. This is according to Iniyan Natarajan - Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Wits Centre for Astrophysics - and Roger Deane - Director at the Wits Centre for Astrophysics and SKA Chair in Radio Astronomy - who wrote for The Conversation.

Black holes were predicted by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity over a century ago. They are regions of space so dense that nothing, including light, can escape. Their boundary is known as the event horizon, which marks the point of no return. That's just one of the reasons these objects are hidden from our eyes. The other is that they are exceedingly small, when placed in their cosmic context. If our Milky Way galaxy were the size of a soccer field, its black hole event horizon would be a million times smaller than a pin prick at centrefield.

Natarajan and Deane's team photographed Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy by capturing light from the hot swirling gas in the immediate vicinity of the black hole. This light, with a wavelength of 1 millimetre, is recorded by a global network of antennas that form a single, Earth-sized virtual telescope.

The importance of the image includes its validation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and the additional insight it may offer into the seemingly implausible relationship between a supermassive black hole and its host galaxy like how the co-evolve over cosmic time, despite their completely contrasting sizes.

InFocus

EHT Collaboration

This is the first image of Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope. The telescope is named after the “event horizon”, the boundary of the black hole beyond which no light can escape.

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