EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE RESPONSE
Editor's Note: Stella S. ('18) wrote this piece in response to a New York Times article she wrote in her advanced chemistry course.
During the last two weeks of March 2015, a dedicated team of scientists, using a “telescope as big as the world,” attempted to take the first ever picture of the supermassive black hole located at the center of our Milky Way.
Well, it wasn’t really a telescope as big as the earth. It was actually a network of radio antennas spread across the world, which does make it the largest ever network of radio antennas. They called this “telescope” the “Event Horizon Telescope,” named after the ambitious project, to take the first ever picture of the black hole in our galaxy, or at least its event horizon.
The network of the Event Horizon Telescope is comprised of seven telescopes spread across six different mountains. Each of the antennas was meticulously synchronized with new atomic clocks. The nerve center of the telescope, named the Large Millimeter Telescope, is on top of the Sierra Negra volcano – now inactive – in Mexico and successfully recorded some data over the five chances it had over the course of two weeks.
Unfortunately, weather impeded much of the process, but the telescope itself was an incredible accomplishment. A picture of a black hole would open a world of concurrent scientific interest.
To truly understand the potential awesomeness of this phenomena, it is important to understand a little bit about black holes and everything we know – and don’t know – about these celestial curiosities.
Black holes are a result of the death of a supermassive star. When the supermassive star runs out of fuel, it begins to collapse and eventually the core implodes and collapses into itself. The gravitational pull inside of a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape, hence the name “black” hole. Theoretically, the closest thing we can take a picture of is the “event horizon” which is the outer edge of a black hole. Ironically, the event horizon is one of the brightest things in the sky, because there is a great concentration of energy and light that appears before getting sucked in. Many scientists have theorized how you would die in a black hole – this question is known as the firewall paradox.
Black holes grow with every bit of mass they consume and could be the factor determining the size of galaxies in which they exist. The shape and size of a black hole could confirm the validity of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The black hole in the center of the Milky Way is estimated to be equivalent to the mass of four million suns. Luckily for us, it is too far away to suck Earth in. And don’t worry, the Sun isn’t nearly massive enough to become a black hole.
In retrospect we know very little about black holes. So why are we spending so much effort trying to take a picture of this thing we can’t even see? The Event Horizon telescope could open a “hole” world of information that we have never even conceived. To put it bluntly, “everything we know about the universe could change if we could know for certain what happens to information inside a black hole” (Klein). This is what makes black holes so scary: that everything we know could be challenged by the information a black hole contains; and the closer we get to taking a picture of one, the closer we get to uncovering this intimidating unseen territory.
Klein, J. (2015, June 8). An Earthling’s Guide to Black Holes. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com.
Overbye, D. (2015, June 8). Black Hole Hunters. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com.
Overbye, D. (2015, December 28). Science News That Stuck With Us in 2015: Celestial Celebrations of Eistein. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com.
Well, it wasn’t really a telescope as big as the earth. It was actually a network of radio antennas spread across the world, which does make it the largest ever network of radio antennas. They called this “telescope” the “Event Horizon Telescope,” named after the ambitious project, to take the first ever picture of the black hole in our galaxy, or at least its event horizon.
The network of the Event Horizon Telescope is comprised of seven telescopes spread across six different mountains. Each of the antennas was meticulously synchronized with new atomic clocks. The nerve center of the telescope, named the Large Millimeter Telescope, is on top of the Sierra Negra volcano – now inactive – in Mexico and successfully recorded some data over the five chances it had over the course of two weeks.
Unfortunately, weather impeded much of the process, but the telescope itself was an incredible accomplishment. A picture of a black hole would open a world of concurrent scientific interest.
To truly understand the potential awesomeness of this phenomena, it is important to understand a little bit about black holes and everything we know – and don’t know – about these celestial curiosities.
Black holes are a result of the death of a supermassive star. When the supermassive star runs out of fuel, it begins to collapse and eventually the core implodes and collapses into itself. The gravitational pull inside of a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape, hence the name “black” hole. Theoretically, the closest thing we can take a picture of is the “event horizon” which is the outer edge of a black hole. Ironically, the event horizon is one of the brightest things in the sky, because there is a great concentration of energy and light that appears before getting sucked in. Many scientists have theorized how you would die in a black hole – this question is known as the firewall paradox.
Black holes grow with every bit of mass they consume and could be the factor determining the size of galaxies in which they exist. The shape and size of a black hole could confirm the validity of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The black hole in the center of the Milky Way is estimated to be equivalent to the mass of four million suns. Luckily for us, it is too far away to suck Earth in. And don’t worry, the Sun isn’t nearly massive enough to become a black hole.
In retrospect we know very little about black holes. So why are we spending so much effort trying to take a picture of this thing we can’t even see? The Event Horizon telescope could open a “hole” world of information that we have never even conceived. To put it bluntly, “everything we know about the universe could change if we could know for certain what happens to information inside a black hole” (Klein). This is what makes black holes so scary: that everything we know could be challenged by the information a black hole contains; and the closer we get to taking a picture of one, the closer we get to uncovering this intimidating unseen territory.
Klein, J. (2015, June 8). An Earthling’s Guide to Black Holes. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com.
Overbye, D. (2015, June 8). Black Hole Hunters. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com.
Overbye, D. (2015, December 28). Science News That Stuck With Us in 2015: Celestial Celebrations of Eistein. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com.
