Astrophysicists hope that over the next 12 months they will get something that no one else has been able to do. Something that can change or at least supplement our understanding of the universe. Black holes are astrophysical objects with such a powerful force of attraction that nothing can escape from them. Even light. Albert Einstein once predicted their existence in his general theory of relativity, but until today, no one has ever seen them. All our knowledge about them is only theoretical, except for the observation of their effects on other objects in space. But the Event Horizon Telescope project can change that.
Event Horizon Telescope consists of eight telescopes located in six points of the globe and united into a single network. Working in unison, they are powerful enough to capture an image of a black hole. At least that's what the scientists responsible for this project think.
“First, you need ultra high resolution. Imagine the equivalent of seeing the grooves on a golf ball in Los Angeles while you are in New York,”says Event Horizon Telescope project manager Shepherd Dohleman.
Second, Duhleman continues, you will need to somehow make your way through the gas and dust of the Milky Way, as well as the incandescent gas surrounding the black hole itself. This will require an Earth-sized telescope. This is where the Event Horizon Telescope comes in.
Large Millimeter Telescope. The largest of its kind and is part of the Event Horizon Telescope.
Using a network of individual radio telescopes scattered across the planet, the Event Horizon Telescope team has created a "virtual telescope the size of the Earth," Dohleman says. Scientists have synchronized the operation of these systems and programmed in such a way that they can simultaneously observe and record data on the received radio waves on electronic media. The researchers are confident that by further combining the data obtained, it will be possible to obtain an image that is equivalent in quality and accuracy to the image that would be obtained if you had a telescope the size of a planet.
In April 2017, scientists tested their virtual telescope for the first time. Over the course of five nights, eight radio dishes located at six points on the planet were directed towards the radio source Sagittarius A *, located in the center of our galaxy. Scientists believe this source is a supermassive black hole.
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Due to the "winter quiet period" until mid-December, it was not possible to pick up data from the South Polar Telescope and transmit it to the Highstack Observatory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now that scientists have received all the data from all eight radio telescopes, they can start analyzing them, and, of course, hope to get the first real image of a black hole in history.
The importance of work is difficult to overestimate. After all, if the image can really be obtained, then this will become not only the first real evidence of the existence of black holes, but also may open up new knowledge about our Universe.
“The importance of black holes for the Universe is very great. It is believed that supermassive black holes located in the centers of galaxies evolve along with their galaxies. So if we can see what is happening on their event horizon, it will help us better understand how the universe works,”explains Duhleman.
Astrophysicists are confident that in the future they will be able to get images of black holes much more often. And this, in turn, will make it possible to determine whether what is described in Einstein's general theory of relativity is true with regard to their boundaries. In addition, scientists will be able to study in more detail the features of the process of absorption of matter by black holes and their growth in size, adds Duhleman. True, here he explains that the April observation of Sagittarius A * was only the first trial use of the Event Horizon Telescope virtual system, so there is some probability of disappointment in the results obtained.
“Of course, we cannot yet guarantee that we will see anything at all. Ultimately, nature can play a cruel joke on us. However, the Event Horizon Telescope is now fully functional, so over the next years we will continue to try to image and see what a black hole actually looks like,”says Duhleman.
While the team is eager to get the first image of the black hole, they are slow to analyze the data and conduct a thorough and very careful review. Therefore, Doleman does not indicate more accurate information about when this work will be completed.
Nikolay Khizhnyak