>Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy.
>It measures 40 billion km across - three million times the size of the Earth - and has been described by scientists as "a monster".
>The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.
>Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
>It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight linked telescopes.
>Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, told BBC News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.
>"What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System," he said.
>"It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in the Universe."
>The image shows an intensely bright "ring of fire", as Prof Falcke describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined - which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth.
>The edge of the dark circle at the centre is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which is an object that has such a large gravitational pull, not even light can escape.
Kayden Ramirez
It's pretty cool ive been wanting to see what they actually look like, and looks like our predicaments weren't that far off from what they actually are even tho this picture is hyper shit quality. >now our generation will actually be remembered for something
Carson Morris
>size 3 million times earth's >mass 6.5 billion times of our sun >absolute monster >heavyweight champion of black holes >light brighter than every star in the galaxy combined
Lmao it's the chad of our galaxy
Hunter Reed
Pretty cool, I'm learning about space & stuff in my astronomy class. But the image with the girl smiling on the mac ticks me off.
It's not in our galaxy you dimwit, every galaxy has a black hole in its center.
Oliver Price
virgin milky way chad M87
Andrew Bell
I know it's not and I know all galaxies have black holes at their center I meant our local cluster or something idk it's 3am and I'm not thinking straight
Dylan Cox
All of that time and money wasted and they can't even get a clear image.
Blurry shit
Anthony Morales
Looks like the fucking Eye of Sauron. What have we stumbled upon.
Yeah, well here's my crazy ramblings, all theoretical musings:
I wonder if it's sentient. I recall reading somewhere that the universe has some sort of sentience that we can't comprehend and it was based on observations that electrons for example will have an observable change in their status when something happens billions of miles away, also the theory of everything being connected. If there was any place to look for any glimpse or proof of such silliness, it'd be this black hole.
Also it's the biggest mass we've seen in existence so far, like a big fucking lighthouse in the sky that any sentient life in our universe advancing in technology/ civilisation will eventually have a gaze at, because it's clearly a significant thing in the universe. Probably a bunch of alien planets scattered throughout our universe have some sort of device pointing at this fucker.
It'd be the ideal spot for aliens to to put a bug gigantic beacon to let other lifeforms know there's other life out there, if it didn't suck everything into it lmao (on the bright side the beacon would probably drift in the superheated gas for billions of years before even getting to the event horizon)
Kayden Adams
I'm really freaking myself out right now thinking about seeing this thing with my own eyes, or going in it.
Austin Ramirez
The sun rise in the east, and lies down on the west. Anything above this is useless.
Oliver Edwards
I meant I wish it was closer to Earth so that it'd suck the Earth in and destroy it.
Andrew Hall
I have thought about this in the past and a lot today after this discovery.
Imagining first that it becomes possible, NASA is recruiting any sad mofo that is willing to die in the name of science and get thrown into the black hole inside a small spaceship. Would you do it? Your name will be remembered by everyone and there's the possibility as well of arriving at another dimension.
Despite that I would freak out due to the gargantuan size of the object I am falling into, I would do it. There's nothing in this earth that makes me want to stay.
