Harvard scientists shed light on importance of black hole image
In the annals of science, there are a few images — think the “pale blue dot” captured by Voyager I or Apollo 8’s “Earthrise” — that have both captured the public imagination and offered scientists insight into how the universe works. Researchers at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) just unveiled the latest. The image, the first-ever of a black hole, is destined for the shortlist of iconic images not only for what it can tell astronomers and physicists about how gravity and general relativity work under the most extreme conditions, but also because it captures what EHT Director Sheperd Doeleman called “a one-way door from our universe.” “This is a real breakthrough,” said Doeleman, a senior research fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). “I think this image could rank up there with those other images because we’re seeing something we never thought we could see.” More than a century after the existence...