One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Back in April 2017, a global network of telescopes were used to see and capture the first ever photo of a black hole.
Some might ask, what is a black hole in the first place?
Well, a black hole is basically a combination of giant amounts of matter, squeezed into a very (and we can’t stress this enough) small area.
This small area creates a massive gravitational field that attracts everything around it and nothing can escape, even light. (And that’s where it gets its name)
The telescopes photographed the supermassive black hole of Messier 87 (M87) galaxy. Which is (only) 55 million light years away from our blue planet, meaning that it took 55 million years for its light to reach us.
We’re looking at history, literally.
Taking this photo was no walk in the park. It took the storage of thousands of gigabytes, and the effort of hundreds of scientists.
And with this image, we humans finally have our first visual evidence that black holes really exist.
Karl Schwarzchildwould be proud.
