On the 10th April 2019, Nasa revealed the first ever picture of a Blackhole. A jaw-dropping proof of the invisible humanity has long-awaited for since Einstein exposed to us the vertiginous theory of relativity.
Witness the Invisible.
Space is a challenge for imagination. Those who turn their thoughts towards the stars have to go beyond the natural boundaries of creativity in hope to shape infinity.
How can the human brain even start to comprehend the immensity of emptiness in which he is no more significant than a piece of salt among an ocean that can fill a billion planet earth? Thanks to telescopes and satellite pictures, we are now able to scratch the surface of the great void.
Like the Event Horizon Telescope (HET) who takes credit for bringing us this new discovery:
Humanity has officially witnessed the invisible, the shapeless, the timeless. A mass so heavy that it deforms space, time and light. Yes, on this cover picture you can see what even light cant shine, a black hole.
So how is that even possible?
So first, technically what we can see is not a black hole but its “shadow”. The fire colored rings giving it a donut shape are actually photon rings attracted by a mass billion times heavier than the sun, which is placed in the middle of a galaxy named “Elliptical galaxy Messier 87″. And the gravitational rings are being formed by the never-ending titanic pull of the black hole.
Astrophysicist Katie Bouman who was behind the computer when the discovery was made said :
” This is like just the beginning. Another window in what can black holes can tell us about our laws and physics.”
What are the implications?
The problem with modern science is that we study on such macro- and micro- scales, we can only speculate about what the eye is incapable of seeing. And most of the time only mathematics can carry experiences to illustrate the invisible or unwitnessable.
In 1915, Albert Einstein put together the theory of relativity. Which is the over-simplified idea: gravity can affect the motion of light. This is the first discovery launching the space venture. Then, it was put together that in space singularities can create gravitational fields so powerful that it would not only affect light, it will obliterate it. Thus, the black hole was found to be part of our reality.
“Even if we had predicted that if you had a black hole you could have that ring of light, we didn’t know we were going to get that ring of light. Just being able to see it exists, is huge.” Katie Bouman
Like I said before in this very simplified explanation, it was just a very likely possible theory that could have never been proven by anything else than numbers. Because who could have imagined at the time one day we would have developed the technology to observe and experiment what is happening millions of light years away from our small planet earth.
Space is definitively the “new world” for modern-day explorers and dreamers. And it still has many mysteries awaiting for brilliant minds to uncover.
