The central black hole of the Milky Way has finally emerged

Like the unmasked spy, who was only a code name – Sagittarius A * – is now a “face”. Thursday, May 12, Science Federation Event Horizon Telescope The EHT, which brings together more than 300 researchers from around the world, has, in fact, released a very intelligent, invisible photo of the giant black hole sitting in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. In the picture, the funny face is a little blurry: an orange disk with lighter, almost white areas, and, in the middle, a dark spot. This shadow is Sagittarius A *, which derives its name from the constellation Sagittarius, which is the brightest source of radio waves (hence A, the first letter of the alphabet). By definition, a black hole is a very dense body whose gravitational field brings everything back to it, including light that cannot escape. In one image, we can only “see” it in Chinese shades, and in contrast to a glowing background, the gas and dust disk is gravitationally white-hot, all around it at astounding speeds.

Let’s face it, the film has the air of Teja Woo. In April 2019, the same federation already caused a stir by releasing a photo of the Galaxy M87, the first photo of the black hole. Same glowing ring, same dark puddle in the center. “The results can be a bit disappointing as both films are identicalFrédéric Gueth, deputy director of the Institute of Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM), acknowledged that it was founded by the CNRS and the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, part of EHT. But, really, this is a very interesting result that shows two things. First, it is the confirmation of the first observation that it is not due to a latent error that went unnoticed. ⁇

Einstein’s predictions were verified by observation

“SecondFrédéric Gueth continues, It should be noted that the masses of these two objects are very different: in the case of Sagittarius A *, the black hole is a few million times larger than the Sun, while M87 is a multiple monster. Masses a billion times as massive as the sun. Still, they have almost the same head. This is what general relativity predicts. ⁇ This suggests that the same thing always happens outside the black hole, regardless of its mass (its size, proportional to it). “The purpose of the game is to answer the question: Is there a difference between observations and theoretical predictions? The answer, for now, is no.”, Concludes the Deputy Director of IRAM. Jeffrey Bower, chief scientist at EHT, said: “We were amazed at how well the size of the ring matched Einstein’s predictions of general relativity. ⁇ So the great Albert can rest in peace.

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