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First Ever Black Hole Image: 'Feels Like Looking at the Gates of Hell,'
Scientist Says
The Wired Word for the Week of April 21, 2019
In the News
On April 10, the first ever direct image of a black hole was published, following observations made by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017 of the supermassive black hole in Messier 87's galactic center, known as M87*. In releasing the image, project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian, said, "We have seen what we thought was unseeable."
A black hole is a region of outer space exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that almost nothing -- not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light -- can escape from inside it. The existence of black holes was posited in 1916 by Albert Einstein.
In 1974, Stephen Hawking calculated that black holes could also emit radiation, and, absent other sources of mass, would eventually disappear. Realistically, this only affects small black holes: An object the size of M87* would require well over 1060 (that's 1 followed by 60 zeros!) years to fade.
The black hole in the released image above resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun. At the press conference in Brussels where the image was revealed, scientist Heino Falcke said, "We're looking at a region that we've never looked at before, a region that we cannot really imagine being there. It feels like looking at the gates of hell, the end of space and time."
The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration is a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes around the globe, operated through international collaboration. Together they form an unprecedented Earth-sized virtual radio-telescope.
More than 200 researchers were involved in capturing the image, which is the first direct evidence of a supermassive black hole -- the largest of the three types of black holes in the universe -- and its shadow.
Because blackness is a prime characteristic of black holes, scientists can't "see" them the way they can see stars and other objects in space. Instead, they must rely on the radiation that is emitted as dust and gas as they are drawn into the vortex. Thus, the image released on April 10 was neither a photo as we know them nor what our eyes would see if we were close enough.
As explained by James Gruetzner, a physicist who consults for TWW, the observations were made at radio frequencies (231 GHz--wavelength of 1.3 mm--for you technical types), not visible light. The "pictures" were artificially constructed using very-long-baseline-interferometry techniques. "The radio waves were received simultaneously by the eight receivers forming the EHT collaboration (two each in Chile and Hawaii, with the others in Antarctica, Arizona, Mexico and Spain).
On four different nights, these radio receivers recorded three to seven minutes of signals. These signals were then massaged, compared and modified to produce effective signals. These signals provided input to image-reconstruction and smoothing algorithms run by several different teams. The outputs were images such as shown in the news.
Despite all the assumptions, these are actually techniques," Gruetzner said, "and give useful information -- along with error estimates -- but do not form a 'photo' as commonly understood." The image published is known as a "false-color image," said Gruetzner, who added that we shouldn't be misled by the name, as false-color imaging is a valid method of data display and analysis.
"The published image uses an intensity-based 'hot' colormap," said Gruetzner. "This would have low-intensities black, high-intensities white, and intermediate intensities of various orange and red hues, similar to what one would see while heating up an iron rod."
The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration provides scientists with a new tool to conduct radio astronomy and examine some of the most interesting objects in the universe.
More on this story can be found at these links:
Astronomers Reveal First Direct Visual Evidence of a Supermassive Black Hole. SciTechDaily
First Ever Real Image of a Black Hole Revealed. New Scientist
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results ... The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Black Holes: Facts, Theory & Definition. Space.com
The Big Questions
1. Compare and contrast outer space's black hole and Easter's empty tomb. What might each symbolize for your life?
2. Have you ever thought of a particular temptation as a gateway to hell? Why?
3. When have events and problems made your life feel like a black hole, consuming all resources that came near it? What, if anything, did you learn at church that helped?
4. In what ways, if at all, has learning about black holes increased your awe about God as Creative Force?
Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
1 Thessalonians 1:2-3
We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (For context, read 1:1-10.)
Paul, accompanied by Silas, visited Thessalonica on his second missionary journey. According to the account of that visit in Acts 17:1-9, Paul preached in the synagogue there and won several converts to Christ, both among the Jews and among the Gentile population. He and Silas apparently stayed only a few weeks, but from the tone of this letter to the church, we gather that the time they were there was enough to give Paul and Silas a deep appreciation for the church that grew there from those converts.
So now, writing to them, Paul addresses them as brothers and sisters and commends them for their "work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." He even comments that they had "become an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia" (v. 7), a reference to the larger area of which Thessalonica was a part.
The church at Thessalonica, of course, was not merely a repository where faith, hope and love were banked away for retrieval after a calamity; it was a place from which the message of faith, the testimony of hope and the power of love went forth to work in the world every day. But at the same time, it was also a place where people lacking faith or feeling hopeless and unlovable, could find those blessings. In that sense, the church at Thessalonica was a fortress against the gates of Hades.
And in that sense, every church should be a storehouse where people in need of the great virtues can find them.
Questions: It has been rightly said that church is the place where faith is offered without embarrassment, where hope is nourished without delusion and where love is exercised without limits. In what ways do you experience this to be so? How do faith, hope and love fortify you against the gates of hell?
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (CEB)
God has made everything fitting in its time, but has also placed eternity in [mortals'] hearts, without enabling them to discover what God has done from beginning to end. (For context, read 3:9-14.)
2 Peter 1:10-11
Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you. (For context, read 1:3-11.)
The verse from Ecclesiastes says that God has placed a sense of eternity in our hearts, but he has not enabled us to grasp the entirety of God's work. Nonetheless, God promises "the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" to those who receive him.
So how long is eternity? Stephen Hawking calculated the lifetime of a black hole the size of M87* to be more than 1060 years -- much, much longer than the time since the calculated "big bang" origin of the universe (1.4 x 107 years ago).Written out, the difference between the two is obvious:
- Big bang: 14,000,000 years
- M87* decay time: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
(Aside: The M87* decay time is very much a "minimum": Even by Hawking's theory, the actual time is much longer.)
Perhaps some TWW readers can comprehend these lengths of time, but most people cannot. Yet in eternity, the decay time for M87* is smaller than a fraction.
Questions: How does the concept of eternal life with God affect or influence your daily life? Are there any ways in which talking or thinking about eternity makes you uncomfortable? If so, why?
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