Event Horizon

 

On Earth it is not possible to see beyond the horizon, a theoretical line.  In Space the event horizon is an imaginary spherical boundary marking the limit of a black hole, or the boundary between a black hole and rest of the universe, beyond which nothing can be seen and from which nothing, not even light, can escape.  At the event horizon the gravitational force is massive and is equal to the speed of light.  Once anything reaches the event horizon it has reached the point of no return and will inevitably be pulled in (because nothing has sufficient escape velocity to resist).  I imagine it to be something like water going down a plug hole, but much more dramatic and on a massive scale.  There is also backwash from my plug hole because a black hole converts the matter that it consumes into intense radiation that is violently expelled.

The Event Horizon Telescope is an international collaboration, launched in 2009.  It is a virtual, planet-Earth sized telescope made up of a global network (or array) of 8 ground-based radio telescopes situated in Hawaii, California, Arizona, Mexico, France, Chili and the South Pole. The collaboration has over 300 members working in 20 countries and 60 institutions.  Its job is to “see” what has previously been un-seeable.   

 



Radio telescopes work by receiving radio waves from the space around an object; some spots have stronger radio waves coming from them than others.  The information is stored in pixels which are turned into numbers.  Algorithms are then developed to process the numbers into images.  Amazingly, data is collected on hard drives and shipped on commercial cargo flights from the various observatories to the MIT Haystacks Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planch Institute in Bonn, for analysis. This means that incidents such as bad weather at the South Pole can lead to a delay in the delivery of results.

The first image of the shadow of a black hole was imaged using data captured in 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope.  The results were announced, and the first image of a black hole’s event horizon released in six simultaneous press conferences, on 10 April 2019.  The images were of the supermassive black hole known as Messier 87* (aka Virgo A) which is 53 million light years away from us. 



Shep Doeleman, the founding director of the Event Horizon Telescope and an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said:

“The spectacular results have surpassed our wildest expectations, and I am deeply proud of what we achieved as a team ….. Now the question one hears the most is, “What’s next?”” 

Topically, the Event Horizon Telescope was due to start observations in March 2020 to expand upon the first set of results but several observatories have had to shut down due to the Covid19 pandemic.  March and April are the best months to perform high quality Event Horizon observations so they will have to wait until March 2021 to try again.  Further into the future, and currently at the concept stage, the space-based Event Horizon Imager could have a resolution five times greater than the Earth-based Event Horizon Telescope.  Pretty impressive.

 

And finally …..

Event Horizon is the name of the spaceship in the 1997 sci-fi horror film “Event Horizon” (IMBd 6.7, Rotten Tomatoes 28%). When the film was released it was a total flop but it has since gained a cult following!

 

Jeanie, 21/10/20

Comments

  1. BridgetOctober 26, 2020 at 2:14 PM

    Do you think they're all in furlough meanwhile then? It's amazing cleverness isn't it?

    ReplyDelete

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