Why this black hole photo is such a big deal

What it took to collect these 54-million-year-old photons from a supermassive black hole.

This is an updated version of a video we published in 2016 about the Event Horizon Telescope, an international collaboration to image a black hole for the first time in human history.

On April 10, 2019, the team announced their results: They had successfully imaged the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy m87, which is nearly 54 million light-years away from us. They were able to achieve unprecedented resolution using very long baseline interferometry, which combines the observations of multiple radio telescopes across the globe.

The team wanted to find out whether Einstein's Theory of General Relativity holds up in the extreme environment of black holes, and the results do, in fact, seem to be consistent with the predictions. In the future, we may see more and shaper images of black holes as the team targets smaller wavelengths of light and recruits more telescopes. Eventually, they may include an orbiting space telescope.

Vox Observatory takes a magnifying glass to some of life's most interesting questions with a focus on science and technology.

[AirshBornely]

Truely an image that'll be in school books in the next couple of years and will be a quiz of what date it was revealed. April 10th, 2019

[ronny]

stop complaining about the pixel, remember this pic came from 54mil light years away and my phone takes a pic of the same pixel from 5m away

[amanpanda]

So Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity which he formulated almost a century ago holds true today. How can you not like this or be amazed or marvel at this breakthrough

[mauriciomochon]

Have you noticed the smile on the guy's face in the last shot? That's the result of a lifetime work. Amazing.

[mukundbhanot]

It's amazing how we're looking at an image 54 million years into the past. Even though the waves are travelling at the speed of light it takes so long to get here. And this is just in our galaxy.
Shows how lonely you are in this vast universe.

[kesasilbzy]

They may go in to revised school books in 2020 but my school won’t buy new text books till 2030

[sorryimaiden]

I showed the image to my grandfather minutes before his passing as he loved everything about space

[bartman]

This is a picture of the way the black hole looked 54 million years ago. Mind blown.

[shanhussain]

Congratulations to everyone who works so hard for this incredible project and a huge thank you from all of us whom you have inspired.

[LEAHFR]

Light:**Travelling**

BlackHole:*NOM NOM NOM*

[GauravSharma-dyxv]

It's just so fascinating to know that Einstein theorized and imagined this 100 years

[austinpowers]

Truely an image that'll be in school books in the next couple of years and will be a quiz of what date it was revealed it was revealed April 10th, 2019

[Zeeq_O]

For people whose complaining about the quality of the image early on this day, do you realize how far that thing is?!

[ferrissbueller]

Black Hole: * Exist *

Meme pages: why is it so blurry?

[domtorres]

Its truly amazing that we get to see something like this in our lifetime. Excellent video vox!

[itsethan]

Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein deserved to see this

[bluefire]

2050
Scientists: Alright let’s enhance this image.




Image: 👌🏻

[scottsterling]

it looks like that thing when you look at a light then close your eyes

[cruzee]

"Should I tell them I just took a blurry picture of a donut?"

[MONi_LALA]

I love how people say, this is a crap photo. Just imagine you are on space station and trying to take photo of a single ant at sea level. That's a understatement too. If that camera pointing at Earth, it probably could see the pore on your face.