A team of around 350 international scientists, including Mexicans, managed to obtain the first image of the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, which is at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and whose mass is four million times that of our Sun.
This fact was announced this morning simultaneously in various countries, including Mexico.
The Alfonso Serrano Large Millimeter Telescope (GTM), operated by the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE) and supported by the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), is part of this international collaboration, along with other radio telescopes located in different parts of the planet, explained David Hughes, director of the GTM and researcher at the INAOE.
In press conferences at Conacyt, it was explained that an international team of astronomers and astronomers unveiled the first image of this practically inactive supermassive black hole.
This finding provides “valuable clues about the functioning of these giants, which are presumed to reside in the center of most galaxies.”
The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT), using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes.
The image finally offers the real aspect of the enormous object that is in the center of our galaxy. Scientists had already studied stars orbiting around something invisible, compact and very massive in the center of the Milky Way. These orbits allowed us to postulate that this object, known as Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, is a black hole and the image released today provides the first direct visual evidence of it.
Dr. María Elena Álvarez-Buylla Roces, director of Conacyt, assured that this scientific announcement is “relevant and of great interest to humanity.”
He recalled that in April 2019, “a historic milestone was the capture of the first image of the shadow of a black hole” announced to the world, that was the M87*, located in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87.
He stressed that the government has supported the GTM improvement, installed in the mountains of Puebla, and stressed that through the GTM and national experts, the “participation of Mexico is important” in this finding.
Hughes pointed out that these images, as well as those of the first rotating massive black hole, from 2019, confirm Albert Einstein’s theory of Relativity.
“We are very excited to share the new results” and added in a later interview that these advances, in addition to satisfying human curiosity about the Universe and expanding knowledge of black holes, can be translated into applications in other fields, for example the resolution achieved could influence an improvement in the use of images, for example in medicine, with which invasive procedures are avoided, also everything developed could improve communications and even in cryogenics.
Black holes cannot be seen, because they are completely dark, but the glowing gas that surrounds them can be captured.
They explained that because the black hole is about 27,000 light-years from Earth, “it appears to us to be about the same size in the sky as a donut would be on the Moon.”
To obtain its image, the EHT team created a network of eight radio observatories, previously built for other purposes, combined to form a single virtual telescope the size of Earth. The EHT observed Sgr A* over several nights, collecting data for many hours at a time, similar to how a traditional camera would take an image with a long exposure time.
“The GTM’s involvement in the EHT is important, in part because the GTM is the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, designed and optimized for observations at a millimeter wavelength,” Hughes said.
The doctor, Luis Alberto Zapata González, director of the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) of the UNAM, explained that “for a long time we were busy confirming the existence of black holes” and stressed that “we confirm that Einstein is correct”.
He argued that unlike the other black hole identified in 2019, the one in our galaxy has a large variability of hot gas around the black hole. “This tells us that it changes in minutes,” which is why it took five years to get the image of the Milky Way’s black hole. And it is that since the observations of 2017 there were indications of its existence.
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