The center of our galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole and a tumultuous, active, high-energy environment. (Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA Hubble, Chandra) As I write this, a conglomeration of radio telescopes scattered across Earth are acting as one giant instrument to try to image the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It’s no easy feat. A black hole, by definition, is so dense and the gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape its confines. So how can an object that can’t emit light and that doesn’t reflect light be observed? By looking for its shadow, and that’s exactly what the so-called Event Horizon Telescope is doing.
Black holes are common objects in the universe. We think each star at least 30 times the mass of our Sun ends up as a black hole. Thousands and thousands of stars that size live in just our Milky ...
