Has the Milky Way’s Black Hole Come to Light?

What is going on with our universe?

There is a massive black hole hidden behind the clouds of dust and gas in the constellation Sagittarius, which is 26,000 light-years away. The equivalent of millions of stars have been dispatched to eternity, leaving a ghostly field and violently twisting space-time. Nobody knows where the door leads or where it is on the other side.

The world is about to get its most intimate look at this mess. Over the last decade, an international team of more than 300 astronomer has been training the event horizon telescope on Sagittarius A*, a faint source of radio waves. On Thursday at 9 a.m. The team, led by Sheperd Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, will release its latest results in six simultaneous news conferences in Washington and around the world.

The team doesn't speak to news media. The first picture of a black hole was produced by the same group in April 2019.

We have seen what we thought was impossible, said Dr. Doeleman at the time. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has an image of that.

The betting is that the team has created an image of Sagittarius A*, our very own doughnut of doom. If Dr. Sheperd's team is able to see the incomprehensible, it would reveal a lot about how the universe works.

The results of the project could be great, said Janna Levin, a gravitational theorist at the college.

A guide to the spaceship.