For the first time in the history of our Universe we have an actual picture of a Black Whole. Einstein theorized their existence. I was delighted to see that they seem to appear to be as we have depicted in all our science-fiction television and movies. I look forward to the years ahead and what we will find concerning the event horizon.
Capturing a black hole, living in space and a new human relative: This week in space and science
By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Updated 6:31 AM EDT, Sat April 13, 2019
CNN)This week, scientists shared the very first photo of a supermassive black hole, and the much-anticipated final results of NASA's Twins Study researching longterm spaceflight's effect on the human body were released.
And that's not all. The fossils of a previously unknown human relative were discovered in a cave. Scientists found an exoplanet and considered how life might thrive on other exoplanets. Declassified U2 spy plane images revealed archeological features lost to time.
And unfortunately, a mission to the moon ended by crashing into it. Here's everything you might have missed this week in the world of space and science news.
Einstein was right (again)
On Wednesday, the world was introduced to the
first photo of a black hole. And then a million memes erupted, tagging such phenomena as the eye of Sauron from "Lord of the Rings" and suggesting cats as the real cause.
The supermassive black hole resides at the center of the galaxy M87, 55 million light-years from us. It's now been named
Powehi, a Hawaiian phrase referring to an "embellished dark source of unending creation."
Scientists used a global network of eight telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration that effectively created an Earth-size telescope. In the image, a central dark region is encapsulated by a ring of light that looks brighter on one side. It acts as confirmation of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.
And then the world was introduced to the smiling face of
Katie Bouman. The monumental effort of capturing this image and sharing it with the world wouldn't have been possible without Bouman, who developed a crucial algorithm that helped devise imaging methods.
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab compared a photo of Bouman among stacks of hard drives to a famous 1969 photo of computer scientist Margaret Hamilton standing next to the thousands of sheets of code she and her team wrote for the Apollo Project.
