Astronomers set to make ‘groundbreaking’ Black Hole announcement next week

The European Southern Observatory has revealed that there will be a huge announcement next week. Reports suggest that the world is about to finally see the first ever photo of a black hole's event horizon. According to the advance statement, the researchers will be discussing the "first result from the Event Horizon Telescope." On 10 April 2019, at 6.30 pm the European Commission, European Research Council, and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project will present results they are describing as "ground-breaking".

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a project to create a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes and combining data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around the Earth. The aim is to observe the immediate environment of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way, as well as the even larger black hole in the supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, with angular resolution comparable to the black hole's event horizon.

“But seeing the event horizon - the point outside a black hole at which light can no longer achieve escape velocity - is theoretically possible, although not easy. Spacetime around a black hole is weird; in addition, Sgr A* is shrouded in a thick cloud of dust and gas,” the Science Alert reported.

The historical event is going to be streamed on YouTube.

A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings.