Articles for tag: Astronomy, astrophysics, Black Holes, cosmic phenomena, Event Horizon, Quantum Physics, Relativity, Scientific Discovery, Space Mysteries, Space-Time

What Lies Beyond a Black Hole’s Event Horizon?

October 18, 2025

The universe holds countless mysteries, yet few capture the imagination quite like black holes. These cosmic monsters have spawned decades of scientific speculation and popular fascination. You’ve likely wondered what happens if someone were to cross that infamous boundary called the event horizon. Recent discoveries in 2025 have brought us closer than ever to understanding ...

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. In coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the centre of Messier 87 and its shadow. The shadow of a black hole seen here is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary — the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name — is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across. While this may sound large, this ring is only about 40 microarcseconds across — equivalent to measuring the length of a credit card on the surface of the Moon. Although the telescopes making up the EHT are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks — hydrogen masers — which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data – roughly 350 terabytes per day – which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers — known as correlators — at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration.

Did You Know? M87’s Monster Black Hole Spins at 80% of the Cosmic Limit—And Feeds Even Faster!

June 13, 2025

Suhail Ahmed

At the core of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), a cosmic behemoth is challenging preconceptions. Renowned for being the first black hole ever directly photographed, the supermassive black hole M87 has just exposed another amazing secret: it devours matter even faster and spins at a blistering 80% of the maximum speed in the universe. Using ...

What Lies Beyond a Black Hole’s Event Horizon?

Did You Know? M87’s Monster Black Hole Spins at 80% of the Cosmic Limit—And Feeds Even Faster!

The Dinosaur Mummy: The Best-Preserved Fossil Ever Found?

Time Capsules in Space: What Earth Artifacts Could Teach Alien Archaeologists

How Old Is Your Water? The Surprising Age of What’s Coming Out of Your Tap