What will people remember about the year 2019 in the year 3019? Just as they're likely to recall 1969 as the year humans first walked on the moon , they might well hold up the first portrait of a black hole as this year's most memorable achievement.
By that measure, there's little question that the Event Horizon Telescope's radio view of M87's supermassive black hole , 55 million light-years from Earth, ranks as the year's top science story. "These are just singular moments in history," White House science adviser Kelvin Droegemeier told me in April when the image was unveiled in Washington, D.C. "We as humans need this."
This may worth something:
Photos of Black Holes Will Blow Our Minds Again in 2020
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The seemingly impossible, paradoxical news that astronomers had taken a picture of a supermassive black hole captured our imaginations in 2019 for good reason. What they actually showed us was a sort of shadow — a spherical blackness surrounded by a cosmic hurricane of matter and energy — but that was enough to qualify as a sign of real human progress.
Getting that now-iconic image relied on technology that did not exist at the turn of the millennium. The leaders of the project said they counted on Moore's Law to bring the electronic advances they needed. The image was constructed from radio waves picked up at eight far-flung telescopes — from France to Hawaii to the South Pole.
NASA shock: Hubble telescope reveals a behemoth black hole spewing radiation into space | Science
In this case, Hubble’s astronomers estimate a supermassive black hole hundreds of thousands to millions of times heavier than our Sun rests at ESO 021-G004's heart.
Supermassive black holes are the biggest known type of black hole and together with stellar-mass black holes are the most common type seen in the cosmos.
And thanks to the galaxy’s black hole, astronomers consider ESO 021-G004 to have an active nucleus.
Galaxy hunter: Finding a 'monster' black hole - CGTN
"But LAMOST has 4,000 eyes. It greatly improves the observation efficiency and increases our sample size, so the chances of discovering black holes have been greatly increased," Bai said.
With the advanced features of an instrument like LAMOST, the painstaking job of looking up at the same area of night sky with its patch of the same stars, at the same time, every single day is made a bit easier. And one little abnormal move is enough to get the astronomer's attention.
While you're here, how about this:
Science news of 2019: From Ring of Fire Black Hole to climate crisis | Science | News |
With the advancements made this year, the next decade looks to be promising for climate activism and space travel with some major announcements in 2019. Express.co.uk looks at the five biggest science stories of the year gone by, and what it means for the future.
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With 2019 marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission which saw humans first step foot on the Moon, NASA announced it is going to send people back to the lunar surface, and this time for good.
NASA's New Black Hole Simulation Mimics How Gravity Warps Light - IGN
Year in Review: The Top Science Stories of 2019 | Chicago News | WTTW
As the year comes to an end, three of our regular science contributors – Daniel Holz of the University of Chicago, Rabiah Mayas of the Museum of Science and Industry and Mark Hammergren of the Adler Planetarium – share what they regard as the most significant science stories of the year.
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Using the Event Horizon Telescope, scientists obtained an image of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87, outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon. (Credits: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.)
"Antarctica Alert" –Ghostly Invader from a Supermassive Black Hole Detected (2019 Most Popular) |
"It's like a crime scene investigation. The case involves an explosion, a suspect, and various pieces of circumstantial evidence," said Matthias Kadler , astrophysicist at the University of Würzburg in Germany about the event that occurred on Sept.
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(Each day, between Christmas and New Year's Day, we'll post one of The Daily Galaxy's 2019 most viewed posts as ranked by Google Analytics. With our best wishes for The Holidays.)
The cosmic invader set off a cacophony of code-red detectors in the The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, ultimately solving one of the enduring mysteries of physics and the cosmos.
Happening on Twitter
The last sunrise of 2019! Thanks to you all for following us and helping share important science and weather safety… https://t.co/UC7K0EkUIP NWS (from United States) Tue Dec 31 14:50:28 +0000 2019
Six humans from three countries will ring in the new year 16 times tonight after researching critical space science… https://t.co/EDTU0PA9tu Space_Station (from Low Earth Orbit) Tue Dec 31 19:41:25 +0000 2019
Archaeologists found the earliest illustrated book — a copy of the 4,000-year-old "Book of Two Ways," which was ins… https://t.co/Qjz8Z5PH9g nytimes (from New York City) Tue Dec 31 08:40:03 +0000 2019
Robert Del Naja from @MassiveAttackUK says the band will tour Europe by train next year, and Liverpool council will… https://t.co/hYdB0b0DwZ BBCr4today (from London, UK) Mon Dec 30 07:34:33 +0000 2019
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