Scientists working with the Event Horizon Telescope recently released an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the first-ever picture of our local singularity. Named Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A star”), the black hole has the mass of four million suns, and is surrounded by a vortex of glowing material heated to extreme temperatures as it’s sucked into the unknown world of the black hole.
The picture is just the second black hole to be imaged, following the release in 2019 of a picture of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. These stunning snapshots come thanks to the EHT, which is not one telescope but many spread out across the planet. Combining these observations lets astronomers effectively create a telescope that is as large as Earth, and which can see objects much farther away than anything else. For scale, consider that the EHT is powerful enough that from Earth it could see an orange placed on the Moon.
Peering inside a black hole for the first time is an undeniably important achievement, and one that captured the imaginations of astronomers and the public alike. But with the world’s most powerful telescope, surely there are other cool things to find out there in the universe — like, say, extraterrestrial intelligence. Could we turn the EHT on distant planets, using its superior resolution to spy on potential alien civilizations?
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