Black hole image: MIT Professor involved with the project explains why it is a big dealApril 11 (AZINS) Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered across the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.

Using a global network of telescopes and international scientific team, the first-ever photo of a black hole  was released which in an achievement that validated a pillar of science put forward by Albert Einstein more than a century ago.

The research was conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, an international collaboration involving about 200 scientists begun in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole. The announcement was made in simultaneous news conferences in Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo. The image was obtained using data collected in April 2017 from eight radio telescopes in six locations that essentially create a planet-sized observational dish.

In a bid to understand the historic achievement, WION had an exclusive chat with Mr Gopal Narayanan, Professor in the University of Massachusetts, Department of Astronomy, Amherst. Excerpts from the interview with Mr Narayanan:

Q. For a layman, can you simplify why this development is a breakthrough?

A: We have known for nearly a hundred years, one of the aspects of Einstein's theory of general relativity, is that you need to have black holes. The extreme levels of gravity that you can get you may get very dense object that collapses into itself to the point where even light cannot escape. So we know the theory of the idea of black holes have been around for a long time. And there has been a lot of indirect evidence about black holes using multiple observations and multiple lines of evidence, theoretical and all types of indirect evidence that there are black holes. This is the very best time scientists have established an actual image of black hole. This is the very first time a bonafide black hole has been imaged. That's why it's such a big deal. To clarify, a black hole by its very nature cannot emit light, even light cannot escape. So we haven't exactly imaged a black hole per se, we have imaged a region right around the black hole called the event horizon.

Q. How does this helps Astrophysicists?

A: There are a lot of reasons why this pursuit is important. This particular black hole that we've imaged is in the centre of the galaxy called MAD7 or Messier 87 which is about 55 million light years away from us.  It is a giant elliptical galaxy where the black hole that was thought to be 6billion solar masses in the centre. That's our sun multiplied by 6bn times. That's how much mass is present and that whole mass is concentrated in a region about solar system in size. It was known that there was chance of such a black hole there, we have established now without a doubt that there is such a black hole there. It's not just the detection of the black hole that's important, we are now imaging a portion of the black hole which is at the very heart of it. Previous observations using other astronomical telescopes have looked at jets coming from the black holes which are all at a very further out distance from the heart of the black hole. This is the first time we've imaged so close to the centre of the Black hole and black hole is a great laboratory to test theories about the intersection, for example the macroscopic concepts such as Einstein's general relativity with the microscopic concepts like the quantum theory. So this is the region where we might be able to intersect the two.

Q. How did scientists chance upon capturing this particular Black hole?

A: It's been known for a while that using theoretical ideas that there is such an event horizon, an idea that there is gravitational potential of the black hole tends to bend the light and you expect to see the shape of the shadow of a certain kind which is you'd have a ring like object with a very asymmetric shadow and essential dark region a donut hole kind of appearance. This has been known for now 30 years. But to image such a region required a technology and collaboration that was unprecedented until now. We needed a telescope the size of the earth. All we see is it was impossible to do with the current technology right now. So we did the next best thing. Combined the various telescopes that are all around the world and synthesized a telescope as though it was the shape and size of the world. To do that, astronomers had to combine and do that collaboration with multiple countries involved. Something like 200-250 astronomers , scientists and engineers combined to carry out this experiment. This is an experiment that has been going on for 10 years and finally we see the fruit of this. This year we published these 6papers showing the results of this work.

Q. Can you throw some light on you and your team's engagement towards this project?

A: I am involved with a telescope called the large millimetre telescope, which is in the country of Mexico. In fact I am sitting here right now with few of my colleagues where couple of them are involved in this experiment. One of them is my graduate student. I lead this team that fields this telescope that I just talked about the Large millimetre Telescope. The LMT as it's called is a 50metre diameter telescope in the country of Mexico. I am a Professor in the University of Massachusetts and I lead this effort to build receivers to put on these telescopes for the EHT experiment and my colleagues and I have been involved in this for 5-6 years now. The LMT is a crucial telescope in the EHT array. It's very central in all the base lines that you derive from it, and is also a very large telescope, because of this the sensitivity boost you get from the LMT is very important. My team's role has been to field receivers to these telescopes and combine and collaborate with all the telescopes all around the world.