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So many cool things in the works
Scientists believe they are on the verge of obtaining the first ever picture of a black hole.
They have built an Earth-sized "virtual telescope" by linking a large array of radio receivers - from the South Pole, to Hawaii, to the Americas and Europe.
There is optimism that observations to be conducted during 5-14 April could finally deliver the long-sought prize.
In the sights of the so-called "Event Horizon Telescope" will be the monster black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Although never seen directly, this object, catalogued as Sagittarius A*, has been determined to exist from the way it influences the orbits of nearby stars.
These race around a point in space at many thousands of km per second, suggesting the hole likely has a mass of about four million times that of the Sun.
But as colossal as that sounds, the "edge" of the black hole - the horizon inside which an immense gravity field traps all light - may be no more than 20 million km or so across.
And at a distance of 26,000 light-years from Earth, this makes Sagittarius A* a tiny pinprick on the sky.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team is nonetheless bullish.
Some very smart imaging algorithms have had to be developed to make sense of the EHT's observations, but it will not be a quick result.
It could be the end of the year, perhaps the start of 2018, before the team releases an image in public.
Scientists believe they are on the verge of obtaining the first ever picture of a black hole.
They have built an Earth-sized "virtual telescope" by linking a large array of radio receivers - from the South Pole, to Hawaii, to the Americas and Europe.
There is optimism that observations to be conducted during 5-14 April could finally deliver the long-sought prize.
In the sights of the so-called "Event Horizon Telescope" will be the monster black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Although never seen directly, this object, catalogued as Sagittarius A*, has been determined to exist from the way it influences the orbits of nearby stars.
These race around a point in space at many thousands of km per second, suggesting the hole likely has a mass of about four million times that of the Sun.
But as colossal as that sounds, the "edge" of the black hole - the horizon inside which an immense gravity field traps all light - may be no more than 20 million km or so across.
And at a distance of 26,000 light-years from Earth, this makes Sagittarius A* a tiny pinprick on the sky.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team is nonetheless bullish.
Some very smart imaging algorithms have had to be developed to make sense of the EHT's observations, but it will not be a quick result.
It could be the end of the year, perhaps the start of 2018, before the team releases an image in public.
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