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Thursday, 24 September 2026
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Thursday, 24 September 2026
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Thursday, 24 September 2026
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THE FIRST BLACK HOLE IMAGE HELPED TEST GENERAL RELATIVITY IN A NEW WAY
Monday, 05 October 2020
When the first image of the black hole was released in April 2019, it marked Albert Einstein's theory of gravity or a powerful affirmation of general relativity.
The theory not only describes how space-time combat but also predicts the existence of black holes, including the amount of shadow cast by a black hole on a bright disk of matter orbiting some dense object. That iconic image of the miraculous black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, about 55 million light-years away, showed that the shadow corresponds closely to the general relative predictions of its magnitude (SN: 4/10/19). In other words, Einstein is right - again.
The results, announced by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, answered a question: Does the size of the black hole in M87 correspond to general relativity?
But "the opposite question is very difficult to answer: how far can I modify general relativity, yet agree with the [black hole] measurement?" Says Dimitrios Saltis, a member of the EHT team at the University of Arizona in Tucson. That question is important because some other theory of gravity may describe the universe, but is obscured as general relativity near a black hole.
The theory not only describes how space-time combat but also predicts the existence of black holes, including the amount of shadow cast by a black hole on a bright disk of matter orbiting some dense object. That iconic image of the miraculous black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, about 55 million light-years away, showed that the shadow corresponds closely to the general relative predictions of its magnitude (SN: 4/10/19). In other words, Einstein is right - again.
The results, announced by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, answered a question: Does the size of the black hole in M87 correspond to general relativity?
But "the opposite question is very difficult to answer: how far can I modify general relativity, yet agree with the [black hole] measurement?" Says Dimitrios Saltis, a member of the EHT team at the University of Arizona in Tucson. That question is important because some other theory of gravity may describe the universe, but is obscured as general relativity near a black hole.