Black holes may finally be ready for their close-ups

For the first time ever, humanity can gaze at an actual photograph of a supermassive black hole. It’s an achievement that’s taken supercomputers, eight telescopes stationed around the world, hundreds of researchers, and vast amounts of data to achieve. The results from this project, called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), were announced today at joint press conferences live-streamed around the world. In addition to providing a picture that will quickly be incorporated into teaching materials around the world, the results helped to confirm (again) Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and it gave astrophysicists an unprecedented close-up of these enigmatic, dense celestial phenomena.