The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has resolved the event horizon of a supermassive black hole
Published: 16 April 2019 (GMT+10)
Credit: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.
On 10 April the globally coordinated announcement was made of the first ever image of the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the distant galaxy Messier 87 (M87) (figure 1).1 The galaxy is 55 million light-years away and the supermassive black hole was confirmed to have a mass of 6.5 billion suns.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)2 —a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration—was designed to capture images of black holes at the centre of galaxies.
This is the work of many astronomers using millimetre wave VLBI radio-telescopes3 across the planet. By stitching together the power of 8 state-of-the-art mmWave radio-telescopes they essentially turned the planet into one giant radio-telescope (figure 2). By using such a large telescope and millimetre wavelengths they gained resolution never obtained before that allowed them to image the event horizon, which is about the diameter of our solar system.
The results so far are consistent with all predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity theory.
Credit: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.
From the biblical creationist perspective this is, yet again, good operational science. There is nothing new here that refutes the biblical timeline of about 6,000 years because that is subject to historical science considerations. It is not an operational science question. (Modern science in creationist thinking) The data was taken from the different telescopes and was assembled and processed over a period of about a year, but those initial observations were taken over a period of 7 days in April of 2017. Over those days the supermassive black hole was ‘observed’. In the same way over the 24-hour period Day 4 of Creation Week about 6,000 years ago all the stars and galaxies (with supermassive black holes) were ’observed’ at the earth as God created them (Genesis 1:16–19). God spoke and “it was so.”
Creationist cosmologists have suggested various ways in which God could have done this with starlight from distant stars visible at the earth in the biblical timeframe. But, ultimately, Creation Week was a miraculous series of events, and God might well have done things in a way that is not accessible to us.
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References and notes
- National Science Foundation News Release 19-006, Astronomers capture first image of a black hole, nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=298276, 10 April 2019. Return to text.
- Event Horizon Telescope, eventhorizontelescope.org, accessed 12 April 2019. Return to text.
- VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometric) radio astronomy uses telescopes separated by a large distance. The larger the distances the greater the resolution. The data is taken at various sites at the same time and later assembled as one observation by a post processing algorithm. In this observation, over 7 days, petabytes (1015 bytes) raw data was saved onto 100 hard disk drives. The hard disks were needed to be flown to the central processing centre because the internet cannot handle such a data load. Return to text.
Readers’ comments
Just for interest sake.
How do scientists confirm an entities mass while you only see the front side and has no idea what, and how long stuff entered into it?
Like the example of the glass that has an input and output to explain dating of rocks
I am sure that if they had a telescope big enough to look into the so called black hole they probably would see more stars.
In his final sentence, Dr. Hartnett nails a point that secularists conveniently overlook. Humans are finite beings trying to understand an infinite God. The gulf between His omniscience and our limited understanding of things scientific is so great that there are no words to describe it. But God has given us His written Word, and it would be wise, as we continue to explore and discover the mysteries of His creation, to keep in mind what God has told us about how He did what He did. Dr. Hartnett honors that here, and yet his explanation of this advance is as clear and scientifically understandable as any I've yet read. Dr. Hartnett demonstrates once again that science, practiced and explained from a creationist viewpoint, loses nothing of that science itself. Well done, sir. Well done.
"In the same way over the 24-hour period Day 4 of Creation Week about 6,000 years ago all the stars and galaxies (with supermassive black holes) were ’observed’ at the earth as God created them."
How exactly does one observe newly created celestial bodies 55 million light years away in a 24 hour period?
Well said. This is the factor to be taken into account in understanding Genesis chs 1&2.
Is the not the potential glory of science, to reveal the “how” of God’s work ??
Will. N.
The current focus on this 6.5B solar mass black hole at 55M ly distance reminds me of the 2015 journal Nature report of one containing the mass of 12 billion Suns at 12.8 billion light years away! As the media reported at the time, this object "simply can't exist" because gravity couldn't attract that much mass that quickly in a big bang universe. The same and similar big bang problems exist with the discoveries of mature distant galaxies, distant galaxy clusters, and many superclusters. Thanks CMI for your biblical perspective helping us better understand such things!
It would fit in with the strange sights in the sky as spoken elsewhere, now that we can see at these great distances.
Presumably God created galaxies with black holes in the centre to stabilise them, just as solar systems (including our own) have stars in the centre for the same purpose.
This is of course conjecture, but did Ezekiel see a representation of the universe in his vision (Ezekiel 1:4ff)?
Isaiah 66:1-2 says "This is what the Lord says:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
Where is the house you will build for me?
Where will my resting place be?"
Has not my hand made all these things,
and so they came into being?”
declares the Lord." [NIV]
If "Heaven" (the universe) is His throne it has to be identified with the cherubim. In photographs of galaxies they look very much like eyes!
Could be!...
The abode of God (the third heaven?) is not likely in the physical universe, which was created by Him.
Of course it is not a salvation issue.