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It’s hard to see the Milky Way in the night sky because of the city lights these days.
Scientists around the world have teamed up to capture the real image of a massive black hole in the middle of our galaxy.
Reporter Yunmi Kim will tell you.
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Our galaxy is made up of hundreds of billions of stars.
Our solar system is 26,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy.
The center of the galaxy is not visible from Earth.
This is because the black dust band is obscuring it.
What is in the middle of the galaxy?
Scientists believe there is an incredibly massive black hole in the middle of our galaxy.
But no one has actually seen the black hole.
Scientists decided to photograph the black hole.
300 astronomers from 80 research institutes around the world gathered.
By connecting high-performance radio telescopes from all over the world to the United States, Spain, South America, and Antarctica, we have created a radio telescope the size of the Earth.
Scientists from the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute also participated.
[손봉원/ 참여 연구원]
“Each telescope needs to perform at its best, and maintaining that is not easy. There are a lot of telescopes in remote areas and they suffer from natural problems.”
A black hole photographed like that.
It’s this picture.
The rings, which look like donuts, aren’t actually black holes themselves.
Black holes also absorb light, making them unobservable.
What we see is the intense energy released when matter is sucked into a black hole.
A black hole seen from Earth is about the size of a small donut on the moon’s surface.
It’s such a difficult job.
Even three years ago, scientists successfully imaged a black hole in another galaxy 55 million light-years away.
It is said that the fact that Einstein’s theory was correct, even though it is 1,500 times larger than the black hole in our galaxy, but looks the same.
[손봉원/ 참여 연구원]
“I wonder if the development of this basic knowledge can eventually be linked to any new amazing human progress.”
It is not yet known how such a huge black hole came into existence at the center of our galaxy.
When scientists around the world work together like this, this problem may soon be solved.
This is Kim Yun-mi from MBC News.
Video Editing: Lee Hyun-seon / Video Source: European Southern Observatory (ESO), Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
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