"How a global network of telescopes may give us first glimpse of a black hole" PBS NewsHour 11/25/2014
Excerpt
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): An amazing scientific search pushing the limits of what we know about the cosmos, the quest to see a black hole.
The “NewsHour's” Rebecca Jacobson went to Chile for this report.
SHEP DOELEMAN, Principal investigator, Event Horizon Telescope: Black holes are some of the most exotic objects in the universe. They come about when matter gravitationally collapses in on itself, and everything becomes pulverized and crushed down into a single point.
REBECCA JACOBSON (NewsHour): MIT astronomer Shep Doeleman is leading an international effort to understand black holes. These exotic objects are fundamental to our understanding of the universe. When stars, dust, and planets cross the event horizon surrounding the black hole, nothing, not even light, can escape. But no one has ever seen one.
Doeleman is trying to change that.
SHEP DOELEMAN, MIT: The Event Horizon Telescope project is really about seeing what we have always thought as unseeable.
REBECCA JACOBSON: But to boldly go where no telescope has gone before, scientists have to drive up a 16,500 foot-high mountain. This is the Atacama Large Millimeter, or ALMA, in Northern Chile. ALMA’s 66 antennas form the most powerful radio telescope in the world.
Each antenna weighs 100 tons, and they are so accurate, they can see a golf ball nine miles away. They will form the anchor for the Event Horizon Telescope, a worldwide network of observatories that will capture an image of a black hole for the first time.
ALMA’s antennas sit just 400 feet lower in elevation than Mount Everest’s North Base Camp. Before going up the mountain, we had to undergo rigorous physical testing, because working at this altitude is dangerous.
My blood pressure was a little too high, so we waited a few minutes to see if it would go down.
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