But if heated materials in the form of plasma surround the black hole and emit light, the event horizon could be visible. In the theory, Einstein predicted that dense, compact regions of space would have such intense gravity that nothing could escape them. The visual confirmation of black holes also acts as confirmation of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Solving the mystery of the most powerful objects in the universe It is so distant that light from it has travelled for about 13 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was only about 780 million years old. To date (early 2021), this is the most distant quasar with radio jets ever found and it was studied with the help of ESO's Very Large Telescope. This artist's impression shows how the distant quasar P172+18 and its radio jets may have looked. “At this wavelength, we can see how the jet emerges from the ring of emission around the central supermassive black hole,” said study coauthor Thomas Krichbaum, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, in a statement. The new image captured radio light emitted at a longer wavelength than the 2019 image.

The light creates the ring structure seen glowing around the black hole’s shadow, or the darkness at the center. “This new image completes the picture by showing the region around the black hole and the jet at the same time,” said study coauthor Jae-Young Kim, assistant professor at Kyungpook National University in South Korea, in a statement.Īs matter orbits around the black hole, it heats up and releases radiation in wavelengths of light. Previous observations have shown the jet and black hole separately, including the first direct image of a black hole, released in 2019. In the new image, the connection between the base of the jet and the matter swirling around the supermassive black hole can be seen. Messy eating habits might reveal elusive black hole

Event horizon telescope images