In a groundbreaking follow-up to their 2019 reveal of the first black hole image, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team has unveiled fresh insights into M87*, the supermassive black hole.
Their latest study not only validates their original interpretations but highlights the dynamic nature of black holes. Spearheaded by Waterloo researchers, this collaboration underscores the synergy of global efforts and cutting-edge technology in unraveling the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena.
Building on Black Hole Discoveries
Since capturing the world’s first image of a black hole in 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team has continued to push the boundaries of discovery. In 2024, this global collaboration of over 400 researchers released new images of M87*, a supermassive black hole, providing an even clearer view of its structure. These detailed images were created by combining data from telescopes around the world, collected two years earlier in 2021.
Recently, the EHT team published a follow-up study building on their 2024 findings from the 2018 observations of M87*. The new paper, titled “The Persistent Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole of M87”, was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and presents additional images of M87*. Rather than revealing entirely new information, the study serves a crucial purpose—it confirms that the researchers’ initial interpretations of the black hole’s structure were accurate.
Understanding Changes in M87*
This means that what they believed they saw in M87* and how the data was interpreted was correct the first time around. While the important parts are constant, that doesn’t mean that M87* isn’t changing, because it is.
“We started to see changes, and that’s exactly what we would have expected,” said Avery Broderick, professor at the University of Waterloo and Research Associate Faculty at Perimeter Institute, who leads the Waterloo team processing the EHT data.
“M87*’s event horizon is about a light-day across, so its accretion disk should present a new version of itself on a timescale of just a few days. All our simulated models give us some sense of how much it should be varying, and this is an important confirmation. This paper is about understanding what these images mean in the context of our best numerical simulations.”
Waterloo’s Vital Role in the EHT Project
Waterloo’s contribution to the EHT is wide-ranging and significant, according to Broderick. “There is no other institution with a contribution larger than ours,” he said. “A lot of the 2018 analysis was led by our colleagues at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan.”
“Interestingly, the people who led both the paper that came out last January and this one came through Waterloo as students and postdoctoral researchers. We’re not only doing a vast amount of work on the project in Waterloo, we’re also training the next generation of leaders in EHT.”
Global Collaboration Driving Innovation
While Waterloo researchers lead the way in uncovering the mysteries of a black hole, the analysis released on January 22 represents a global collaboration of talent, technology, and effort, showcasing the remarkable innovations that become achievable through collective effort.
The study, “The persistent shadow of the supermassive black hole of M87,” is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Explore Further: The First Monster Black Hole Ever Imaged Is Changing Before Our Eyes
Reference: “The persistent shadow of the supermassive black hole of M87 – II. Model comparisons and theoretical interpretations” by Kazunori Akiyama, Ezequiel Albentosa-Ruíz, Antxon Alberdi, Walter Alef, Juan Carlos Algaba, Richard Anantua, Keiichi Asada, Rebecca Azulay, Uwe Bach, Anne-Kathrin Baczko, David Ball, Mislav Baloković, Bidisha Bandyopadhyay, John Barrett, Michi Bauböck, Bradford A. Benson, Dan Bintley, Lindy Blackburn, Raymond Blundell, Katherine L. Bouman, Geoffrey C. Bower, Michael Bremer, Roger Brissenden, Silke Britzen, Avery E. Broderick, Dominique Broguiere, Thomas Bronzwaer, Sandra Bustamante, John E. Carlstrom, Andrew Chael, Chi-kwan Chan, Dominic O. Chang, Koushik Chatterjee, Shami Chatterjee, Ming-Tang Chen, Yongjun Chen, Xiaopeng Cheng, Ilje Cho, Pierre Christian, Nicholas S. Conroy, John E. Conway, Thomas M. Crawford, Geoffrey B. Crew, Alejandro Cruz-Osorio, Yuzhu Cui, Brandon Curd, Rohan Dahale, Jordy Davelaar, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Roger Deane, Jessica Dempsey, Gregory Desvignes, Jason Dexter, Vedant Dhruv, Indu K. Dihingia, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Sergio A. Dzib, Ralph P. Eatough, Razieh Emami, Heino Falcke, Joseph Farah, Vincent L. Fish, Edward Fomalont, H. Alyson Ford, Marianna Foschi, Raquel Fraga-Encinas, William T. Freeman, Per Friberg, Christian M. Fromm, Antonio Fuentes, Peter Galison, Charles F. Gammie, Roberto García, Olivier Gentaz, Boris Georgiev, Ciriaco Goddi, Roman Gold, Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz, José L. Gómez, Minfeng Gu, Mark Gurwell, Kazuhiro Hada, Daryl Haggard, Ronald Hesper, Dirk Heumann, Luis C. Ho, Paul Ho, Mareki Honma, Chih-Wei L. Huang, Lei Huang, David H. Hughes, Shiro Ikeda, C. M. Violette Impellizzeri, Makoto Inoue, Sara Issaoun, David J. James, Buell T. Jannuzi, Michael Janssen, Britton Jeter, Wu Jiang, Alejandra Jiménez-Rosales, Michael D. Johnson, Svetlana Jorstad, Adam C. Jones, Abhishek V. Joshi, Taehyun Jung, Ramesh Karuppusamy, Tomohisa Kawashima, Garrett K. Keating, Mark Kettenis, Dong-Jin Kim, Jae-Young Kim, Jongsoo Kim, Junhan Kim, Motoki Kino, Jun Yi Koay, Prashant Kocherlakota, Yutaro Kofuji, Patrick M. Koch, Shoko Koyama, Carsten Kramer, Joana A. Kramer, Michael Kramer, Thomas P. Krichbaum, Cheng-Yu Kuo, Noemi La Bella, Sang-Sung Lee, Aviad Levis, Zhiyuan Li, Rocco Lico, Greg Lindahl, Michael Lindqvist, Mikhail Lisakov, Jun Liu, Kuo Liu, Elisabetta Liuzzo, Wen-Ping Lo, Andrei P. Lobanov, Laurent Loinard, Colin J. Lonsdale, Amy E. Lowitz, Ru-Sen Lu, Nicholas R. MacDonald, Jirong Mao, Nicola Marchili, Sera Markoff, Daniel P. Marrone, Alan P. Marscher, Iván Martí-Vidal, Satoki Matsushita, Lynn D. Matthews, Lia Medeiros, Karl M. Menten, Izumi Mizuno, Yosuke Mizuno, Joshua Montgomery, James M. Moran, Kotaro Moriyama, Monika Moscibrodzka, Wanga Mulaudzi, Cornelia Müller, Hendrik Müller, Alejandro Mus, Gibwa Musoke, Ioannis Myserlis, Hiroshi Nagai, Neil M. Nagar, Dhanya G. Nair, Masanori Nakamura, Gopal Narayanan, Iniyan Natarajan, Antonios Nathanail, Santiago Navarro Fuentes, Joey Neilsen, Chunchong Ni, Michael A. Nowak, Junghwan Oh, Hiroki Okino, Héctor Raúl Olivares Sánchez, Tomoaki Oyama, Feryal Özel, Daniel C. M. Palumbo, Georgios Filippos Paraschos, Jongho Park, Harriet Parsons, Nimesh Patel, Ue-Li Pen, Dominic W. Pesce, Vincent Piétu, Aleksandar PopStefanija, Oliver Porth, Ben Prather, Giacomo Principe, Dimitrios Psaltis, Hung-Yi Pu, Venkatessh Ramakrishnan, Ramprasad Rao, Mark G. Rawlings, Luciano Rezzolla, Angelo Ricarte, Bart Ripperda, Freek Roelofs, Cristina Romero-Cañizales, Eduardo Ros, Arash Roshanineshat, Helge Rottmann, Alan L. Roy, Ignacio Ruiz, Chet Ruszczyk, Kazi L. J. Rygl, Salvador Sánchez, David Sánchez-Argüelles, Miguel Sánchez-Portal, Mahito Sasada, Kaushik Satapathy, Tuomas Savolainen, F. Peter Schloerb, Jonathan Schonfeld, Karl-Friedrich Schuster, Lijing Shao, Zhiqiang Shen, Des Small, Bong Won Sohn, Jason SooHoo, León D. S. Salas, Kamal Souccar, Joshua S. Stanway, He Sun, Fumie Tazaki, Alexandra J. Tetarenko, Paul Tiede, Remo P. J. Tilanus, Michael Titus, Kenji Toma, Pablo Torne, Teresa Toscano, Efthalia Traianou, Tyler Trent, Sascha Trippe, Matthew Turk, Ilse van Bemmel, Huib Jan van Langevelde, Daniel R. van Rossum, Jesse Vos, Jan Wagner, Derek Ward-Thompson, John Wardle, Jasmin E. Washington, Jonathan Weintroub, Robert Wharton, Maciek Wielgus, Kaj Wiik, Gunther Witzel, Michael F. Wondrak, George N. Wong, Qingwen Wu, Nitika Yadlapalli, Paul Yamaguchi, Aristomenis Yfantis, Doosoo Yoon, André Young, Ziri Younsi, Wei Yu, Feng Yuan, Ye-Fei Yuan, J. Anton Zensus, Shuo Zhang, Guang-Yao Zhao and Shan-Shan Zhao, 22 January 2025, Astronomy & Astrophysics.
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202451296
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
4 Comments
Has the appearance of looking down a vortex pipe.
I would like to see many more BHs.
Actually, helps corroborate Pearlman SPIRAL cosmology, as much or more.
As in SPIRAL all beyond SPIRAL LY (light year) radius i is ‘lookback’ to the transition from hyper-density to gravitational bound equilibrium, by the end of 4/365.25(SPIRAL LY radius i) a fraction into history, i years before present.
The more distant beyond i, the denser and hotter the universe was at it’s light (arriving here and now) departure. The entire universe approximates the visible universe whose radius (based on CMB temp and distribution) approximates 1B LY.
reference and consider on Pearlman YeC at ResearchGate where it has been panning out for a decade and recently gaining traction. Follow, recommend and share to help advance the science.
This reads as blatant self promotion of an attempt to expose superstitious non-scientific notions (“the alignment of Torah testimony, science and ancient civilization”) by ducking the requirement of peer review publication (ResearchGate is a social networking site) and recruiting unaware readers for unethical uses.
Even if there were some “alignment” correlation isn’t causation – but from browsing religious texts roughly half their claims are erroneous and half cannot be tested. Mostly, our concordance cosmology now show robustly and beyond reasonable doubt that an entirely natural process of space expansion produces the entire universe, rejecting the suggested type of magic agency.
The author has exactly 0 citations and so a h-index of 0, rejecting the notion of “panning out” and “gaining traction”. Which may explain the snake oil selling here.