The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration tirelessly analysed five million gigabytes of raw data to photograph a black hole 55 million light-years away from Earth. The monumental achievement saw an international collaboration spanning across all seven continents link together the planet’s most powerful radio telescopes. Then, after two years of collecting more data than the entirety of the internet, keeping track of minute timestamps using atomic clocks and hand carrying suitcases full of hard drives onto planes, the impossible was achieved. On Wednesday, April 10, scientists at six simultaneous press conferences unveiled what is being touted as the most significant scientific achievement of the 21st century – a picture of a black hole in the galaxy Messier 87 (M87).
But this is not the end of the journey just yet, according to Professor Derek Ward-Thompson of the University of Central Lancashire, who told Express.co.uk more breakthroughs are in the pipeline.
When the EHT project kicked off in 2017, the group of astronomers focused their attention Messier 87 and Sagittarius A* – the black hole in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.
The Messier 87 black hole seemed like an obvious candidate for observation because it is a much bigger and clearer to see object.
Sagittarius A*, on the other hand, might only be 26,000 light-years away but it is considerably smaller and obscured by tons of “space junk” thanks to Earth’s position in the galactic plane.
However, Professor Ward-Thompson, remains hopeful and positive the incredible team of EHT scientists are on the right track.
READ MORE: What is a black hole and how did scientists take the photo?
Black hole picture: Astronomers are now tracking down Sagittarius A* in Milky Way (Image: EHT COLLABORATIONGETTY)
He said: “We’re still working on the data for that. It’s taken two years from the data being taken to producing yesterday’s results.
“Basically we wanted to get the result out there as quickly as possible, because we wanted the public to see but also so that other scientists outside of our project could look at the data and they can also then do their own private verification tests and make decisions as to whether we’ve done it right or have we made any mistakes.
“What this has meant is by trying to get it out as soon as possible, it means that this is the only one finished so far.
“We’re still working on Sagittarius A* but I’m afraid I can’t give you a timescale for when that one will appear because sadly research doesn’t always lend itself to timetables.
“Nevertheless, I’m optimistic it won’t be too much longer and of course, we can start to look at the differences.
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“The Sagittarius A* black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, that one is many times smaller than M87 that we showed yesterday.
“So, then the question is how does the mass of the black hole affect what we see in the pictures and does that also follow general relativity.”
I’m optimistic it won’t be too much longer
The discovery at hand has already marked a “new era” in scientific exploration and astronomers will now want to know how other black holes compare to M87.
Yesterday’s black hole image was obtained by scanning the skies in radio frequencies of 1.3-millimetres, which Professor Ward-Thompson said are reminiscent of household microwaves.
He also said astronomers hope to soon explore skies at the 0.8-millimetre frequency, which will allow for better fidelity and clearer image results.
READ MORE: Is there LIFE inside a Black Hole? Or never-ending nothingness?
Black hole picture: The monumental photo was snapped using linked radio telescope (Image: ESO)
Black hole picture: Sagittarius A* is at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy (Image: GETTY)
After all, he argued, this is only the beginning for what scientists will without a doubt discover about the cosmos.
Professor Ward-Thompson said: “We’ll persevere until we get the result.”
In order to produce yesterday’s photo, the physicist said all researchers involved had to counterintuitively fight against the limitations of modern technology.
Because on one hand, the EHT observations produced five petabytes of raw data to process, and on the other hand, there were no supercomputers readily available to process this treasure trove of intimation.
Instead, the scientists used the power of the cloud to compute and process the data into the image we saw on Wednesday.
But even that process was not as easy as it sounds because every single observation had to be precisely time-stamped and compared to the other observatories using on-site atomic clocks.
And even then, it was simply too much data to send around the internet, which meant researchers had to pack suitcases full of hard drives for transport.
Professor Ward-Thompson said: “In anybody’s book that’s quite a lot, so that’s why the most efficient way to pass it around the world was on aeroplanes.”
The astrophysicist and his colleagues are now attempting to image Sagittarius A* but their work is far from over.
The Professor, who said he was only a “foot soldier” in the army behind yesterday’s historic achievement, would not say what the EHT’s next target is after Sagittarius A* but he teased there is a whole cosmos out there to observe.
