Angelo Ricarte

In 2019, astronomers unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole's shadow — a dark void encircled by a lopsided orange ring. This is the supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy M87, 55 million light-years away. The ring isn't just glowing: one side is noticeably brighter than the other, like a campfire burning unevenly, with flames leaping higher on one side.

Radio telescopes scattered across the globe pick up waves from distant black holes. But two telescopes placed almost side by side see only a blurry blob — fine details are beyond them. Usually, such pairs are considered useless and discarded. But that's a mistake: even a blurry blob holds clues.

Black holes are cosmic spinning tops. Their spin warps spacetime (as predicted by Einstein) and is described by a spin parameter from 0 to 1. The limit 1 is unattainable: infalling matter acts like a brake.

At the center of the Milky Way lies the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. It is four million times more massive than the Sun, but by cosmic standards it behaves quietly: it only occasionally flares up when it swallows a clump of gas.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space, like circles on water from a thrown stone. On Earth, they are drowned out by traffic, tides, and earthquakes, like a storm beating on a lake, making it impossible to notice faint splashes. The LILA project moves the detector to the Moon, where windless silence reigns.

A black hole is not a frozen void, but a living magnetic engine. Its 'heart'—the accretion disk, pulsates: inhale, matter spirals into the funnel, exhale — magnetic reconnection tears the field lines, and plasma shoots away from the horizon.

In April 2021, the antennas of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)—a global network of millimeter-wave radio telescopes — zeroed in on a tiny spot in the constellation Virgo.