Since that time at MIT, Shep and I have both found our way via relativity to the most remarkable of its predictions, black holes.īlack holes were conceived of as a thought experiment, a fantastical imagining. Relativity permeates my thoughts so that I think in relativity the way writers think in their natural language. Now I cannot imagine my own mind without it. Maybe my memory of that particular board is so crisp precisely because that moment defines the cusp between before and after acquiring relativity. ![]() Relativity, defying its name, is true for all of us. When Einstein conceived of relativity, he gave us a gift that has been passed from person to person around the world. We knew the words already, the standard lore: All forms of matter and energy bend space and time, and light and matter follow those curves. Video: Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope, unveiled the first-ever photo of a black hole at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Covered in chalk dust, we acquired the hard-earned mathematics of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. He welcomes us, “black hole enthusiasts.” I have the strongest memory of standing at the chalkboard in an otherwise empty classroom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Shep, my funny friend with his funny, unmistakable, burnt-mahogany hair. Scientists with the Event Horizon Telescope aspired for years to take the first-ever picture of a supermassive black hole, so when they gathered journalists and scientists together today for a press conference, there wasn’t much doubt as to what we were here to see.Īt the podium is Sheperd Doeleman, the director of the Event Horizon Telescope. ![]() I am at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C., a hive of excitement. I am moved by the image of a species looking at an image of a curious empty hole looming in space. I am moved not just by the image overwhelmingly I am moved by the significance of sharing this experience with strangers around the globe. At this historic moment, the world has paused to take in the sight of humanity’s first image of the strangest phenomenon in the known universe, a remarkable legacy of the general theory of relativity: a black hole.
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