In astrophysics milestone, first photo of black hole expected

By Will Dunham

作者：Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists are expected to unveil on Wednesday the first-ever photograph of a black hole, a breakthrough in astrophysics providing insight into celestial monsters with gravitational fields so intense no matter or light can escape.

华盛顿（路透社） - 科学家们预计将在周三揭开第一张黑洞照片，这是天体物理学的突破，提供了洞察力

The U.S. National Science Foundation has scheduled a news conference in Washington to announce a “groundbreaking result from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project,” an international partnership formed in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole.

美国国家科学基金会计划在华盛顿召开新闻发布会宣布“事件地平线的突破性成果”望远镜（EHT）项目，2012年成立的国际合作伙伴关系，试图直接观察黑洞的直接环境。

Simultaneous news conferences are scheduled in Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo.

同时举行的新闻发布会定于布鲁塞尔，圣地亚哥，上海，台北和东京。

A black hole's event horizon, one of the most violent places in the universe, is the point of no return beyond which anything - stars, planets, gas, dust, all forms of electromagnetic radiation including light - gets sucked in irretrievably.

黑洞的事件视界，宇宙中最暴力的地方之一，是任何事物都无法回归的地方 - 恒星，行星，气体，灰尘，包括光在内的所有形式的电磁辐射都会被无法挽回地吸收。

While scientists involved in the research declined to disclose the findings ahead of the formal announcement, they are clear about their goals.

参与研究的科学家们为了在正式公告之前披露调查结果，他们明确了自己的目标。

“It's a visionary project to take the first photograph of a black hole. We are a collaboration of over 200 people internationally,” astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, said at a March event in Texas.

“这是一个有远见的项目，拍摄第一张黑洞照片。我们是国际上200多人的合作，”天体物理学家Sheperd Doeleman，哈佛大学和史密森尼天体物理中心的地平线望远镜主任，在德克萨斯州的3月份活动中说。

The research will put to the test a scientific pillar - physicist Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, according to University of Arizona astrophysicist Dimitrios Psaltis, project scientist for the Event Horizon Telescope. That theory, put forward in 1915, was intended to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces.

这项研究将为科学支柱 - 物理学家阿尔伯特爱因斯坦的广义相对论提供考验。亚利桑那大学天体物理学家Dimitrios Psaltis，事件地平线望远镜的项目科学家。该理论于1915年提出，旨在解释万有引力定律及其与其他自然力的关系。

SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES

超级黑洞

The researchers targeted two supermassive black holes.

研究人员针对两个超大质量黑洞。

The first - called Sagittarius A* - is situated at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, possessing 4 million times the mass of our sun and located 26,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

第一个 - 称为射手座A * - 位于在我们自己的牛奶的中心方向星系，拥有我们太阳质量的400万倍，距离地球26,000光年。光年是光线在一年内行进的距离，5.9万亿英里（9.5万亿公里）。

The second - called M87 - resides at the center of the neighboring Virgo A galaxy, boasting a mass 3.5 billion times that of the sun and located 54 million light-years away from Earth. Streaming away from M87 at nearly the speed of light is a humongous jet of subatomic particles.

第二个 - 称为M87 - 位于邻近处女座星系的中心它的质量是太阳的35亿倍，距离地球5400万光年。以接近光速的速度远离M87的是一股巨大的亚原子粒子射流。

Black holes, coming in a variety of sizes, are extraordinarily dense entities formed when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Supermassive black holes are the largest kind, devouring matter and radiation and perhaps merging with other black holes.

黑洞，有各种尺寸，是非常大质量恒星形成的极其密集的实体在他们的生命周期结束时崩溃。超大质量黑洞是最大的类型，吞噬物质和辐射，可能与其他黑洞合并。

Psaltis described a black hole as “an extreme warp in spacetime,” a term referring to the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time joined into a single four-dimensional continuum.

Psaltis将黑洞描述为“时空中的极端扭曲”，这个术语指的是空间的三个维度和时间的一个维度连接成一个单独的四维连续体。

Doeleman said the project's researchers obtained the first data in April 2017 from a global network of telescopes. The telescopes that collected that initial data are located in the U.S. states of Arizona and Hawaii as well as Mexico, Chile, Spain and Antarctica. Since then, telescopes in France and Greenland have been added to the network.

Doeleman说该项目的研究人员在2017年4月从全球网络获得了第一个数据望远镜收集初始数据的望远镜位于美国亚利桑那州和夏威夷州以及墨西哥，智利，西班牙和南极洲。从那时起，法国和格陵兰的望远镜已被添加到网络中。

The scientists also will be trying to detect for the first time the dynamics near the black hole as matter orbits at near light speeds before being swallowed into oblivion.

科学家们还将尝试首次探测黑洞附近的动态，因为物质在轨道上运行。在吞噬被遗忘之前接近光速。

The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult. The scientists will be looking for a ring of light - radiation and matter circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon - around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is known as the black hole's shadow or silhouette.

黑洞不允许光线逃逸的事实使得难以观察它们。科学家将寻找一个光环 - 辐射和物质在事件视界的边缘以极快的速度盘旋 - 围绕代表实际黑洞的黑暗区域。这被称为黑洞的阴影或轮廓。

Einstein's theory, if correct, should allow for an extremely accurate prediction of the size and shape of a black hole.

爱因斯坦的理论，如果正确，应该能够非常准确地预测黑洞的大小和形状。

“The shape of the shadow will be almost a perfect circle in Einstein's theory,” Psaltis said. “If we find it to be different than what the theory predicts, then we go back to square one and we say, 'Clearly, something is not exactly right.'”

“的形状在爱因斯坦的理论中，阴影将几乎是一个完美的圆圈，”Psaltis说。“如果我们发现它与理论预测的不同，那么我们回到原点，我们说，'显然，某些事情并不完全正确。 ”