We jump to 2019, the year the first picture of a black hole is presented. Not even in the 1970s, when a more experienced American researcher who lectured at the IAG needled the then-early scientist out of the room where the astrophysicist had just defended his thesis: “I do not believe in black holes, that does not exist”, said Charles Dean. For Steiner, however, long before, the evidence of the black holes was already strong enough not to shake his confidence. Professor João Steiner: Image exhibits a phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, besides being an extraordinary technological achievement – Photo: Luiza Cairesīefore that, however, the number of skeptical scientists about the reality of these directly invisible objects was not negligible. After this observation, there was hardly anyone in the scientific community who doubted the existence of black holes. Again, the characteristics of the orbit of S2 could only be explained if the invisible object around which the star moves was a black hole. Shortly thereafter, in 2002, a star named S2 is discovered, here in the Milky Way. We move on to 1995, the year of the discovery of a disc around the galaxy NGC 4258, which only the existence of a black hole could explain. Until very recently, these singular objects were at best a well-constructed theory when an indirect proof of their existence – Cygnus X-1 – had been revealed. The thesis ‘A model for Cygnus X-1’ deals with the first source of X-rays, identified in the constellation of the Swan, accepted as a candidate for black hole. The year is 1975, and a young scientist named João Steiner has just defended his masters thesis at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (IAG) of USP. But to understand how big is the accomplishment of the Event Horizon Telescope team, a network of eight observatories around the world, let’s go back a little in time. And that makes it impossible for the light to escape from them – hence the name they receive. These cosmic monsters known as black holes are small considering the universal scale, but with an immense mass to the point of generating a gigantic gravitational effect. This black hole is 53.5 million light years away from Earth and has a mass of 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. The first photo of a supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87, a huge galaxy in the Virgo clump, has just been revealed. If you are reading this text, you are among the lucky people who lived to see a historical image for science.
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