Its the first picture of a black hole...a cosmic phenomenon so deep and dense that even light can't escape.
Nearly a century after astronomers suggested they might exist, we have our first picture. Using powerful observatories on earth, you can see the jets of plasma that the black hole is spewing into space, soon scientists may be able to detect the ripples in space-time and even peer at the disc of disrupted mass and energy that surrounds the black hole's horizon.
“We’ve exposed a part of our universe we’ve never seen before,” said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at Harvard University who directed the effort to capture the image, during a Wednesday news conference in Washington, D.C.
Black holes are extremely dense pockets of matter that drastically warp the fabric of space-time. Anything that gets too close gets captured. Most black holes are the remnants of a massive star.