PARIS First postulated more than 230 years ago, black holes have been extensively researched, frequently depicted, even featured in sci-fi films.
We’ve all seen the artists’ impressions and read of their ravenous star-gobbling feasts.
But here’s the thing… science is still not 100 percent sure what they look like, how they behave or even that they exist.
Telescopes have never seen a black hole, and the world’s brightest minds are unable to reconcile their core characteristics with some of the bedrock laws of nature.
Seeking answers, scientists have trained a massive telescope, named
Gravity, in Chile on a point some 24,000 light years away where a supermassive black hole is thought to lurk at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.
The enormous eye will look for miniscule but telltale deviations in the movement of gas and stars swirling around the monster hole.
“The goal of Gravity is to finally prove the existence of a black hole at the centre of our galaxy,” project member Guy Perrin, an astronomer from the Paris Observatory, told AFP.
But finding something unexpected would in some ways be an even bigger breakthrough as it may offer clues to our imperfect understanding of physics.
