The Event Horizon Telescope will focus on the giant black hole, with a mass of four million suns squeezed into a region the size of Mercury’s orbit, at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It will observe processes taking place just outside the edge or “event horizon” of this black hole—the spherical surface from which nothing can escape. This will be by far the most extreme gravitational environment ever observed and will provide an ultimate testing ground for Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The photons detected by this combined system will be as wide as our planet, yet, when detected
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