第一張黑洞圖片背后的團隊，剛剛獲得了300萬美元的獎金

第一張黑洞圖片背后的團隊，剛剛獲得了300萬美元的獎金

The heart of every major galaxy is thought to contain a supermassive black hole – a place where gravity is so strong that anything, including light, gets devoured.

我們都知道，每個主要星系的中心包含著一個超大質量黑洞——一個引力非常強大的地方，包括光在內的任何東西都會被吞噬。

Like all black holes, supermassive ones form when stars collapse in on themselves at the end of their life cycles. On average, they're millions of timesmore massive than the Sun.

和所有黑洞一樣，超大質量黑洞是恒星在生命周期結束時自我坍塌而形成的。平均來說，它們的質量是太陽的數(shù)百萬倍。

For years, scientists have struggled to capture a black hole on camera, since the absence of light renders them nearly impossible to see.

多年來，科學家們一直在努力用相機捕捉黑洞，因為沒有光線，黑洞幾乎看不見。

But on April 10, a group of scientists from the international Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released the first-ever photograph of a supermassive black hole to the public. Though the image was fuzzy, it signified a major milestone for space research.

但在4月10日，國際事件地平線望遠鏡合作組織的一組科學家，向公眾公布了有史以來第一張超大質量黑洞的照片。雖然這幅圖像很模糊，但它標志著太空研究的一個重要里程碑。

The accomplishment has now earned the team a 2020 Breakthrough Prize, which was awarded on September 5. The prize was started eight years ago by a team of investors including Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg, and is often referred to as the "Oscars of Science".

這一成就現(xiàn)在為該隊贏得了9月5日頒發(fā)的2020年突破獎。這個獎項是由一個包括謝爾蓋·布林和馬克·扎克伯格在內的投資者團隊八年前創(chuàng)立的，被稱為“科學界的奧斯卡”。

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT) team will collectively receive US$3 million, but the money will be divided equally among the group's 347 scientists, giving each person around US$8,600.

活動地平線望遠鏡合作(eht)小組將總共獲得300萬美元，但這筆錢將平均分配給該小組的347名科學家，每人約8600美元。

獲獎照片(Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration)

What the black hole photograph shows

這張黑洞照片顯示了什么

The April image captured a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Messier 87 galaxy, which is about 54 million light-years away from Earth. The black hole in the photo likely had a mass equivalent to 6.5 billion Suns.

這張四月的照片，拍攝到了梅西埃87星系中心的一個超大質量黑洞，距離地球約5400萬光年。照片中的黑洞質量可能相當于65億個太陽。

Black holes are defined by a border called the event horizon: a region of space so dense with matter that not even light can escape its gravity. This creates a circular 'shadow', where all light and matter is gobbled up.

黑洞是由一個叫做視界的邊界來定義的:這個空間區(qū)域的物質密度如此之大，以至于光都無法逃脫它的引力。這就產(chǎn)生了一個圓形的“陰影”，所有的光和物質都被吞噬。

Outside the event horizon, supermassive black holes have an accretion disk – clouds of hot gas and dust trapped in orbit. Though scientists can't see beyond a black hole's event horizon, they can detect the gas and dust in that disk, since the material gives off radio waves that can be captured by a high-powered telescope.

在事件視界之外，超大質量黑洞有一個吸積盤——由熱氣體和塵埃組成的云被困在軌道上。盡管科學家們無法從黑洞的視界之外看到，但他們可以探測到圓盤中的氣體和塵埃，因為這些物質會發(fā)出無線電波，可以被高功率望遠鏡捕捉到。

This is what EHT scientists captured in their groundbreaking image.

這是EHT的科學家們在他們開創(chuàng)性的圖像中捕捉到的。

"As a cloud of gas gets closer to the black hole, they speed up and heat up," Josephine Peters, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, told Business Insider in October.

牛津大學天體物理學家約瑟芬·彼得斯(Josephine Peters)今年10月對《商業(yè)內幕》(Business Insider)表示：“隨著一團氣體離黑洞越來越近，它們會加速并升溫。”

"It glows brighter the faster and hotter it gets. Eventually, the gas cloud gets close enough that the pull of the black hole stretches it into a thin arc."

“它發(fā)出的光越快越亮，溫度越高。最終，氣體云靠得足夠近，黑洞的引力把它拉伸成一個細細的弧形。”

黑洞的主要特征。(ESO/ESA/Hubble/M. Kornmesser/Business Insider)

To capture the image, researchers relied on 8 telescopes

為了拍攝這幅圖像，研究人員依靠8架望遠鏡

The EHT scientists are stationed all over the world, at 60 institutions across 20 countries.

EHT科學家分布在世界各地，在20個國家的60個機構。

To capture the photograph, they relied on eight radio telescopes, operating in Antarctica, Chile, Mexico, Hawaii, Arizona, and Spain. They used a network of atomic clocks – extremely precise time-keeping devices that can measure billionths of a second – to sync up the telescopes around the world.

為了拍攝這張照片，他們使用了8臺射電望遠鏡，分別在南極洲、智利、墨西哥、夏威夷、亞利桑那和西班牙運行。他們使用了一個原子鐘網(wǎng)絡——可以測量十億分之一秒的極其精確的計時設備——來同步世界各地的望遠鏡。

The EHT project began collecting information about black holes in 2006.

EHT項目從2006年開始收集有關黑洞的信息。

The image released in April was the result of observations that started two years prior.

今年4月公布的這張照片是兩年前開始的觀測結果。

(Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration)

"It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time," Heino Falcke, an Event Horizon Telescope collaborator, said when the photo was published in April.

“感覺就像是在看地獄之門，在空間和時間的盡頭。”事件地平線望遠鏡合作者海諾·法爾克(Heino Falcke)在4月份發(fā)表這張照片時說。

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

本文最初由Business Insider發(fā)表。