Making a Black Hole Visible
“If the speed of light were infinite, all the information in space would reach me instantaneously, even if we were separated by an infinitely great distance. The knowable Universe would have no limits and would be infinitely large. Everything would be connected with everything else simultaneously. But because the speed of light is finite, there is no knowable infinity in space or time and therefore never an absolute precision. The finite nature of the speed of light thus grants us a particular freedom – only the here and now counts.”
And in this here and now, award-winning astrophysicist, Heino Falcke, inspired, organized, and led, a brilliant team of astronomers and other incredible experts, around the world, to take the first ever image of a black hole.
Lightness in the Dark: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us, is the wondrous account of this decades long journey to achieve the once assumed impossible feat of taking a photo of a black hole.