The Hidden Shipping and Handling Behind That Black-Hole Picture
The mesmerizing image of a cosmic wonder required a rather old-school approach to piece together.
The picture of a black hole, captured for the first time, shows a ring as radiant as gold against the darkness of space. At its center, the charcoal shadow of a void so powerful, nothing can escape its pull.
The dreamy photograph represents a tremendous technological achievement, assembled using eight radio telescopes in four continents—two each in Hawaii and Chile, and one each in Arizona, Mexico, Spain, and Antarctica—all synced together to scan the skies for several days in a row.
But the picture would not exist without technology much less sophisticated: computer disk drives.
The telescopes’ data had to go to two astronomy
