The picture will be the first time an image has been snapped of the mysterious, swirling phenomenon deep in our galaxy. And it could change our view of the universe, revealing some of its most mysterious and fundamental processes.
The "groundbreaking" announcement from the the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) – which will be revealed in simultaneous news conferences in Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo – comes after the project was started in 2012 to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole using a global network of telescopes.
What is a black hole and why is it so hard to take an image of one?
Black holes are phenomenally dense celestial entities with gravitational fields so powerful no matter or light can escape, making them extraordinarily difficult to observe despite their great mass.
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As the name suggests, the hole is very black: they suck in any light that goes near them, which means there's none left to reach us. As such, it is impossible to see the swirling and roiling middle of a black hole.
But around the edge is the event horizon, which marks the border where light can escape the pull of the black hole. That part, we hope we can see – and that's what the new image should show us.
A black hole's event horizon is the point of no return beyond which anything - stars, planets, gas, dust and all forms of electromagnetic radiation - gets swallowed into oblivion. The project targeted two supermassive black holes residing at the center of different galaxies.
What are we going to learn?
The research will test the theory of general relativity put forward in 1915 by Einstein, the famed theoretical physicist, to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces.
Einstein's theory allows for a prediction of the size and shape of a black hole. If the prediction turns out to be off the mark, the theory may need rethinking.
This is separate from another key component of Einstein's broader theory of relativity: his 1905 theory of special relativity, part of the basis of modern physics. The theory of special relativity explaining the relationship between space and time.
What are we actually going to see?
One of the black holes - Sagittarius A* - is situated at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, possessing 4 million times the mass of our sun and located 26,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
The second one - M87 - inhabits the center of the neighboring Virgo A galaxy, boasting a mass 3.5 billion times that of the sun and located 54 million light-years away from Earth. Streaming away from M87 at nearly the speed of light is a humongous jet of subatomic particles.
Black holes, which come in different sizes, are formed when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Supermassive black holes are the largest kind, growing in mass as they devour matter and radiation and perhaps merging with other black holes.
The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult. The scientists will be looking for a ring of light - disrupted matter and radiation circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon - around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is known as the black hole's shadow or silhouette.
The scientists said the shape of the shadow would be almost a perfect circle in Einstein's theory of general relativity, and if it turns out that it is not, there is something wrong with the theory.
Additional reporting by agencies
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