The news of the first-ever image of a black hole swept the world yesterday. Einstein’s equations and our general understanding of physics had predicted these phenomena in space, but we had never actually seen one. Artists had done a great job at illustrating these “black holes” in the universe, but yesterday’s image was visual proof they existed.
Even with our advanced understanding of physics, black holes have always inspired awe. After all, how can something so massive be so small (relatively speaking) and so large at the same time?
To warp our sense of size, the black section, or shadow, of the black hole the image showed is huge. How huge you ask? As large as our entire solar system. And how large is our solar system? If the Earth were the size of a marble (yes, those we used to play when we were kids) and our Sun 5 feet wide (1.5m), Neptune, the last planet on our solar system. would be 3.5 miles (5.6km) from our 5-foot Sun. But I’ll let the video below better demonstrate the immense size of our solar system, and therefore the immense size of the black hole we’ve just imaged.
