Event Horizon for the Human Race—Moving Beyond Our Own Boundaries

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on Hawai’i’s Mauna Kea and Atacama’s Large Submillimeter Array (SMA) answered some cosmic prayers this week.

Event Horizon Discovery by Global AstroSci Team

Summit of Mauna Kea at 13,000ft has ideal microclimate for Harvard-Smithsonian Event Horizon 8-telescope array

The Submillimeter Array of eight radio telescopes alongside the James Clerk Maxwell Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawai’i have sent earthling skywatchers skyrocketing with delight, as they released their first picture of Messier-87—a super-dense neutron region or ‘black hole’ in Virgo galaxy this week.

Hawai’i is crucial to Event Horizon (EHT)’s world network. Its high volcanic setting provides cloud-free receiving/bending of its own multiple signal—from three points in an array of eight new [radio]telescopes, top, with Mauna Kea Observatory’s James Clerk Maxwell 49-foot dish telescope, and reusing CalTech’s nearby CSO ‘redundant’ observatory.

Previously co-funded by Great Britain, Canada and Netherlands, EHT is presently co-sponsored by Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts with the Academia Sinica, and a consortium of astrophysics interests from Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea and Chile. EHT is in international partnership with the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan, together with NRC (Canada), NSC and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea). Vital cooperation is the link with the Republic of Chile—where ALMA‘s 66 high-precision antennae are located on the Chajnantor plateau, at 5000 meters altitude/one mile high in northern Chile.
(ALMA)=Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

Event Horizon Telescope —EHT— world’s 1st super-array captures its first picture of ultra-dense neutron region M-57 in constellation Virgo

The Event Horizon Telescope—EHT—is a global array of radio telescopes involving dozens of institutions and astrophysicists round the world. Breakthrough discovery by the EHT is an image of Messier 87 (M-87)’s supermassive neutron black hole at the center of the Virgo galaxy cluster, 55 million light years away. This neutron-dense region contains 6.5 billion times the mass of our Sun.

Affectionately named ‘black holes’ are extremely compressed cosmic objects, containing extraordinary amounts of mass packed densely into a tiny region of space. This mass is shrouded by an event horizon—a boundary beyond which nothing—not even light—can escape its electromagnetic/gravitational pull.

They affect their surroundings in extreme ways, including warping spacetime and heating surrounding material to hundreds of billions of degrees. Albert Einstin in his 1915 Theory of General Relativity predicted that a black hole would cast a circular shadow on its bright, glowing material. The newly-released image of M87 from EHT reveals this shadow.

Light emitted from inside the event horizon can never reach the outside observer. Likewise, any object approaching the horizon from the observer’s side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon—its image becoming more and more redshifted as time elapses. This means that the wavelength of the light emitted from the object is getting longer as the object moves away from the observer. The traveling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of ‘proper’ time.

As high as the Swiss Alps, Mauna Kea hosts climate-immune radiotelescope array for worldwide science cooperative

Black hole event horizons are widely misunderstood. Common, although erroneous, is the notion that black holes vacuum up material in their neighborhood, where in fact they are no more capable of seeking to consume than any other gravitational attractor. As with any mass in the universe, matter must come within its gravitational scope for the possibility to exist of capture or consolidation with any other mass. Equally common is the idea that matter can be observed falling into a black hole. This is not possible either.

Astronomers can detect only accretion disks around black holes, where material moves with such speed that friction creates detectable high-energy radiation. Matter from these accretion disks is forced out along the axis of spin of the black hole, creating visible jets where the streams interact with matter—such as interstellar gas—or if they happen to be aimed directly at Earth.
J.A.Peacock Cosmological Physics, 1999

A distant observer—or world-class telescope array—will never actually see something reach the horizon. Instead, while approaching its edge, the object will seem to go ever more slowly, while any light it emits will be further and further redshifted.

Earth-size Telescope Dish
In order to see a black hole for the first time, the Event Horizon Telescope team hooked up an array of radio telescopes in Hawai’i, Central and South America (Atacama), Europe, Greenland and Antarctica, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) dish in Cambridge, MA.

EHT signals from global telescope network create earth-size dish receiver, beamed Mauna Kea HI to Cambridge MA for image resolution by the EHT team

Using a technique known as very long baseline (vLBI) interferometry, the CfA-MIT team took precisely-timed data from each radio telescope, combining them to produce images comparable with what an Earth-hemisphere-sized dish would capture. The resulting virtual telescope has the highest resolution of any instrument ever built on earth, in orbit within the Solar System—or even beyond the Heliopause where Voyagers I & II entered Interstellar Space.

We’re a melting pot of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers. That’s what it took to achieve something once thought impossible.
Katie Bouman, PhD CfA elec.engineer/computer sci
Co-author six papers in Astrophysical Journal Letters

EHT’s image reveals that this enormous black hole—large enough to engulf the solar system—anchors a jet that extends outwards for tens of thousands of light years.

Hawai’i’s Mauna a Wakea—white mountain—multiple telescope array at 13,803feet on the dormant volcano played crucial role in Event Horizon success

There are already plans to expand the EHT: to enable the team to make time-lapse movies of the dynamics of this (newly-discovered) living system, and to discover how the jet draws its energy from this negative source.

Creating the EHT was a formidable challenge which required upgrading and connecting a worldwide network of thirteen pre-existing telescopes deployed at a variety of challenging high-altitude sites. These locations included volcanoes in Hawai`i and Mexico, mountains in Arizona and the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Chilean Atacama Desert, and Antarctica.

All Very Baseline Interferometry
Event Horizon observations use a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) which synchronizes 13 telescopes around the world, using earth’s rotation to form one huge, Earth-size telescope observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. This lets EHT achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arc-seconds—enough to read a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk café in Paris.

From Chile’s Atacama high desert to Spain’s Sierra Nevada to Mauna Kea’s multiple array, telescopes worldwide combined to bring new images beyond human expectation and belief

Resolution of the EHT image depends on separation distance between the telescopes—the baseline—and the short-millimeter radio wavelengths captured around the world. EHT’s finest resolution is achieved by the longest baseline, which for M87 stretches from Hawai’i to Spain and Greenland to Antarctica. To optimize long baseline sensitivity—or make detection possible—the team developed a specialized system which combines all signals from Mauna Kea’s SMA dishes, letting Hawai’i act as a single EHT station.

Beaming-coordinating signals from night-time (western) half of the globe employs optimum use of precious telescope time when the other—Asian—hemisphere is in daylight.

After separately recording signals at all thirteen telescopes, data are flown to a single location and combined by computer to create an image by a virtual Earth-size telescope—first of its kind.

Petabytes, Raw Data and Red Shift
Lindy Blackburn, EHT data processing team leader and coauthor explains that EHT holds millions of gigabytes of data from many telescopes that weren’t originally designed to work together. ‘We developed multiple pathways to process and calibrate data, using new algorithms to stabilize the Earth’s atmosphere and to align the signals from all sites within trillionths of a second precisely.’

Rapidly spinning supermassive hole surrounded by its accretion disc of rotating leftovers from Sun-like star ripped apart by the hole’s tidal force, courtesy ALMA Large Array, Atacama

Telescopes contributing to this result were ALMA*, APEX, the Spanish IRAM 30-meter telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, the Submillimeter Array, the Greenland Submillimeter Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope. Petabytes of raw data from all telescopes were combined by highly specialized supercomputers hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Munich, and MIT Haystack Observatory, Cambridge, MA.
*Atacama Large Millimeter-Submillimeter Array in Andes high desert, Chile

Global teamwork meant a close collaboration by astrophysicists, technicians and researchers around the world—and a first for science.

Construction of the EHT and this week’s observations represent the culmination of decades of close technical theoretical work. Thirteen partner institutions worked together to create the EHT, using both pre-existing infrastructure and support from a variety of world agencies. Key funding was provided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), EU’s European Research Council (ERC), and funding agencies in East Asia, above.

On a planetary level, we sci-fi addicts thank the team for rising above national barriers and creating something previously only dreamed of.

On a Cosmic level—look out—unlimited data incoming.
©2019 Siderealview

11:II:11 Navigating the Vortex: our Quantum Leap

Vortex, maelström, whirlpool: Nature's basic mechanism for transporting mass and energy effectively

“Nature seems to be a Book written in the Language of Mathematics” Galileo (1564-1642)

As communicators, we bloggers may sometimes feel we have been speaking but the words are not coming from inside our bodies. The words have been coming from somewhere else…

“For several months, we have been moving forward and are being released in small increments. We are in the birth canal –the tunnel– and in that space it is near impossible to ‘see’ anything. We feel we are not connected to anything. Alone in the tunnel, we have been traveling on a raft with no wind behind us, no oars and in still waters, with no-one to left or right. But now we are moving forward and this new movement is creating the strange feeling of being in two places at once.” Karen Bishop Emerging Earth Angels

Lightworker Karen Bishop suggests that the sensation of being lost, disconnected and alone will pass as humanity moves through this intermediary stage and into the great mass awakening to follow. This new sensation of bliss and purpose comes as soon as we “are enmeshed in our new spaces in a higher dimension.”

Schrödinger's Cat: quantum uncertainty principle (1935) reduced to the absurd

Higher dimensions, Alternate Reality, parallel Universes; the quantum paradox of ‘many worlds’: an unending conundrum of being in two places at the same time. Particle physicists pursuing the ‘God’ particle, Higgs-Boson, endlessly around circular underground tunnels on two continents. What do these concepts have in common?

Uncertainty principle: math simplifies quantum reality

Higher dimensions –or alternate ones– are presently the preoccupation of particle physicists, quantum cosmologists and proponents of the holographic universe in our search for the meaning of Reality. Physics, cosmology and mathematics are crossing the boundaries between science and philosophy.

New Age lightworkers are becoming more assured and vocal in their prediction of a mass awakening in human consciousness. And it looks as if science is beginning to agree.

Max Tegmark, astrophysicist, cosmologist and professor in the physics faculty at MIT in Cambridge, Mass likes the idea of parallel universes: the quantum mechanics (QM) paradox of a particle’s ability to be in two places at the same time. He sees mathematics as our ultimate connection to reality. “Math is not something we invented, but something we are continually rediscovering.”

“We now have equations that describe how light behaves, how gravity behaves, how atoms behave. We can express the speed of light in mathematical terms. It is beautiful. In math we capture the essence of a very complicated Universe out there.”

“What if we were to see the Universe not as an entity that exists inside space and time, but that space and time exist inside it?” Max Tegmark, Prof. of Physics, MIT

Anton Zeilinger, author of Dance of the Photons 2005, translated into German as Einsteins Spuk, ‘Einstein’s Spook’ or ‘Ghost’, has a different view. He currently heads a team at the University of Vienna who have ‘teleported’ light photons 600 meters under the river Danube. He and his Austrian team of photon-busters have proved (in their ‘double-slit’ particle experiment) a basic quantum theory that we change the nature of reality simply by observing it.

“(Quantum Theory of Reality) is exciting, it is extremely precise, it is mathematically beautiful; and it describes everything. It just doesn’t make sense.” Anton Zeilinger

Quantum cosmologist, Leonard Susskind, professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University since 1979, says the beauty of math’s connection to reality is its simplicity. It becomes easier to describe reality with mathematics. “As you probe deeper, mathematics becomes the ONLY reality.”

But in sounding the depths of the cosmos, he uncovered many unanswered questions, e.g., the popular assignment of black holes as the bad guys of the Universe. He and Stephen Hawking discussed the black hole theory in 1988 when Hawking first published his Brief History of Time. “It changed my life.”

” I believed he was wrong. I spent the next 20 years working through the evidence to prove lt.”

Hawking suggested black holes were places in the cosmos which swallowed everything. Nothing escapes after it has breached the rim — event horizon — of a black hole. All light, matter, energy, information is sucked in by its (theoretical) huge gravitational pull and is lost. Nothing comes back out.

“Hawking had to be wrong. I refused to believe everything could disappear. We can’t allow information to be ‘lost’. Instead, how about if the horizon of a back hole is 3D like a hologram capturing 3D reality of everything that falls into it?”

In 1993 he and his graduate students announced their holographic principle of the Universe: that if all reality were indeed a hologram — a 3D model of everything captured as an image of our reality — maybe black holes were images of events taking place very far away: back in time; that our reality is a projection of a holographic record stored at the outer reaches of the Universe. The team became bold. They called a consortium of the world’s top physicists to a conference at Stanford in November 2009 and Susskind invited Stephen Hawking to speak. By then, Hawking was talking about ‘sideways’ or lateral time. But he was interested in Susskind’s holographic theory. And Susskind’s team was about to put it to the test.

“He didn’t get it. You don’t get it. Nobody gets it. But we may be about to prove that the whole of creation is a hologram.”

If the Stanford team is right, their model brings quantum cosmology, the ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation and New Age spiritualism into the same arena: We are what we believe, what we think and how we see our own Reality.

Or even more spiritual in concept, that Susskind’s ‘something stored at the outer reaches of the Universe’ might be the Intelligent Being/Source from whom mystics and devotees seek enlightenment.

Does this mean that the Cosmos is coming full circle?

We are having an intelligent conversation with the Universe.

The Universe may be providing its own answer to the question.

The Sun and solar system gravitate each year to and from Galactic center (of the Milky Way), coming closest in mid-December. It is a point on the ecliptic roughly in the constellation of Sagittarius from which (in the view of many esoteric disciplines and world religions) we emerged in the dark recesses at the beginning of time. In the view of some (physicists, cosmologists) Galactic Center is a black hole. To others (esoteric/New Age science), it is the source of a massive emission of photons, beaming information towards us, a ‘photon belt’ affecting Earth and human DNA. And we are circling in an irrevocable spiral back towards the point where on December 21, 2012 Earth’s orbit in the Solar System, the Sun’s position on the ecliptic and the center of our Galaxy will line up as one.

We may reach this galactic vortex unscathed. In the mythology of the Maya, this is Hunab Ku, our galactic heart; a sign that the Mayan Long Count Calendar is complete and that Mankind will start a new Count of Time.

In world mythology, earth was ground out from the mill of the Vortex, the great Maelström, the cosmic whirlpool. And so, in the eyes of the Maya at least, we are returning to that vortex, that pool of creation.

According to some Mayan scholars, we entered the last Underworld (phase of human evolutionary Consciousness), the Universal Underworld yesterday.

In the eyes of Karen Bishop and other New Age lightworkers who have been working tirelessly to prepare for the ‘Shift’ (in human consciousness), the runup to our rendezvous with the heart of our Galaxy is a sign of our Ascension, ‘coming home’, maturing as a species. To the fearful, solstice 2012 could mean chaos, collapse of Earth systems, erratic solar and stellar behavior; even a physical shift in earth’s poles.

The Sun, our partner up there in the immediate galactic neighborhood, has indeed been leading us a dance lately. Solar activity is on the increase.

Tiny solar burst crop circle in rice at Magelang, Java January 29th, 2011

We are currently headed for solar maximum, but it’s not sunspots –traditionally seen as the barometer for solar minima and maxima— that have featured, but strong warnings of solar flares disturbing our geomagnetic field.

NOAA’s solar X-ray alert system [view sidebar at right] has been signaling ‘major storm’, ‘active’. Twin crop circles* in Java in late January were followed by a third small design reminiscent of last season’s Wiltshire solar flare warnings.

Spaceweather alert.

And last weekend the Sun itself joined the 3D holographic universe.

Last Sunday, dubbed Superbowl SUNday by NASA and the media, February 6th 2011 marked the day when the space agency’s twin STEREO satellites locked into orbit round the sun and started projecting 3D pictures of both sides of the sun back to Earth.

Affectionately known as STEREOAhead and STEREOBehind, the craft were launched in 2006 on a mission to study solar flares [coronal mass ejections, CMEs] to predict solar storms headed towards earth. The two craft reached their final position [in ‘opposition’ to each other, 180ºdegrees apart] so NASA, SOHO, and SDA are now combined to beam a wholistic continuous view of the sun back to earthbound systems.

“We expect great advances in theoretical solar physics and space weather forecasting.”

Heliophiles are jumping for joy. The 3D stereo images arrived just in time to document new coronal holes forming on the sun’s far side, which are heading to face towards us.

STEREO went into orbit round the SUN last Superbowl SUNday

STEREO is an acronym for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory. The two satellites now join forces with SOHO [NASA’s Solar & Heliospheric Observatory] which has carried the load of solar projections to date.

“In the past an active sunspot could emerge on the far side of the sun completely hidden from Earth. Then, the sun’s rotation would turn that region towards our planet, spitting flares and clouds of plasma, with little warning.”

Now, in the runup to solar maximum, 2012, these first 3D stereo images bring into focus our need to prepare for possible solar disruption to the geomagnetic field and earth’s electromagnetically-powered systems.

Coronal Holes, imaged from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

Coronal holes on the sun’s surface are the source of open magnetic field lines from which high-speed solar wind particles stream out into space. This fast solar wind travels at approximately 800 km/s [about 1.8 million mph].

When this surge reaches Earth’s magnetosphere, predictably three or four days later, some spectacular fireworks can occur. Usually the spaceweather team tries not to alarm earth populations more than they really have to. So electromagnetic disruptions to power supplies and weather systems are downplayed. Aurora borealis –northern lights– are emphasized instead.

UV image of same solar holes: coronal flares heading earthwards

“After traveling through space for a few days the particles will impact the Earth and may spark the formation of some auroral activity for lucky spectators” NASA

In NASA’s study ‘of the nature of coronal mass ejections’ the agency is not responsible for reporting on physical repercussions strong emissions [M-class flares] may have on communications, logistical and transportation systems. There are three categories of flares, X-class, M-class and C-class. C-class flares are small, with few noticeable consequences in the geomagnetic field. M-class flares are medium-sized, capable of causing brief radio blackouts, affecting Earth’s polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare. The largest, X-class, flares are ‘Superstorms’, major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms. Earth’s last major Superstorm blackout was the Carrington Event of 1859 when telegraph systems behaved erratically. But at the time the electric light had not yet been invented. **

150 years later our systems are massively dependent on NOT having magnetic surges play havoc with our electrical supply. Not to mention our telephone, television, cells, blackberries, macBooks, iPods, iPads… you get the picture.

So, is our Universe shaking its quantum hologram fist in our faces and saying ‘shape up or else…’? [In that context, we, reflections of the Intelligent Source, may be setting ourselves the test to see if we are ‘intelligent’/evolved enough to pass it].

Maelström, vortex of the Norwegian Sea

Or, is the vortex going to win? Is the black hole going to pull us in? Are we navigating the cosmic whirlpool alone with no-one to save us from drowning?

Mythology and spiritual belief predict Mankind has enough presence of mind to make a quantum leap in consciousness, to save itself. History says it’s never too late to start anew. Native American and Maya traditions say now is a good time.

I hope we’re listening.

©2011 Marian Youngblood

*more on the January Java crop circles here.
**Two days after this blog was posted, the Sun issued a “Valentine’s Day” X-class flare. There have been several large flares since then, along with some disturbing volcanic eruptions. Siderealview apologies for any suggestive content within this blog. No harm was intended.
MY 03/10/11