How to watch the ‘groundbreaking’ announcement

Today, at 9 a.m. ET, we might see the first-ever actual image of a black hole. 

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project is an international collaboration aimed to capture the first image of a black hole. And now, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is holding a press conference to announce that project’s “groundbreaking result.” 

Press conferences will be held simultaneously in Brussels (in English), Lyngby (in Danish), Santiago (in Spanish), Shanghai (in Mandarin), Tokyo (in Japanese), Taipei (in Mandarin), and Washington D.C. (in English). 

You’ll also be able to watch a live stream of the event, below. 

The EHT is not a single physical telescope; instead, it’s an array of linked radio dishes across the globe, creating an Earth-sized virtual telescope.  

A black hole is an object with such strong gravitational pull that nothing, even light, can escape it. The black hole itself is invisible (don’t expect to see anything like the special effects in Interstellar), but the surrounding matter illuminates its “shadow,” which can be seen. The particular black hole the EHT is focusing on is the central black hole in our own galaxy, and getting a glimpse of it is a pretty big deal. 

Read more about the project here.