Black Hole Awesomeness!

We have been loving the hype and memes surrounding the first ever “photo” of a black hole. Here at Gadgetcetera, we have been fascinated with science, technology and innovation since we first touched the Atari 2600. This past week has been the culmination of 400 years of science, dating back to Galileo and his homemade telescopes.

In case you don’t find the photo all that impressive, keep these things in mind:

• This black hole is 500 million light years away. Humans beings took a “photograph” of a black hole in a galaxy (if my math is correct) approximately 4 700 000 000 000 000 000 000 km away. Somewhere I read that this would be akin to taking a photograph of a 1mm object (grain of sand) 13 000 km away. So for those of us in Winnipeg, Canada, that would mean taking a photograph of a grain of sand somewhere in India (or vice verse!).
• The dark area, inside the “ring of fire”, is the length of our Solar System, laid end to end, 3 times.
• The scientists basically turned the Earth into a large telescope, using 8 telescopes to collect radio waves from the distant black hole.
• Scientists predicted what this would look like, using mostly math. It ended being basically bang-on.
• Humans can be pretty awesome!

As a celebration of all of this scientific and technological awesomeness, please take 15% off your order using code BLACKHOLE