Signals From the Void
Scientists are trying to get the first direct look at the black hole at the center of our galaxy. How close will they come to seeing the unseeable? Even without a telescope, it's possible to look off the summit of Mauna Kea and see, 14,000 feet below and dozens of miles in the distance, wide swaths of rain forest touching the whitecapped Pacific. Down there, people are doing what people come to Hawaii to do: hiking to waterfalls, lying in the sand, exposing their skin to tropical solar radiation. Up here, there is no vegetation, no warmth and very little atmosphere. And as the sun sets over the parabolic aluminum dishes of the Submillimeter Array observatory, it's time to work. Sheperd Doeleman, the 45-year-old MIT researcher in charge of tonight's experiment, is setting up a piece of the radio telescope that, if all goes well, will synchronize with other radio telescopes in...