The Event Horizon Telescope project and the National Science Foundation will "announce a groundbreaking result" at a press conference on Wednesday at 9 a.m. EDT, which will be livestreamed here.
Today (April 10), a global collaboration of more than 200 astronomers presented the first image of a directly-observed black hole. The other is an even bigger black hole 53.7 million light years away in another galaxy, M87.
"You have all this energy stored in the black hole".
The data used to create the image could help scientists better understand gravity and other phenomena, said Charles Gammie, an astronomy and physics professor at the University of IL. While Sagittarius A* is far closer in distance than the M87 galaxy black hole that was imaged, there are some "cosmic coincidences" that made the photograph possible.
Black holes are formed when huge stars collapse at the end of their life cycle, but because they do not allow light to escape, it can be hard to see them. Einstein a century ago even predicted the symmetrical shape that scientists just found, they said.
The scientists said the shape of the shadow would be nearly a ideal circle in Einstein's theory of general relativity, and if it turns out that it is not, there is something wrong with the theory. "We've been hunting this for a long time", she said of the new black hole image.
"What we're seeing is light from the stuff that's falling into the black hole", said Gammie, a member of the Event Horizon Telescope Science Council. And it could change our view of the universe, revealing some of its most mysterious and fundamental processes. Fortunately, our galaxy's supermassive black hole is on the quiet side.
The black hole measures 40-billion kilometres across - three million times the size of the Earth.
The photo of the black hole has been captured by the EHT taking up radiation from particles in the disk that are really hot.
The light you see here is what's called the accretion disk.
This person, who works for Firefox, saw the Firefox logo in the black hole.
"The shadow of the black hole is almost circular, which is consistent with our simulations".
Scientists on Wednesday revealed the first-ever image of a black hole, giving visual evidence to research dating back to Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
The Event Horizons Telescope team has also turned its sights on another black hole.