Curiouser and curiouser, NASA plans to 'image' a black hole

0 Comments | USA TODAY, October, 2006 | by Dan Vergano

In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice learns it's possible to "believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast," but many astrophysicists would like to see just one: a view of a light-destroying black hole. And they are getting closer. NASA is even calling the drive to "image" a black hole a long-term goal for space exploration.

Astronomers provided an update of the chase at the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society meeting last week in San Francisco. When anything falls down the gravitational rabbit hole into the maw of a black hole, a collapsed star with gravity so strong that even light can't escape its pull, nothing returns. But the high-temperature, debris-accumulating "accretion" disks circling many of them emit radiation, a...