Nobel laureate physicist Kip Thorne once said that black holes seem to fit more in scientific imagination and mythology than in the real world. He was not wrong. Black holes are the most bizarre objects in the universe, but also the most fascinating. In their vicinity, space and time have no relation to what we know from Newton's tranquil celestial mechanics. On the contrary, they behave in a way that defies any human experience: they create an unfathomable abyss from which nothing escapes - not even light. It is not surprising, therefore, that physicists and astronomers - led by Einstein - stubbornly refused to accept their existence, until eventually any objections were overcome and black holes became an integral part of the way we see the universe today.
In April 2019, the international scientific team collaborating within the framework of the EHT telescope announced an unimaginable achievement. They had looked into the "heart" of the galaxy Messier 87, about 50,000,000 light-years away from Earth, and using the technique of radio interferometry, they recorded something unique: the "shadow" cast by a black hole on the bright accretion disk that surrounds it. The shape and brightness of this shadow once again matched the predictions of the General Theory of Relativity. The dark, incomprehensible, unacceptable monster out there is now practically visible! And it behaves exactly as insanely predicted by the theory...