The Black Vault

Mouth of Giant Black Hole Measured for First Time

By Clara Moskowitz | SPACE.com – Thu, Sep 27, 2012

For the first time, scientists have peered to the edge of a colossal black hole and measured the point of no return for matter.

A black hole has a boundary called an event horizon. Anything that falls within a black hole's event horizon — be it stars, gas, or even light — can never escape.

"Once objects fall through the event horizon, they're lost forever," Shep Doeleman, assistant director of the MIT Haystack Observatory and research associate at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, said in a statement Thursday (Sept. 27). "It's an exit door from our universe. You walk through that door, you’re not coming back."

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