SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS Radio) -- Long the stuff of conjecture and theory, scientists Wednesday offered what they said was photographic proof of a "black hole".
"Truly remarkable, almost humbling," said astrophysicist Sheperd Doleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope project, at a Washington D.C. news conference. Doleman is part of a National Science Foundation team that used massive amounts of data from eight radio telescopes to produce the image.
The team is reporting its findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Another member of the team, Jessica Dempsey, said the image reminded her of the "eye of Sauron" from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
A black hole is an object so dense that even light can't escape its massive gravitational pull. They were first predicted by the physicist Albert Einstein in the early 20th century. Scientists now believe there are numerous places in the universe where stars that have exhausted their fuel collapsed and created black holes.