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@mattmcgorry : By @farhoudmeybodi : “Astronomers have just taken the first ever image of a black hole, one the most mysterious objects in the universe. The black hole itself – a cosmic trapdoor with a diameter stretching 38 billion kilometers, from which neither light nor matter can escape – is totally unseeable. But this photograph reveals a beautiful halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole, at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55 million light years from Earth. Black holes were first predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity – although Einstein himself was skeptical that they actually existed. Since then, astronomers have accumulated overwhelming evidence that these cosmic sinkholes are out there, including recent detection of gravitational waves that ripple across the cosmos when pairs of them collide. The breakthrough image was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Chile, in an effort involving more than 200 scientists. This magical photo is our first glimpse of a black hole’s accretion disk, a fuzzy doughnut-shaped ring of gas and dust that steadily feeds the monster within. I mean how much more esoteric can this whole thing get? We’re quite literally gazing into the womb of the universe, which is a manifestation of darkness and shadow, not light. And if you venture too close to this mythic force and cross “event horizon,” you'll never escape. It boggles my mind how similar the macro of the universe is to the micro within each of us. Every one is us has a shadow deep within. A hidden place where we suppress the darkness of our childhood traumas. But this pain isn’t the end, only the beginning. By journeying into the shadow, which is a Herculean task, we break through to the other side, into the light, the joy, the possibility. And ironically, the only way we can truly grasp the gravity of this monumental force is through true collaboration from differe