the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 6, 2022
Astronomers in mid-May revealed their first-ever picture of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the galaxy where we live.
The picture is important to science because black holes are thought to exist at the center of most galaxies. Images like this will help explain how they all developed, which is what let us evolve. Black holes are celestial bodies that become so dense, they suck in all nearby matter and energy, including light. This means black holes cannot be directly seen. Albert Einstein’s theories predicted them. Galaxies are collections of millions of stars rotating around a center. This new picture shows how much darker the area of the black hole is compared to the surrounding area, which is filled with energetic material being pulled inward. The center of the Milky Way is very far away from us. Light from near the black hole has travelled 27,000 years to reach the earth.
It is impressive that a team of astronomers involved more than 300 researchers from 80 institutions around the world. They analyzed observations from eight telescopes in Arizona, Hawaii, Mexico, Chile, France, Spain and Greenland. This shows what can be accomplished when scientists around the world work together. But this is only the second picture ever of a galactic black hole. Under capitalism, cooperative work is rare. Look how pharmaceutical labs patent their research products instead of sharing them.
Black holes devour light, but capitalism devours the drive to cooperate.