The Black Hole Explorer: Motivation and Vision
Abstract
We present the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX), a mission that will produce the sharpest images in the history of astronomy by extending submillimeter Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to space. BHEX will discover and measure the bright and narrow "photon ring" that is predicted to exist in images of black holes, produced from light that has orbited the black hole before escaping. This discovery will expose universal features of a black hole's spacetime that are distinct from the complex astrophysics of the emitting plasma, allowing the first direct measurements of a supermassive black hole's spin. In addition to studying the properties of the nearby supermassive black holes M87* and Sgr A*, BHEX will measure the properties of dozens of additional supermassive black holes, providing crucial insights into the processes that drive their creation and growth. BHEX will also connect these supermassive black holes to their relativistic jets, elucidating the power source for the brightest and most efficient engines in the universe. BHEX will address fundamental open questions in the physics and astrophysics of black holes that cannot be answered without submillimeter space VLBI. The mission is enabled by recent technological breakthroughs, including the development of ultra-high-speed downlink using laser communications, and it leverages billions of dollars of existing ground infrastructure. We present the motivation for BHEX, its science goals and associated requirements, and the pathway to launch within the next decade.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2406.12917,
title = {The Black Hole Explorer: Motivation and Vision},
author = {Michael D. Johnson and Kazunori Akiyama and Rebecca Baturin and Bryan Bilyeu and Lindy Blackburn and Don Boroson and Alejandro Cardenas-Avendano and Andrew Chael and Chi-kwan Chan and Dominic Chang and Peter Cheimets and Cathy Chou and Sheperd S. Doeleman and Joseph Farah and Peter Galison and Ronald Gamble and Charles F. Gammie and Zachary Gelles and Jose L. Gomez and Samuel E. Gralla and Paul Grimes and Leonid I. Gurvits and Shahar Hadar and Kari Haworth and Kazuhiro Hada and Michael H. Hecht and Mareki Honma and Janice Houston and Ben Hudson and Sara Issaoun and He Jia and Svetlana Jorstad and Jens Kauffmann and Yuri Y. Kovalev and Peter Kurczynski and Robert Lafon and Alexandru Lupsasca and Robert Lehmensiek and Chung-Pei Ma and Daniel P. Marrone and Alan P. Marscher and Gary J. Melnick and Ramesh Narayan and Kotaro Niinuma and Scott C. Noble and Eric J. Palmer and Daniel C. M. Palumbo and Lenny Paritsky and Eliad Peretz and Dominic Pesce and Alexander Plavin and Eliot Quataert and Hannah Rana and Angelo Ricarte and Freek Roelofs and Katia Shtyrkova and Laura C. Sinclair and Jeffrey Small and Sridharan Tirupati Kumara and Ranjani Srinivasan and Andrew Strominger and Paul Tiede and Edward Tong and Jade Wang and Jonathan Weintroub and Maciek Wielgus and George Wong and Xinyue Alice Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.12917},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Proceedings for SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation