Einstein’s theory of relativity paved the way for black holes’ discovery, but the concept behind their existence was so bizarre that even the scientific visionary was not convinced.
More than a century ago, Albert Einstein stunned the world when he explained the universe through his theory of general relativity. The theory not only described the relationship between space, time, gravity and matter, it opened the door to the theoretical possibility of a particularly mind-boggling phenomenon that would eventually be called black holes.
The concept that explains black holes was so radical, in fact, that Einstein, himself, had strong misgivings. He concluded in a 1939 paper in the Annals of Mathematics that the idea was “not convincing” and the phenomena did not exist “in the real world.”
The unveiling of the first-ever picture of a black hole by the Event Horizon Telescope in April 2019, however, not only confirmed Einstein’s original theory, but also provided indisputable proof that the gravitational monsters are, in fact, real.
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