Nev­er­the­less, if see­ing is be­liev­ing, we have fi­nally glimpsed the mon­ster’s shadow, hav­ing heard its whim­pers only re­cently. It ap­pears that one of the weird­est con­structs of the hu­man mind ex­ists for real. The trans­for­ma­tion of the black hole from a math­e­mat­i­cal odd­ity, emerg­ing from Ein­stein’s the­ory of gen­eral rel­a­tiv­ity, to an ob­serv­able fix­ture of the cos­mos is a tes­ta­ment to hu­man­i­ty’s col­lec­tive in­tel­lec­tual prow­ess, re­lent­less cu­rios­ity and dogged per­se­ver­ance

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