Stephen Hawking's daughter says her father would have been 'blown away' by the first ever image of a black hole

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Stephen Hawking's daughter says her father would have been 'blown away' by the first ever image of a black hole

Stephen Hawking

ANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images

Professor Stephen Hawking.

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  • Stephen Hawking would have been "blown away" by the first ever picture of a black hole, his daughter told Business Insider.
  • Lucy Hawking said her father was aware of the Event Horizon Telescope's project when he was still alive, and hoped it would be successful.
  • Scientists published the photograph of a black hole on Wednesday.
  • Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

Stephen Hawking would have been "blown away" by the first close-up image of the black hole that was published on Wednesday, his daughter has told Business Insider.

Lucy Hawking said Thursday that she would have loved her father, the world-renowned specialist in black holes who passed away last year, to see the picture.

"As the absolute leader in theoretical discoveries about black holes, we think our father would have been blown away by this first image and we all feel desperately sad he is not here to see it," she said on behalf of herself and her two brothers, Robert and Timothy.

Black hole

Event Horizon Telescope

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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration published the groundbreaking image of a black hole's shadow after more than a decade of work by scientists from 40 different countries. Eight observatories created a "virtual" telescope to capture the details of the supermassive black hole.

Read more: 'Like looking at the gates of Hell': Astronomers just revealed the first picture of a black hole, and it's a monster

Lucy Hawking said her father would have been aware of the project as it had been underway since 2006.

"He very much hoped the project would be successful as it would mean a leap forward in terms of our understanding of black holes," she said.

"And it would have been incredible for Dad to see an image of the mysterious and fascinating object of a black hole which dominated his scientific career and his thoughts."

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Stephen Hawking contributed revolutionary theories to the study of black holes. One of his most famous assertions was that black holes are in fact not "entirely" black, but emit small parts of radiation over time. According to "Hawking Radiation," black holes actually shrink as they radiate away their energy.

"Black holes ain't as black as they are painted," he once said.

Read more: Scientists have come closer to confirming one of Stephen Hawking's biggest theories on black holes

EHT did not confirm or deny this theory, but no one expected the image to do so at this stage, astrophysicist Erin Bonning told Live Science.

Wednesday's picture showed a black hole in the center of the "supergiant" Messier 87 galaxy. Scientists said the image showed a structure that was about the size of our solar system. The black hole's shadow was about 25 billion miles long - more than three times as far as Pluto's orbit.

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Heino Falcke, an astrophysicist at Radboud University Nijmegen who is an EHT collaborator, said during a live press briefing that scientists are looking at a region they cannot even imagine being there.

"It feels like looking at the gates of Hell, at the end of space and time: the event horizon, the point of no return. That is awe-inspiring to me, at least, but it's also important to physics," Falcke said.

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