A professor has given a Hawaiian name Powehi to the black hole depicted in an image created in a very landmark experiment.University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian professor Larry Kimura named the cosmic object.
The world’s initial image of a black hole revealed wednesday was created using data from eight radio telescopes round the world.
Powehi suggests that ‘the adorned fathomless dark creation’ or ’embellished dark source of unending creation’ and comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th century Hawaiian creation chant.
Po could be a profound dark source of unending creation, while wehi, honored with embellishments, is one amongst the chant’s descriptions of po, the newspaper reported.
‘To have the privilege of giving a Hawaiian name to the terribly initial scientific confirmation of a black hole is very meaningful to me and my Hawaiian lineage that comes from po,’ Kimura said in a very news release.
A Hawaiian name was justified as a result of the project included 2 Hawaii telescopes, astronomers said.
‘As soon as he said it, I nearly fell off my chair,’ said Jessica dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on mauna kea.
Dempsey was among 200 scientists WHO worked to capture a picture of the massive region within the M87 galaxy nearly 54 million light-years from Earth.
Dempsey said Powehi is an excellent match for the scientific explanation provided to Kimura.
‘We described what we had seen which this black hole was illuminating and brightening the darkness around it, and that’s once he came up with the name,’ she said.
