It's hole new galaxy out there, suckers

Costa Blanca Astronomical Society talk on super-massive black holes will help clear up a cosmic conundrum – now caught on camera

REMEMBER all that furore about a photo of a black hole that popped up in the news in April? Been wondering ever since what all the hype was about?

Well, apart from the fact it's the first of these gigantic destroyers ever caught on camera, the shots taken by eight telescopes round the globe (including one in the Sierra Nevada) prove they actually exist. Whenever you've struggled to find the other sock in a pair, you were probably already convinced they were out there and that they were stuffed full of pens, lighters and hoofpicks – but until it's proven, any scientific theory is just that: speculation.

These gaping orifices down the back of the cosmic sofa are scattered all over the universe, but every galaxy is thought to have a super-massive version at its centre, hoovering up everything that falls into its mattersucking mouth. Spanish scientists have floated the idea that they are gateways to other galaxies, and that anything caught up in their funnels squidges through like toothpaste rather than disintegrating.

The late, great Stephen Hawking would be chuffed that the super-massive hole in the centre of galaxy M87 had been photographed, and if you want to find out why you should be, too, head to Dénia Casa de Cultura on Friday, May 10 for 19.00.

Professor Katherine Blundell, OBE, teaches astrophysics at Oxford University, specialises in black holes and active galaxies, and helped set up the 'Jetwatch' hole-monitoring project. Her talk, Black Holes & Spin-Offs, run by the Costa Blanca Astronomical Society, will successfully answer everything you didn't realise you didn't know about these gobbling giants in the sky, and if it doesn't, you can ask questions.

Then write to us at Costa News and tell us the answers.