Black holes: seeing 'the unseeable' – Science Weekly podcast

Using a global network of telescopes, scientists have managed to capture an image of a black hole for the first time. Hannah Devlin investigates why it's more than just a pretty picture

Black holes have long featured in science fiction movies as dark swirling objects that swallow anything that dares to cross its threshold, so it's easy to forget that we've never actually seen one before. That was until earlier this month when the Event Horizon telescope produced an image of a black hole's outline surrounded by dust and gas.

Hannah Devlin speaks to Dr Matt Middleton from the University of Southampton about decades of research that led to the achievement and to one of the scientists, Dr Ziri Younsi from UCL, who helped create the image, about why it's more than just a pretty picture.