Abstract

The next-generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT) is a transformative upgrade to the EHT that will realize black hole “cinema”: real-time and time-lapse movies of supermassive black holes on event horizon scales. These movies will resolve complex structure and dynamics on Schwarzschild radius dimensions, bringing into focus not just the persistent strong-field gravity features predicted by General Relativity (GR), but details of active accretion and relativistic jet launching that drive large scale structure in the Universe. This effort builds upon recent results by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT): the first image of M87 ’s supermassive black hole and its magnetic field structure, as well as resolved images of SgrA*, the central black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. These images are scientifically rich, and show that evolution of the EHT to a more capable array can address even deeper questions across physics and astronomy. The central concept behind the ngEHT is that the addition of modest-diameter dishes at new geographic locations and multi-color observations over a range of frequencies will enable the next revolution in horizon-resolved black hole studies. This talk will cover the ngEHT technical plans and scientific goals.