The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a next-generation space very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) mission concept that will extend the ground-based Event Horizon Telescope into space. The Japanese community is poised to make major contributions to the mission, ranging from science to mission-critical instrumentation. Here we present the Japanese vision for the mission. A potential major technical contribution is providing key components for its sensitive tri-band receiving system, including SIS mixers at 230 and 345 GHz and a space-qualified multi-stage 4.5K cryocooler similar to that on JAXA’s Hitomi and XRISM satellites. The Japanese community envisions broad science cases spanning from various black hole physics/astrophysics explored with VLBI to molecular universe explored by the potential single-dish observing mode at radio frequencies to be explored for the first time with the BHEX mission.
Around the horizon of a black hole, an edge of the universe, light is captured, spun into orbit by the black hole’s powerful gravitational pull. Lying within the orange donut in the famous first image of a black hole, this “photon ring” would be a prize...
My world was jolted by two shadow images: one, thrilling, the other terrifying. After a years-long effort—with 200 other scientists—we made the first image of a black hole, its shadow of no return. Then I fell into debilitating pain. A deadly shadow...
1930, Madras, India. On a steamship to England, 19-year-old Indian physics prodigy, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar makes a paradigm-shattering discovery about the life cycle of stars: a discipline pioneered by Sir Arthur Eddington, the world’s most famous...
