alt Hacker NewsWhile the conclusions of the observation are interesting, what really stood out to me was the observations themselves. That black hole is 20 million light years away, in another galaxy! And we have multiple high enough resolution observations to conclude how the gas orbits the black hole and gets dragged along behind it. That's nuts.
What blows my mind is that 20 million light years also means that what we're observing something that happened 20 million years ago. We're looking into the very distant past, at something that might well no longer exist.
Turn that around and there well could be other lifeforms observing the Earth with dinosaurs roaming around on it. Perhaps observing the impact of a giant meteor onto the earth.
The light of that meteor impact on Earth is still roaming the universe. If only we could travel faster than that light.