Having learned from its past mistakes, the European Commission noted on Wednesday 10 April that the very first image of a black hole, which had never before been photographed, was made possible thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a programme financed by European funds.
This is a “major discovery”, explained the Commission in its press release, allowing us to better understand black holes, which confirms “the predictions of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and opens up new lines of enquiry into our universe”.
At six simultaneous press conferences around the world, the European Commission noted that the EHT – a network of eight telescopes around the world (in Sierra Nevada, Hawaii, Arizona, Chile and Antarctica) and the collaboration of nearly 200 scientists – has received, through the European Research Council (ERC), around EUR 14 million in European funding under this 2014-2020 budget cycle of the Horizon 2020 framework programme.
In addition, the European Commission recalls that the EU has invested EUR 30.3 million over the last 15 years in RadioNet, a consortium of 27 institutes throughout Europe, the Republic of Korea and South Africa, the objective of which is to integrate world-class infrastructures for radio astronomy research.
In the past, the Commission has communicated very little, or too late, on the financial role played by the EU in major scientific discoveries, in particular on the occasion of the discovery of 7 telluric exoplanets (see EUROPE 11732/13). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)