Are we going to be able to see black holes? Perhaps soon!

While black holes cannot be directly seen, since light cannot be emitted through the event horizon of the black hole, it may be possible to see the so-called accretion disk, a hot, rotating region of hot gas and plasma that is trapped by the gravity of a black hole, and which could come from the immediate environment as well as a companion binary star near the black hole. There is some new telescope technology that should be able to see accretion disks, and this new experiment is called the Event Horizon Telescope. This tool, along with the rapidly growing field of gravitational wave detectors like LIGO and others that are being built, could be opening the door to a new branch of astronomy that complements astronomy with electromagnetic radiation.