What we know today about black holes in space is thanks to three geniuses with significant handicaps. Albert Einstein (with Asperger's syndrome), Stephen Hawking (victim of an ALS detected at the age of 21 which, against all odds, allowed him to live until he was 76) and Karl Schwarzschild, a difficult character physicist who provided exact solutions to the equations of Einstein while fighting in World War I. He died of pemphigus contracted at the front.
They were not even aware of the success of their formulas, which would explode decades after they left this small world. I like to think that since last week we saw the first image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our galaxy, their predictions have been confirmed.
Many high-ranking scientific discoveries, the endless hours they entail, the inexhaustible efforts dedicated by their professionals, the despair and even abandonment, get their reward much later. When they can no longer celebrate. They have the dubious honor of recognition a posteriori, the big letters in history (before in the encyclopedias) and the already inaudible gratitude of those who have been graced, especially in the medical field, with their findings.
If we have now taken that image of the red glow in the Milky Way as proof that some researchers were right, if what they predicted after crushing stone – for years and at the expense of criticism – is finally corroborated, it is thanks to three fabulous guys who they put the world on a montera.
Let's recap: a man of Jewish origin who did not know how to give the correct change for coins on the bus and wore a sock of each color, an Englishman who communicated through a voice tuner because of a tracheostomy and a German who barely lived 42 years into himself. Perfect targets, objects of ridicule and victims of bullying, who did not take the hint. Wave.
And we give it a go, so tiny and insignificant, clumsy and wrong, stumbling around in our own black hole: between routine and stress, looking for the light without seeing it.
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