If you’ve been on the internet in the past week, you’ve probably seen this image – the first ever image of a black hole (and it has been made into many memes since its release on Wednesday).
A team of over 200 people was responsible for the image, but one has skyrocketed in fame. Katie Bouman is a 29 year old computer scientist from MIT and soon-to-be assistant professor at Caltech, one of the best universities in the world. Bouman led one of four teams responsible for turning on data from hard drives that eventually led to the algorithm that produced the image.
On Facebook, Bouman wrote, “No one algorithm or person made this image, it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat. It has been truly an honor, and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you all.”
Although blurry, the image was incredibly hard to attain. It took eight telescopes around the world and five petabytes of data. (If you’re like me, the word “petabyte” means nothing to you, but according to Dan Marrone, Ph.D. and associate professor at the University of Arizona, “It amounts to more than half a ton of hard drives. Five petabytes is a lot of data: It’s equivalent to 5,000 years of MP3 files.”)
The black hole in the picture is 6.5 billion times larger than our sun and 55 million light-years from Earth. And we can see it on our computer screens. That is insane. The definition of a black hole is literally a region of space where no matter, not even light, can escape, yet somehow we managed to get a picture of one.
Basically, science is incredible and this blurry image of a black hole may be a funny meme, but don’t discount the astonishing work of the team of scientists behind it.
Images From:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/13/18308652/katie-bouman-black-hole-science-internet
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/black-hole-hard-disks-picture/587119/