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Katie Bouman, The MIT Grad Who Made First-Ever Photograph of Black Hole Possible

Katie Bouman, a computer scientist and MIT post-doctoral student, played a vital role in creating the algorithm that made it possible to take the first photograph of a black hole. She led the creation of a new algorithm three years ago to produce an image of the supermassive black hole located 50 million lightyears away at the center of the M87 galaxy. The historic first photo, released on Wednesday after years of work by the international Event Horizon Telescope project, provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new window for studying black holes and gravity.

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92 views2 pages

Katie Bouman, The MIT Grad Who Made First-Ever Photograph of Black Hole Possible

Katie Bouman, a computer scientist and MIT post-doctoral student, played a vital role in creating the algorithm that made it possible to take the first photograph of a black hole. She led the creation of a new algorithm three years ago to produce an image of the supermassive black hole located 50 million lightyears away at the center of the M87 galaxy. The historic first photo, released on Wednesday after years of work by the international Event Horizon Telescope project, provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new window for studying black holes and gravity.

Uploaded by

tahir777
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Katie Bouman, the MIT grad who made first-

ever photograph of black hole possible


Highlights

 Katie Bouman, a computer scientist, took the lead on creating the algorithm that made the
first-ever black hole picture possible
 Photographing a black hole is "equivalent to taking an image of a grapefruit on the moon,
but with a radio telescope": Bouman
 The supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is
50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87.

BRUSSELS: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) post-doctoral student Katie


Bouman, who isn’t an astronomer, amazingly played a vital role in taking the first-ever
photograph of a black hole.

That historic first photo of a black hole was released to the public on Wednesday after years of
work on an international project called Event Horizon Telescope.

Katie Bouman, a computer scientist, took the lead on creating the algorithm that made it possible
to take the photo 55 million light-years away from Earth.

According to the Event Horizon Telescope website, “This long-sought image provides the
strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new
window onto the study of black holes, their event horizons, and gravity.” In layman’s terms, this
could change everything about how we think about the universe.

Three years ago MIT grad student led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever
image of a black hole.

The snap, which has only been available to the public eye for a few hours, was taken using a
worldwide network of powerful telescopes back in 2017.

The image of the black hole was taken in a galaxy known as M87, where, for 16 years,
astronomers observed stars rotating in an orbit.

Scientists observing the stars determined that they were rotating around a supermassive black
hole, and it is that black hole the whole world is now getting a glimpse of, in large thanks to
Bouman’s contributions.

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