Agnostic.com

9 26

Katie Bouman: The woman behind the first black hole image.

A 29-year-old computer scientist has earned plaudits worldwide for helping [note: she led the team that created it] develop the algorithm that created the first-ever image of a black hole.

Katie Bouman led development of a computer program that made the breakthrough image possible.

[bbc.co.uk]

Jnei 8 Apr 11
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

9 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

1

Will history credit her? History did not with the discovery of DNA. The Nobel went to 2 men who stole her place.

Rosalind Franklin took the x ray diffraction images which led to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel prize in 1962 ... Franklin sadly died of ovarian cancer in 1958 and missed out as these prizes are never given posthumously.

1

So we have a picture of a very distant black hole, composed by computer algorithm that may or may not have errors, that shows a black circle with bright light around it. Interesting academic exercise, but what use is the knowledge?

0

I seen this story 2 days on Word News, pretty Awesome story

0

Okay, it is a nice effort by a team who merely, in my opinion, used a computer to create an image based entirely upon, what even Astronomers say, are Educated Guesses since, a) we cannot actually see a ' Black Hole, only the ASSUMED events occurring around it, i.e. the Event Horizon, etc, and, b) since NOTHING can escape the Gravitational pull of a 'Black Hole', not even light, etc, then HOW does it compute that her image shows streams of light and materials emanating from the Black Hole in the first place?

" streams of light and materials emanating from the Black Hole in the first place?"

wouldn't the image be showing the light before it entered the black hole, never to be seen again?

@callmedubious Well since Astronomers, etc, hypothesise that everything is dragged (sucked) in by the immeasurable gravitational forces, INCLUDING light, via the Event Horizon and cannot escape then logically NOTHING could/should emanate from a Black Hole BUT the image produced that I have seen CLEARLY shows beams or what ever they represent emanating perpendicular from the both sides of it.

That was a very old view of a black hole, someone worked out that there is material ejected from a black-hole too an that has been confirmed by observation. This latest image shows a ring of light around the blackhole, but that is light from objects behind it that has been drawn towards it while not sufficiently to be drawn in completely. Hence it is the light from many objects that have been concentrated, or lensed, to give the appearance of a ring.
This is exactly the same technique that is used for detecting planets around other stars, but while most of those were detected from space based single telescopes this required a much larger telescope and the software was used to combine the data from many telescopes to create a single image.
Similar technique is used by combining multiple video frames to provide a sharper image of faces from surveillance tapes. Recent phones are using multiple cameras to do the same thing too. Similar also as by artists that use pointillism for paintings made up of dots.

"If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow — something predicted by Einstein’s general relativity that we’ve never seen before," explained chair of the EHT Science Council Heino Falcke of Radboud University, the Netherlands. "This shadow, caused by the gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon, reveals a lot about the nature of these fascinating objects and allowed us to measure the enormous mass of M87’s black hole."

So, what we see in the photo is not light emanating from the black hole (which, as you say, is not possible) but the gas around it. [eventhorizontelescope.org]

@Francool But to the best of my knowledge No-one has yet actually seen an ACTUAL Black Hole ergo the entire computer generated image is merely, and at very best, a POSTULATION.

@Francool, @Jnei I did actually say " beams or whatever they represent emanating," did I not?

@Triphid which image did you see? There are no obvious beams in 'the first black hole image'

@Triphid You miss the point, it is not a computer generated image. The computer was used to combine the direct observations of many telescopes pointing at the same point. Hence it IS NOT a postulation.

@Francool I still maintain my point that since NO-ONE has ever ACTUALLY seen a Black Hole then any image generated MUST be merely a postulated Hypothesis to say the very least, the same as if no-one had EVERY excavated a dinosaur fossil but generated what they THEORISED dinosaurs looked like.

0

This was posted previously and lots of comments (including my own) were made. That was before an actual image was posted. We have made so many important advances in many fields of science and I fear the Drump (supposedly the original family name) administration will find others uses for the money.

1

While such achievements are always group activities, she did come up with the algorithm that enabled the photo and it is always good to have strong role models for girls, particarly in science.

2

Women are still underrepresented in all STEM fields. We can only hope that a few little girls take inspiration from this and many other achievements of other great women.

underrepresented and unrecognized. I cringe everytime I see stories of the women that were involved in the early space program. And they were women of color on top of that

0

Algorithms are sexy.

1

So important as a role model. Hopefully inspires more girls to explore science and technology fields and to seek careers there.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:329119
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.