EHT: A Planetary Effort to Photograph a Black Hole

Recording of a series of 4 presentations and a Question & Answer session from the panel named "EHT: A Planetary Effort to Photograph a Black Hole" at the 2019 SXSW festival that took place on March 8-17, 2019 in Austin, Texas, USA. Speakers: Sheperd Doeleman, Dimitrios Psaltis, Sera Markoff, Peter Galison,

SXSW 2019 Panel -- Event Horizon Telescope: A Planetary Effort to Photograph a Black Hole

Predicted almost a century ago by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, black holes not only exist, but actually power some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global effort to construct an Earth-sized virtual telescope array, able to actually “photograph” nearby supermassive black holes. It had its first full run in April 2017, and will announce results in Spring 2019. Below is a recording of a series of 4 presentations and a Question & Answer session from the panel named "EHT: A Planetary Effort to Photograph a Black Hole" at the 2019 SXSW festival that took place on March 8--17, 2019 in Austin, Texas, USA.

Takeaways:

  • Black holes can be seen even though light cannot escape them. Surrounding matter illuminates the hole's “shadow”, revealing the shape of spacetime.
  • The EHT is a global experiment linking telescopes across Earth and resulting in the first-ever “photographs” of our own Galaxy’s central black hole.
  • The act of seeing an object for the first time—like the actual event horizon of a black hole—plays a key role in the development of science.

Speakers:

  • Sheperd Doeleman, EHT Project Director, Senior Astronomer, Center for Astrophysics |  Harvard & Smithsonian
  • Dimitrios Psaltis, EHT Project Scientist, Professor of Astronomy and Physics, University of Arizona
  • Sera Markoff, Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics, University of Amsterdam (organizer)
  • Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University

 

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