Black holes are one of the universe’s most exotic and elusive objects. When nothing, not even light, can escape their powerful gravitational grasp, taking a picture of one seems unimaginable. But an image of a black hole, or more accurately its shadow, could offer insights that theory alone may not provide when testing predictions.
Harvard astrophysicist Shep Doeleman and a team of 250 researchers achieved this extraordinary feat by linking a group of radio telescopes around the world. This network, called the Event Horizon Telescope, produced the first image of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87, around 55 million light-years away, and the first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy. In this episode, Doeleman tells co-host Janna Levin how he turned the Earth into a telescope capable of seeing a black hole, the incredible level of science and collaboration that was required to achieve this, how the images have furthered our understanding of these exotic objects, and how movies of black holes may be possible by the early 2030s.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta. STROGATZ: A podcast from Quanta Magazine where we look at some of the biggest unanswered questions in math and science today. I’m pretty excited about this one.
I cannot deny or hide it. We’re talking about not only an area where I’ve spent a lot of my life black holes — the greatest, strangest topic out there — but also I had a chance to talk to an old friend. So it’s a fun episode, I hope.
STROGATZ: I’m really looking forward to hearing it. I know you’ve always had a special affection for black holes. I’ve had a chance to interview you in some earlier version of this.
STROGATZ: And you blew my mind over and over about black holes. LEVIN: Yeah, they require some defense. They’ve got a bad reputation, not entirely earned.
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