Episode 80: Picturing the Bach Hole with Adal Rifai
Posted Aug 21, 2019 by bn
The Supermassive black hole at the centre of M87
HEY EVERYONE!
this is something i literally thought i would never see. In all of the years studying Black holes, i never thought i’d be able to LOOK AT an event horizon with anything other than my imagination.
I heard about the Event Horizon Telescope about a decade ago, but when Leo emailed me that i should put together a show on the topic, I was SHOCKED. I never thought they would would have a result so SOON, let alone a result as brilliant and breathtaking as this one.
Today’s episode is on the Event Horizon Telescope: what it was photographing, and how it pulled off this magnificent accomplishment!
But!
the good news doesn’t end there! When the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration had collected its data, it needed to make sense of all of the information. What followed were months of careful and creative image processing, culminating in a meeting where the isolated teams brought together their final images to be compared, and THIS FAMOUS PHOTO WAS TAKEN. Dr. Katie Bouman is one of our expert physicists on this episode!!!
(Then graduate student) Dr. Katie Bouman reveals the images each isolated team had produced.
Today’s Guest is Adal Rifai , Performer and instructor at Chicago’s iO theatre . You might know him as Chunt the talking badger from Hello From the Magic Tavern. His new Podcast is called Hey Riddle Riddle.
Physicists: Dr. Leo Stein, and Dr. Katie Bouman
Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists –Tell Balgeary Balgury is Dead
Exit Music: Ramona Falls – Russia
