Episode 34
How do you image a black hole?
This week, the Event Horizon Telescope unveiled something truly groundbreaking - the first ever direct image of a black hole. The telescope consisted of a dozen antennas located all around the globe (well, one side of it at least). They had to synchronize their data to an error equivalent to one second over 100 million years. The hard drives storing this data filled an entire plane and it took them two years to process it. So how exactly did they construct the image then? With so much care put in and pressure to release this historic image, the science has to be very tight. James brings in a paper from a Dutch astronomer detailing the past, present, and future of black hole imaging.
Check out the Event Horizon Telescope here, an IOP Conference paper here, a NY Times article here, and the Veritasium video here.
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