At only 33 years old, Katie Bouman has already participated in two immense scientific feats: after the revelation of the first image of a black hole in 2019, she again played a key role in the never-before-seen image, revealed Thursday, of the hole. black located in the center of our own galaxy, called Sagittarius A*.
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A few years ago, she had become a world celebrity, invited as far as the American Congress. Now a computational imaging specialist at Caltech University in California, she is still part of the huge international collaboration that made this feat possible, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
AFP
His working group is responsible for reconstructing a faithful photograph, from the gigantic mass of data gathered by telescopes around the world.
AFP spoke to her shortly after the new image was revealed.
– For you, is the revelation of this second black hole image less exciting than the first?
The first image was spectacular, because it was the first time that we could see a black hole. But I think the holy grail for the Event Horizon Telescope has always been to have an image of Sagittarius A*.
Because we have a lot more information on what Sgr A* is supposed to look like, via other scientific observations (for example the rotation of the stars around him, Editor’s note). So being able to see a picture of it makes it much easier for us to compare whether it’s what we expected, based on our previous observations and theories.
That’s why I think even though this is the second image we show, it’s actually much more exciting, because we can use it to further test our understanding of gravity.
– Why was it more difficult to obtain an image of “our” black hole, than of M87*, yet located much further away?
We observed both in the same week, in 2017. But it took us much longer to create the image of Sgr A*, than for M87*.
A lot of things make it much more difficult to pull off an image of Sgr A*. First, we observe the black hole through the plane of our galaxy. Which means the gas in the galaxy is interfering with the image. A bit like looking through a frosted window, for example in a shower.
This is one of the challenges. But the most difficult thing we had to face is the fact that the black hole is evolving very quickly. The gas around M87* and Sgr A* moves at approximately the same speed. But if it takes days or even weeks to go around M87*, for Sgr A*, it evolves every minute.
– Why do black holes fascinate us so much?
They break with what we know on Earth. Light can’t even escape them, and they distort space-time around them. They are this mysterious thing, and I think they capture our imagination.
What’s cooler than working on black holes? And being able to take a picture of it, of something that you shouldn’t be able to see…I think it’s fascinating.
– What are you most looking forward to in the future? The film of a black hole?
I think this is just the start. Now that we have these extreme gravity labs, we can improve our instruments and our algorithms, so we can see more of them, and do more science experiments.
We’ve made a first attempt at getting a movie, and we’ve made a lot of progress, but we’re not at the point yet to be able to say, this is what Sgr A* looks like minute by minute. So we’re going to try to add new telescopes in the world, collect more data, so we can show something that we know for sure.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca