How to take a picture of a black hole

Title:
How to take a picture of a black hole
Speaker:
Katie Bouman
Description:

At the heart of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole that feeds off a spinning disk of hot gas, sucking up anything that ventures too close -- even light. We can't see it, but its event horizon casts a shadow, and an image of that shadow could help answer some important questions about the universe. Scientists used to think that making such an image would require a telescope the size of Earth -- until Katie Bouman and a team of astronomers came up with a clever alternative. Bouman explains how we can take a picture of the ultimate dark using the Event Horizon Telescope.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
12:51
Format: HTML5
Primary
Original