March 7, 2019

It Takes a Planet to Photograph a Supermassive Black Hole

• What: Panel discussion about the first attempt to take a picture of a supermassive black hole
• When: Saturday, March 9. 12:30-1:30 p.m. CST.
• Where: SXSW, Fairmont Hotel, Manchester AB, Floor 5, 101 Red River, Austin, Texas

By taking the first pictures of two supermassive black holes, one at the center of the Milky Way and one at the center of the Virgo A galaxy, astrophysicists are putting Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to the ultimate test.

The existence of black holes, predicted almost a century ago by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, has since been supported by decades' worth of astronomical observations. Now scientists hope to use the Event Horizon Telescope to do something that has never been done before – directly observe and image a black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT, is a telescope as big as Earth – literally. Tens of research institutions in over ten countries have come together to construct the first and only telescope array of planetary proportions by linking together radio telescopes located on five continents. The EHT acts as one giant, virtual telescope, achieving the highest possible resolving power from the surface of the Earth.

Currently, EHT collaborators are processing data gathered during the EHT's first full observation run in April 2017 and the results will be announced soon.

EHT scientists will share their insights on this unprecedented project at a special panel discussion at SXSW titled "EHT: A Planetary Effort to Photograph a Black Hole."

For more information about the EHT, visit https://eventhorizontelescope.org

Speakers:

• Sheperd Doeleman, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
• Dimitrios Psaltis, University of Arizona
• Sera Markoff, University of Amsterdam
• Peter Galison, Harvard University

UA Implements NVIDIA Technology

The UA is responsible for integrating in the project two of the eight radio telescopes that made up the EHT during the 2017 observations and three out of the eleven in the current array. UA scientists have pioneered the development of tests of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity with EHT data as well as a new application for NVIDIA graphics processing units, more commonly used in graphics-intensive computer games, to interpret the vastly complex data gathered during the observations. NVIDIA-powered supercomputing also has enabled the team to create scientifically accurate and visually stunning simulations of the physical processes predicted to happen in the vicinity of black holes. The National Science Foundation funds most of the EHT-related research at the UA.