Katie, the scientist who calculated the photo of the black hole. Baumann: "Even though we don't know, we still have to take the first step."

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On April 10, 2019, people saw the appearance of a black hole for the first time, like a donut in the universe.

Many people are curious about how this photo was taken. An important figure in the team is Katie, a 29-year-old computer scientist. Katie Bouman. She is responsible for the algorithms needed to photograph black holes. The BBC described her as "the female driving force behind the black hole image" However, as early as the year before last, Bowman publicly shared his team's experience at TED. She was a doctoral student at the time of the program. [1] [2]

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The most spectacular things in the universe are invisible to the naked eye

"My name is Katie. Bauman, I am a PhD student in computer science at MIT, specializing in computer vision, which is the science that allows computers to see and identify things through images. Although I am not an astronomer, I still want to tell you how I got involved in this project to find black holes."

The starting point of the story happened six years ago. At that time, people's imagination of black holes only existed in the laboratory.

"Let's first look at the starry sky, along the galactic spiral, 26,000 light-years forward, you will find a group of stars at the center point. Scientists have been studying this group of stars for sixteen years. Scientists have found that they all revolve around something small, heavy, but invisible."

The most spectacular things in the universe are often invisible to the naked eye.

It is the so-called "supermassive black hole". It is extremely dense and will also suck in everything around it, even light.

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Therefore, scientists at the time speculated that where the black hole was located, there should be an aura that could "illuminate" the outline of the black hole. However, Bauman pointed out that this black hole is too far away from the Earth, and when viewed from the Earth, the halo is very small, just like we have to identify an orange on the moon with the naked eye. Taking photos of black holes is extremely difficult.

Therefore, we must build a larger telescope to see what a black hole looks like. After calculation, the size we need is the size of the whole earth (laughter).

This is a level that no radio telescope can reach at this stage. What to do?

Bauman: We turned the earth into a disco ball

Bowman said, like the famous song by Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try, you will find that you can still get what you need."

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So, we connected radio telescopes around the world.

The international organization "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) was born in this context. The content of the plan is to create a telescope project almost the size of the earth by connecting radio telescopes around the world in series and synchronizing the world through atomic clock calibration. It sounds spectacular, the research team at each location, collecting gigabytes of data and collecting data on light.

In other words, we're turning the Earth into a giant disco ball.

When telescopes are distributed in different places in the world, as the earth rotates, different data on the location of the black hole can be collected by refracting the mirror. In places where there is no telescope, the computer is taught to fill in these gaps through computer algorithms. In this way, a complete photo of the black hole can be obtained.

My job is to make the invisible visible

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Baumann's job is actually mainly to teach computers to recognize "this is a black hole photo". Sounds simple? Most importantly, though, the entire program ran into a problem with imaging. There will be thousands of pictures that fit the description. But the problem with people is that no one can teach a computer how to tell "this is a picture of a black hole," Bauman said.

Because even we ourselves have never seen a black hole. Are we going to use the analog photos of "Interstellar"? Because we are not even sure that Einstein's theory of relativity is still true around black holes. This way, we will only get the desired picture, not the truth.

Bauman said that her job is to import features from different types of images so that the algorithm can reconstruct the black hole image.

"That is, we take a lot of different photos into puzzle pieces and give them to the algorithm to piece them together." If more and more photos are tied together and the results are gradually consistent, it means that the data described by the algorithm will not be much different from the truth.

CNN reported that Bauman's role is almost as important as making black holes image things that were previously invisible and visible to the world. [3]

"Even though it's as unknown as a black hole, you still have to take the first step."

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Time Magazine reported that her research passion lies in "'coming up with ways' to make us see the invisible." This also makes her one of the most suitable candidates for studying black holes. It's a place where anything can be devoured. Although the field of expertise is not related to aerospace, Baumann still contributes his specialty and brings practical calculation methods into the plan of black holes. [4]

Without her and her team, it is likely that our knowledge of black holes would still be just imagined, and Bauman recalled that she was excited when the team captured the images.

"Even though we've been trying for so many years, I really didn't expect us to get a picture of the entire black hole ring, I was just expecting a small piece (a bolb)."

A photo of her sitting in a lab went viral on the Internet. She is not a research assistant or a researcher companion. She is a member of the project and is using a computer to watch the research results she participated in, and successfully obtained the black hole picture.

Open the secrets of the entire universe on the screen of the small laboratory.

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Baumann's cooperation with the Event Horizon Telescope continues, and in the future, they will include more satellite dishes in space into the telescope network, and will also start recording moving images of black holes, and people will have the opportunity to see videos of engulfing black holes. At the same time, Bauman also worked as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The history is still short, and the future is long

According to Time Magazine, only 30% of engineers worldwide are still women. In history, female engineers or computer scientists have been recorded, and it is even rarer. But did they really never contribute to computer science? In fact, it is very likely that we have eliminated the names of these women from the vast sea of history. (Extended reading: Google detonates gender debate: Fewer female engineers are innate, not sexist?) ）

In 1946, World War II gave birth to the Electronic Numerical Integral Computer (ENIAC), known as the "world's first computer", and its program was written by a female engineer, her name was Jane. Jean Jennings.

In 1969, female engineer Margaret. Margaret Hamilton wrote the program for Apollo 11 to minimize possible dangers and ensure the success of the first lunar landing program in human history.

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In 2019, we also met with Katie, a PhD student at MIT. Baumann and her team have written new computer algorithms to allow the world to see a real black hole for the first time.

This history of women's engineering seems to be very short, and there are many missing names that no one has filled. We find out the scattered names and retell the stories of women that have been forgotten by history. And what about the new names in the future? We hope that more and more women will write history in various fields. Half a century ago, Hamilton helped us land on the moon; Half a century later, Baumann showed us black holes. Who says women are not suitable for science? (Extended reading: In the field of science and technology, the gap between men and women is getting smaller and smaller)

As Baumann encourages people to take the first step: "I am not an astronomer at all, but I participated in this cross-disciplinary project and contributed. Even if the first step may be as mysterious as a black hole, you have to keep going."

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