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Perfectly imaging imperfect science

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 1111–1113 (2022)Cite this article

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How does one maintain a personal professional identity while part of a large collaboration in which everything is a team effort? Tensions will undoubtedly arise, but among the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, at least, they are resolved as one would handle family dynamics.

In his 1983 work The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar began “The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the Universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time.”1 The opening establishes outright the deep, awe-filled fascination that Chandrasekhar held for these celestial phenomena.

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Fig. 1: EHT images of M87* and Sgr A*.

EHT Collaboration, under a Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 2: Sara Issaoun presents the EHT image of Sgr A* to journalists and scientists.

ESO/M. Zamani, under a Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0.

References

  1. Chandrasekhar, S. The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (Oxford Univ. Press, 1983).

  2. Galison, P. How do you photograph a black hole? MoMA Magazine 563 (17 May 2021).

  3. Stachel, J. Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’ (Springer, 2001).

  4. The Washington meeting of the National Academies of Sciences. In The Scientific Monthly Vol. 12, 577–579 (AAAS, 1921); https://www.jstor.org/stable/6315#metadata_info_tab_contents

  5. Dukas, H. & Hoffmann, B. Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses from his Archives (Princeton Univ. Press, 1979).

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  1. Freelance science writer, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands

    Gina Maffey

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  1. Gina Maffey
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Correspondence to Gina Maffey.

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Competing interests

G.M. was commissioned in 2021 by the EHT collaboration to conduct the interviews referenced in this article.

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Maffey, G. Perfectly imaging imperfect science. Nat Astron 6, 1111–1113 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01791-z

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