Event Horizon Telescope (Episode 5: Future Applications of EHT)

Lecture (Video)

Main Content

What the EHT could do in the future?

• Refine photographs
  • With the assistance of AI and quantum computation, it is likely that we can obtain more pictures and pictures with higher resolution.
• Photographing more supermassive black holes
  • Find patterns and deepen our understanding of a typical black hole
• Finding more unknown phenomena
  • Orbiting supermassive black holes is still a very unsolved mystery

Summary for the 5 episodes

1. Black holes have always been difficult to observe, but by using astronomical interferometry, the EHT collaboration has discovered a way to picture them. Scientists spent half a decade on the Sagittarius A* black hole and overcomed technical problems.
2. The EHT has produced images of two black holes so far: Messier 87 and Sagittarius A*. The EHT observes radio waves while the JWST mainly observes the infrared wavelength, and the EHT has higher resolution.
3. The EHT image prove the general relativity theory from several different aspects: shadow size, shadow shape, the brightness asymmetry of the photon ring and the plasma spinning around it, and the non-changing radius-mass relationship
4. Interferometers are proved to be very useful, being more accurate, far reaching and clear