Harnessing the power of multiple telescopes around the globe, an MIT researcher has come up with an algorithm that may allow scientists to capture the first images of black holes.
To see a black hole from Earth would require a telescope with a 10,000-kilometer diameter. Such a lens is impossible, since it would be roughly the size of Earth itself. So a project called Event Horizon Telescope is working on synchronizing multiple telescopes around the world to approximate the capacity of a single giant one.
That's where MIT graduate student Katie Bouman comes in. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, she has developed an algorithm that can adjust for fluctuations in atmospheric noise—"galactic dust," as she puts it—in addition to the differing sizes of the telescopes themselves. The result will be a single image that could show a black hole.
The telescopes use radio wavelengths, not the optical lenses of the sort that can be found in amateur astronomers' backyards. That means they're better suited to the task of taking photos of far-off space objects, such as the millions of potential black holes NASA has already identified.
"Radio wavelengths come with a lot of advantages," Bouman said in a blog post. "Just like how radio frequencies will go through walls, they pierce through galactic dust. We would never be able to see into the center of our galaxy in visible wavelengths because there's too much stuff in between."
But radio waves don't make for good pictures: according to MIT, the world's largest single radio-telescope dish has a 1,000-foot diameter, but an image it produced of the moon, for example, would be blurrier than the image seen through an ordinary backyard optical telescope. So Bouman's algorithm will mathematically enhance the radio waves captured by the telescope network to resemble an optical image.
The Event Horizon project currently counts nine telescopes around the world, according to its website, mostly in the US and South America. Three more are expected to join, including one near the South Pole.