Peter Galison
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Date
06 October 2021
Host
Atac Imamoglu
Title
Philosophy of the Shadow: Objectivity and the First Picture of a Black Hole
Abstract
Across three hundred years, in thousands of atlases, scientists worked out what counted as visual scientific objectivity. This long-term history, with its evolving take on the reliable image, converged in the years-long struggle of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to produce a robust picture of a black hole. On April 10, 2019, the team released the first image of a black hole. This is a talk about how the EHT team of some 200 scientists came to judge the glowing, crescent-like ring as objective.
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