Meet Katie Bouman, the Young Scientist behind the Image of the Black Hole

Young Scientist Katie Bouman has become an online star after the first photo of a supermassive black hole was shared with the world recently. Katie Bouman a graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is among the core team of scientists who led the creation of the black hole image.

She shared her happiness and achievement on her Facebook page with a picture of herself with the caption “Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed”. The photograph went viral in no time and was shared more than 33 thousand times in just 22 hours.

The online world too started pouring congratulatory message for Katie. A user wrote, “Congratulations to Katie Bouman to whom we owe the first photograph of a black hole ever. Not seeing her name circulate nearly enough in the press.  Amazing work. And here's to more women in science (getting their credit and being remembered in history”.

UN Women in its congratulatory message to Katie Bouman wrote, “We need more #WomenInScience like Bouman, and increase their visibility”.

The highly anticipated cosmic portrait of the black hole is located at the center of Messier 87, which is the largest galaxy and is about 54 million light-years away. This is recently discovered by Katie and her team and was shared with everyone.

Black hole was first detected by the Event Horizon Telescope, which is a network of 10 radio telescopes spread across the planet and functions as a single receiver, one tuned to high-frequency radio waves. The telescope developed the image later.

The image of the black hole shows there is a boundary line between light and dark and around a black hole, which is known as the event horizon. An event horizon is regarded as the point of no return, where the gravity of the black hole becomes so extreme that anything that enters into it can ever escape.

At the center of the black hole, time and space are merged among themselves and where all the laws of physics break down completely.