主讲人 Speaker：Doeleman Sheperd (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)
时间 Time：Tuesday, 19:30-20:30
地点 Venue：求真讲堂, Qiuzhen Auditorium; Zoom Meeting ID: 4552601552 Passcode: YMSC
课程日期：October 27, 2026
This lecture is jointly organized by the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center (YMSC), Qiuzhen College, and Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS.
Title: From Still Images to Video: Observing Supermassive Black Holes on Event-horizon Scales
Abstract: Black holes are cosmic objects so small and dense, that nothing, not even light can escape their gravitational pull. Until recently, no one had ever seen what a black hole actually looked like. Einstein's theories predict that a distant observer should see a ring of light encircling the black hole, which forms when radiation emitted by infalling hot gas is lensed by the extreme gravity near the event horizon. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global array of radio dishes that has now successfully imaged the 6.5 billion solar mass black hole at the center of galaxy M87, and the 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way - both exhibiting the predicted strong gravitational lensing. Subsequent observations have revealed ordered magnetic fields on horizon scales with implications on how black holes launch relativistic jets of material. What's next? The next-generation EHT (ngEHT) is a project to expand the EHT in several ways, enabling us to make full-color, high definition movies of black holes in pursuit of the next big questions. This talk will cover the first EHT results, what we have learned about black holes from these observations, future directions, and progress towards realizing the ngEHT.
Bio:
Shep Doeleman is Founding Director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project and led the international team that made the first image of a black hole. He received his bachelor's from Reed College, a PhD in astrophysics from MIT, and spent a year in Antarctica conducting space-science experiments where he got hooked on doing research in challenging circumstances. After serving as assistant director of MIT's Haystack Observatory and receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, he moved to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-founded the Black Hole Initiative – the first center dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of black holes. He is the recipient of the Lancelot M. Berkeley Prize and the Bruno Rossi Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the Prix Georges Lemaître, and he now leads the next-generation EHT (ngEHT) project with a goal to make movies of black holes. The Event Horizon Telescope project received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2020.
