At just 33 years old, Caltech assistant professor Katie Bouman is already a veteran of two major scientific discoveries.
May 12, 2022
At just 33 years old, Caltech assistant professor Katie Bouman is already a veteran of two major scientific discoveries. The expert in computational imaging—developing algorithms to observe distant phenomena—helped create the program that led to the release of the first image of a black hole in a distant galaxy in 2019. She quickly became something of a global science superstar, and was invited to testify before Congress about her work. Now, she has again played a key role in the creation of a groundbreaking image of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy—a cosmic body known as Sagittarius A*. Her working group within the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, which revealed the stunning image Thursday, was tasked with piecing it together from the mass of data garnered by telescopes around the world. Bouman spoke with AFP shortly after the breakthrough announcement. How does this discovery compare to 2019?—
“The first one was just so exciting because it was the first one, and just being able to see a black hole for the first time was spectacular. But I think the holy grail of the Event Horizon Telescope has always been to image Sagittarius A*.
“The reason why is because we have a lot more information from other observations on what we expected Sgr A* to look like. And so being able to see an image of that, it’s much easier for us to see how it matches with what we expected from prior observations and theory.
