Heidelberg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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GP: Fachverband Geschichte der Physik

GP 9: History of Physics

GP 9.4: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 23. März 2022, 16:40–17:00, GP-H7

Black Hole Imaging and Framings of the Observer — •Emilie Skulberg — Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam

Based on the study of an extensive collection of visual representations of black holes from 1970 to the present, I trace the history of visual and textual framings of the observer in the context of black hole imaging. I argue that the framing of the observer changed significantly in this period. Some peer-reviewed papers containing early visual representations of the immediate surroundings of black holes had brief references to telescopic observation. More commonly, such images were framed as part of thought experiments of what an observer (appearing in thought experiments as a hypothetical human being) would see or photograph if equipped with a camera directed at a black hole. The observer here became a point of view in a visual sense as images showed what an observer "saw" or "photographed". Towards the new millennium, visualizations from simulations began to form part of arguments that observing the shadow of a black hole would in fact be possible. Rather than an observer with a camera in thought experiments, visualizations showed how a specific celestial object believed to be a black hole might look if observed from Earth using Very Long Baseline Interferometry. This method, in which data from observations by multiple telescopes placed far apart are combined, was what would later enable the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration to produce images such as the first observation of the shadow of a black hole. At the same time, virtual reality now offers the immersive and embodied experience of seemingly being an observer approaching a black hole.