MIT graduate receives high praise for creating algorithm used to photograph black hole

(WSVN) - There’s a young woman to thank for the first image of a black hole.

The image comes after years of data collection and analysis by 200 scientists.

Beyond the hole exists a gravity so powerful, not even light can escape, and all known physical laws break down.

Since no single instrument is powerful enough to capture the black hole, a network of eight telescopes spread across the Earth acted as one.

MIT graduate and computer scientist Katie Bouman, 29, led the creation of a new algorithm used for the breakthrough.

Without her contribution, scientists were unable to fill in the gaps of data necessary to capture the image from a galaxy 55 million light years away.

Bouman’s work did not go unnoticed.

“You’re basically looking at a supermassive black hole that’s almost the size of our entire solar system,” said Sera Markoff, professor at the University of Amsterdam, “and, in fact, that’s part of the reason we can see it even though it’s so far away.”

The project, named Even Horizon Telescope, is the biggest experiment of its kind.

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