- A documentary film following the quest to understand the most mysterious objects in the universe, black holes.
- Black holes stand at the limit of what we can know. To explore that edge of knowledge, the Event Horizon Telescope links observatories across the world to simulate an earth-sized instrument. With this tool the team pursues the first-ever picture of a black hole, resulting in an image seen by billions of people in April 2019. Meanwhile, Hawking and his team attack the black hole paradox at the heart of theoretical physics-Do predictive laws still function, even in these massive distortions of space and time? Weaving them together is a third strand, philosophical and exploratory using expressive animation. "Edge" is about practicing science at the highest level, a film where observation, theory, and philosophy combine to grasp these most mysterious objects.
- Black holes stand at the limit of what we can know. To explore that edge of knowledge, the Event Horizon Telescope links observatories across the world to simulate an earth-sized instrument (to see an object as tiny and as far away as a black hole, they need a telescope the size of the Earth) (So, by linking many telescopes across the world, each will take a tiny picture of the black hole and it will be stitched together by a super computer). Shep Doeleman is the Director of the Event Horizon. He does a dry run at the LMT (Large MM Telescope in Mexico) and encounters issues as this has never been done before. Gopal Narayanan, heads Radio Astronomy, Event Horizon Telescope. Ramesh Narayan, Computational Astrophysics, Event Horizon Telescope. Lydia Patton (Philosophy of Science). A black hole is a super massive object with gravity, so strong that it collapses into a point and develops an event horizon. If you cross the event horizon, you vanish. Nothing ever comes out. Janna Levin, Cosmology.. Black hole is the darkest object in the Universe.
Heino Falcke, Event Horizon Telescope Science Council Chair. Dimitrios Psaltis, Event Horizon Telescope Project Scientist. With this tool the team pursues the first-ever picture of a black hole, resulting in an image seen by billions of people in April 2019. April 7, 2017, the observation window starts. 8 dishes across the world take images in sync, and all 8 need perfect weather conditions. Shep runs the control room and coordinates actions with all 8 sites and help them resolve their issues or make adjustments. After 5 days of observations, the hard drives are packed and transported to the central processing facility. Sagitarrius A black hole is 25,600 light yrs away. While M87 is 54.8 MM light yrs away. May 2017, MIT. Sep, The data arrives and the stitching starts.
Andrea Ghez, Astronomer was the first in 96, 97, 98 and 99 to picture the center of the galaxy using the Hawai telescope to take a pics of the stars. By measuring their movement, she predicted the presence of a super massive black hole at the center of the milky way. EHT starts an imaging hacking competition in Oct 2017. 4 sets of teams, that cant talk to each other, use imaging algorithms to produce the pic. The challenge is to chose the most accurate pic.. Some teams feel that the data is not yet well calibrated for imaging work to be done. June 2018, M87 black hole data is ready for imaging. Images look super promising and Shep imposes an embargo banning any images from being texted to anyone outside the EHT team.
The 4 teams come together to compare results in late 2018. The 4 images were compared pixel by pixel and each had a 95%+ correlation with the other. All 4 teams are seeing the exact same structure. The first picture of a black hole is official now. Now the EHT team assembles a team of external experts in Nov 2018, to review their entire approach and decide on how best to publish the results to the world. Apr 2019, the picture is published to the world, along with the data, in 6 simultaneous press conferences across the world. first visual evidence of a black hole M87.
Meanwhile, Hawking and his team (Andrew Strominger, Malcolm Perry & Sasha Haco) attack the black hole paradox at the heart of theoretical physics-Do predictive laws still function, even in these massive distortions of space and time? Hawking works on a theory that Black holes do indeed return information back to the universe in the form of geysers of energy (which bear no relation to the stuff that fell in) (he also says that the output is random, which means that there is no structure to the Universe). The team work out how the surface structure of black holes could also be the key to holding information. Hawking first spoke about the Information Paradox in 1975 and it is unsolved. 1000s of papers since have tried to solve it, but all failed. Malcolm is confident of solving it in his lifetime.
All scientists believe that pure maths is not the way to solve for black holes. We need to simulate on a super computer. Malcolm theorizes super-translation and super-rotation on the surface of the event horizon as means of storing information. Everytime something goes in, the super rotation changes and thus, information is transferred. Hawking's team encounters issues as the math doesn't add up. Months pass and the maths gets more and more complicated and at one point it has 1050 terms. The terms need to add up to 12 J, at which point the surface of the black hole, would have enough energy to store information. They use a computer, but the elusive figure still evades them. Hawking dies at the age of 76. Malcolm is distraught. Sep, 2018, they continue on with their work and get the target answer of 12J. Oct 2nd, 2018, they publish their paper. The next challenge is to figure out the flow of information in and out of the black hole and how that changes the entropy of the surface.
Meanwhile Physicists such as Silke Weinfurtner, try to understand Black holes in labs by conducting experiments. She has demonstrated super-radiance and Hawking Radiation and light bending around a black hole. 2015, LIGO discovers the collision of 2 completely dark black holes by measuring gravitational waves.
Weaving them together is a third strand, philosophical and exploratory using expressive animation. "Edge" is about practicing science at the highest level, a film where observation, theory, and philosophy combine to grasp these most mysterious objects.
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By what name was The Edge of All We Know (2020) officially released in India in English?
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