Caltech scientists have developed the first 3D video depicting flares around Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, using AI techniques and data from the ALMA telescope. This interdisciplinary study, blending astrophysics and computer science, opens up new possibilities for understanding black hole environments. Credit: SciTechDaily.
The multidisciplinary team first considered if it would be possible to create a 3D video of flares around a black hole in June 2021. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, of which Bouman and Levis are members, had already published the, and was working to do the same with EHT data from Sgr A*. Pratul Srinivasan of Google Research, a co-author on the new paper, was at the time visiting the team at Caltech.
The team thought that they might be able to overcome this problem because gas behaves in a somewhat predictable way as it moves around the black hole. Consider the analogy of trying to capture a 3D image of a child wearing an inner tube around their waist. To capture such an image with the traditional NeRF method, you would need photos taken from multiple angles while the child remained stationary.
ALMA is one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world. However, because of the vast distance to the galactic center , even ALMA does not have the resolution to see Sgr A*’s immediate surroundings. What ALMA measures are light curves, which are essentially videos of a single flickering pixel, which are created by collecting all of the radio-wavelength light detected by the telescope for each moment of observation.
The result is a video showing the clockwise movement of two compact bright regions that trace a path around the black hole. “This is very exciting,” says Bouman. “It didn’t have to come out this way. There could have been arbitrary brightness scattered throughout the volume. The fact that this looks a lot like the flares that computer simulations of black holes predict is very exciting.”
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