Team that generated 1st black hole photo receives millionaire award

There is no doubt that one of the most important and commented images of the year so far was the first black hole “picture” - an image that was released in April and made headlines around the world. But the portrait continues to make its mark, as it was announced this week that the team responsible for generating the photograph has won the Breakthrough Award, a sort of "Science Oscar" that celebrates scientific breakthroughs and is sponsored by Silicon Valley bigwigs., including Google's co-founder Sergey Brin and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

And Breakthrough goes to ...

According to Rachel England of Engadget, in order for the black hole image to be produced, scientists had to process a volume of data equivalent to the amount of selfies that 40, 000 people would capture over a lifetime, so think at work! The result of all this processing, as you can see below, is not the clearest in the universe, but, according to project director Shep Doeleman, it is possible that in the next 10 years there may be technology that allows the capture of videos in time. real and high definition of these cosmic structures.

In fact, the team is already working on data processing to be able to create the first video of a black hole in action - a sequel that could even be released next year that could help scientists better understand the behavior of these mysterious regions of space. .

Of course, everyone will be eagerly awaiting them, but back to the picture, she earned the team a prize of $ 3 million - about $ 12 million - which will be split among the 347 scientists who worked on the project. If shared equally among all researchers, each will receive just under $ 35, 000, which can be considered a reasonable bonus, right?

Learn more about black holes

Still full of mysteries, black holes have been studied intensely by some of the brightest people on the planet. A great example in this case is the renowned Stephen Hawking: his lectures to the BBC have become a lean book on the subject, demystifying much about the "dreaded" space phenomena. You can check it out through the link below:

• Black Holes - Hawking, Stephen

Team that generated 1st black hole photo receives millionaire award via TecMundo