Speaker
Prof.
Luciano Rezzolla
(Trinity College)
Description
How HPC made it possible to take a photo of a black hole.
I will briefly discuss how the first images of the supermassive black holes M87 and Sgr A were obtained by the EHT collaboration. In particular, I will describe the theoretical aspects that have allowed us to model the dynamics of the plasma accreting onto the black hole and how such dynamics was used to generate synthetic black-hole images. I will also illustrate how the use of HPC has been critical in deducing the presence of supermassive black holes and to extract information about the accretion process. Finally, I will describe the lessons we have learned about strong-field gravity and alternatives to black holes.
