From Renaissance Painter Albrecht Dürer to Spacetime Warps: The Making of Black Hole Images

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) consortium released the first direct images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87. The interpretation of these images relies on advanced numerical simulations and a specialized rendering technique known as ray tracing. Interestingly, ray tracing traces its origins (no pun intended) to the renowned Renaissance German artist Albrecht Dürer and has since found applications in various fields, most notably in the video game industry. The black hole Gargantua in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie Interstellar was also rendered using this technique. In this presentation, I will explain how the EHT images of black holes were obtained, outline the history and methodology of ray tracing, and discuss why this technique was essential to the analysis of EHT images.

Speaker: Laurent Loinard, 2024-2025 Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor, Black Hole Initiative, Harvard University

This is an Robert F. Kennedy Professorship program Lecture organized by DRCLAS.

Presented in collaboration with The Black Hole Initiative.