Black Holes & Frontiers in Astrophysics

​Education session hosted by Catalyze in conversation with Dr. Peter Galison and Dr. Michael Johnson of Harvard to discuss frontiers in Astrophysics research, the success of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), and their ongoing work on the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) Project.

Topics to include:

• ​A brief history of cosmology research

• ​Overview of active areas of research in the field

• ​Explanation on what black holes are - and why we're interested in them

• ​Stories from the EHT initiative and explanation of the team's work on BHEX

​Michael D. Johnson is a Smithsonian astrophysicist, a lecturer in the Harvard Department of Astronomy and an inaugural member of the Harvard Black Hole Initiative. He studies the most compact objects in the universe – black holes and neutron stars – through imaging at extreme resolutions with radio telescopes. Most recently, he co-led imaging efforts of the Event Horizon Telescope to produce the first picture of a black hole. He also studies pulsars, interstellar scattering, and active galactic nuclei.

​Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard, as well as the Director of the Black Hole Initiative, the Founding Director of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and a member of the Event Horizon Telescope team and coordinator of the History, Philosophy, and Culture working group for the next generation Event Horizon Telescope. Galison is Science Team Leader for the Black Hole Explorer, working to capture the sharpest ever image of a black hole, and to see for the first time in history an image of a black hole’s photon ring.

​As a filmmaker, Galison has directed multiple feature films on the history of science and physics, including Secrecy; Ultimate Weapon: The H-Bomb Dilemma; Containment; and his most recent feature-length film on the journey to image a black hole for the first time, Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know. Galison has also produced and directed a number of short films, such as Shattering Stars; Dream of a Shadow; and most recently; Light at the Edge of the Universe: The Black Hole Explorer.