Thousands of people yesterday flocked to Academia Sinica’s campus in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港) for its annual open house event, which featured a black hole exhibition and speeches by researchers who helped obtain the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole in April.
Offering more than 300 scientific activities, this year’s open house is expected to have a turnout up to 200,000 visitors — more than last year's 160,000, as interest in black holes has skyrocketed since the image was first revealed, Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said.
On April 10, Academia Sinica’s Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics researchers participating in the global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project shared the first-ever image of a black hole simultaneously with scientists in Washington, Santiago, Brussels, Shanghai and Tokyo.
Paul Ho (賀曾樸) — distinguished research fellow at the institute — yesterday talked about the achievement in a theme speech.
The image of a black hole confirms Albert Einstein’s general relativity theory. He said thanks to the techniques of interferometry, people can hear the gravitational waves and see gravity working in extreme conditions, adding that the reasons a supermassive black hole forms are still not yet clear.
Institute members played a big role in the achievement as they helped design three of the eight telescopes forming the EHT array as of 2017. The Submillimeter Array in Hawaii was finished in 2003, Ho said.
The EHT Collaboration members shared the international Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics announced last month, with 53 of the 347 members being institute members or their domestic collaborators, institute research fellow Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said.
The 53 Academia Sinica members made up 15 percent of the winners, highlighting Taiwan’s important role in the collaboration.
The telescope’s construction was possible thanks to Taiwan’s solid industrial techniques, Chen said, naming the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology and China Steel Structure Co among their key supporters.
“There are always people saying ‘you can never achieve this,’” he said, encouraging young people to commit to long-term goals instead of worrying about short-term setbacks.
A senior high-school student surnamed Shen (沈) from Yunlin County said she found the speeches inspiring and that she hopes to study astronomy.
Elsewhere on the campus, the Genomics Research Center held guided tours for its Ultra High Throughput Screening and Animal Molecular Imaging Laboratory, while Institute of Molecular Biology researchers explained research results on fruit flies and other subjects.
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