Surely you’ve seen the image today — the first image we’ve ever seen of an actual black hole. Pretty awesome in itself, but even more awesome is the fact that a research group from University of Illinois made a significant contribution to making it happen. Event Horizon Telescope, a network of telescopes, and an international group of collaborators are responsible for capturing the image, and our very own physics department is a part of that.
From the Illinois Physics press release:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Professor of Physics and Astronomy Charles Gammie, a member of the EHT Science Council Board, co-led the theory working group and served as co-coordinator of Paper V, focused on the theoretical interpretation of the EHT data.
You can read more about their contribution and all of the science-y details here.
Photo from the EHT Collaboration