VOA:The Woman Behind the Image of the Black Hole

The Woman Behind the Image of the Black Hole

Trying to capture an image of a black hole is like trying to take a picture of an orange sitting on the surface of the moon from Earth——with your smartphone.

试图捕捉黑洞的一张图片就好比在地球上试图用智能手机去拍摄在月f球表面放着的一个橙子.

That is what Dr.Katie Bouman said two years ago during her TED talk called “How to take a picture of a black hole.”

这是两年前凯蒂·布曼博士在她的TED演讲《如果拍一张黑洞的照片》中所说的话.

Bouman is 29 years old. She received her doctoral degrees in computer science and enginnering from the Masschusetts Institute of Technology. She later became a postdoctoral researcher with the international Event Horizon Telescope,or EHT,project. The project scientists produced a black hole image from data collected from a series of telecopes around the world. Together,they formed an Earth-sized “virtual” telescope——on powerful enough to do what had once seemed impossible.

布曼今年29岁,她在麻省理工学院获得了计算机科学和计算机工程博士学位.后来,她成为了国际事件视界望远镜(简称EHT)项目的博士后研究院.研究该项目的科学家们从世界各地各种望远镜收集的数据中的得出了一张黑洞图像.他们一起组成了一个地球大小的虚拟望远镜,这个望远镜强大到足以让他们完成曾经看起来不可能完成的任务.

This week,the team of scientists,led by Sheperd S.Doeleman of Harvard University,released to the public the first-ever image of a black hole.

本周,由哈佛大学的谢泼德S.杜勒曼领导的科学家团队向公众发布了史上第一张黑洞图片.

Soon after,another image was spreading over ssocial media and the news. It’s showed a smiling Bouman with the black hole image on her computer screen. She wrote on Facebook, “Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed.”

不久之后,另一个照片在社交媒体和新闻上传播开来.照片上布曼在微笑,她后面的电脑屏幕上是黑洞的图像.她的脸书上写到: “看着我制作的第一张黑洞图片正在重新,这简直难以置信.”

Bouman led a team that helped create an algorithm,or set of computer processes that turned the huge amout of telescopic data into one image.

布曼领导者的团队帮助创建了一种算法,或一组计算机处理程序,其能将望远镜观察到的大量数据转换为一张图像.

Bouman quickly became a symbol for woman in science.

布曼很快成为了科学界女性的象征.

One especially pupular Twitter post showed a side-by-side picture of Bouman with hard drives of black hole image data next to another woman scientist: Margarget Hamilton. In 1969,Hamilton helped write on-board computer code for NASA’s Apollo space program.

一条特别受欢迎的推特帖子展示了一张布曼与另一位女科学家玛格丽特·汉密尔顿并列的照片,布曼的硬盘里存有黑洞图像数据.1969年,汉密尔顿为美国宇航局的阿波罗太空计划编写了随行对计算机代码.

Twitter user Tammy Emma Pepin wrote of Bouman,”Here’s to more women in science——getting their credit and being remembered in history.”

推特用户塔米·艾玛·佩平这样评论布曼: “让更多的科学女性获得荣誉,并被载入史册.”

And Twitter user Pooja Chandrakekar,who recently completed her studies in engineering at Harvard,wrote, “So many young girls will see Dr.Katie Bouman as an inspiration and go on to make their own discoveries in space,physis,and computer science. A historic moment not just for science,but for women in science.”

推特用户普贾·钱德拉斯卡最近最哈佛大学工程学系毕业,她写到: “很多年轻女性都因凯蒂·布曼博士而大受鼓舞,决定在太空,物理和计算机科学领域做深入研究.这不仅是科学界的历史性时刻,也是科学领域中女性的历史时刻.”

But Boman herself quickly noted that she was not the only one responsible for the image off the black hole. She posted on Facebook, “No one algorithm or person made this image,it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work…”

但布曼本人很快指出,她并不是黑洞图像的唯一功臣. 她在Facebook上写到: “并不是什么算法或者人制作了这幅图像.这幅图像的的问世得益于世界各地的科学家团队的惊人才能和多年的辛勤工作···”

After the press event Wednesday,Bouman spoke with members of the media. She said she is looking forward to developing more algorithms and methods that will help lead to an even better,sharper image of a black hole.