Event Horizon Telescope and the portrait of a black hole

June 7, 2019, 14:00. Auditorium B, Allégaten 66, Bergen, Norway.

How was the famous image of the black hole made? Tuomas Savolainen presents the process and science leading up to capturing a glimpse of M87.

Tuomas Savolainen will present the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, describe how the now famous image of M87 was made, and discuss future prospects for studying black holes at event horizon scale resolution.

The Event Horizon Telescope is a global, very long baseline interferometry array operating at 1.3 mm wavelength. The combination of a short observing wavelength and long intercontinental baselines between the participating telescopes allows the EHT to make images at exquisite resolution of 20 microarcseconds – enough to resolve event horizon scale structures around the supermassive black holes in the centre of our galaxy, and in the centre of the radio galaxy M87.

The first EHT observations with an array that had potential to image these black holes took place in April 2017. After almost two years of data processing and analysis, we can now report success. The EHT has successfully imaged the radio source in the centre of M87 and the image reveals a bright, asymmetric ring of emission encompassing a central depression in brightness.

The image is consistent with the predictions for a shadow of a Kerr black hole in General Relativity. The observed properties of the ring are in close agreement with a gravitationally lensed photon ring of a 6.5 billion solar mass black hole.

The lecture is organized by the Department of Physics and Technology and Academia Europaea Bergen Knowledge Hub.

The lecture starts at 14.15. Refreshments will be served from 14.00.

Tuomas Savolainen

Tuomas Savolainen is an Academy Research Fellow with the Aalto Universitys Anne Lähteenmäki Group and Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, as well as an Academy Research Fellow with the Metsähovi Radio Observatory.

He is one of the over 200 researchers part of the international Event Horizon Telescopecollaboration, the group responsible for the very first image of a black hole, released April 10, 2019.

25th International Conference on Types for Proofs and Programs

Oslo, Norway, 11 – 14 June 2019. The conference will be held at Ingeniørenes Hus Møtesenter, located centrally in Vika in Oslo.

The TYPES meetings are a forum to present new and on-going work in all aspects of type theory and its applications, especially in formalised and computer assisted reasoning and computer programming. The meetings from 1990 to 2008 were annual workshops of a sequence of five EU funded networking projects. Since 2009, TYPES has been run as an independent conference series.

The TYPES areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • foundations of type theory and constructive mathematics;
  • applications of type theory;
  • dependently typed programming;
  • industrial uses of type theory technology;
  • meta-theoretic studies of type systems;
  • proof assistants and proof technology;
  • automation in computer-assisted reasoning;
  • links between type theory and functional programming;
  • formalizing mathematics using type theory

We encourage talks proposing new ways of applying type theory. In the spirit of workshops, talks may be based on newly published papers, work submitted for publication, but also work in progress.

The conference is partially supported by COST Action CA15123 EUTypes, the Research Council of Norway, and Academia Europaea Knowledge Hub Region Bergen.

Homotopy Type Theory and Univalent Foundations

Oslo, Norway, 12 – 14 June 2019. The conference will be held at Ingeniørenes Hus Møtesenter, located centrally in Vika in Oslo.

Homotopy Type Theory and Univalent Foundations combines ideas and techniques from algebraic topology, logic, higher categories and computer science. As a fairly young subject it is still under dramatic development and sees vibrant activity.

The workshop aims at bringing together researchers spanning the width of the field, complementing the concurrent TYPES conference with which it will share some plenary sessions.

The workshop is organised jointly by the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the University of Bergen (UiB). With financial support from Academia Europaea Knowledge Hub Region Bergen.