♪ INSPIRING SYNTH MUSIC (Erika) Welcome to New Frontiers, a show that's all about exploring the science, discovery, and innovation happening at the University of Arizona.

I'm your host, Erika Hamden.

And for this episode, we will explore ways in which we might grasp the unseen and make the seemingly invisible visible, not with a magic trick, but with something way better-- science.

Join us to look at black holes, virtual reality technology, and accessible engineering.

Let's go.

I'm currently outside of Steward Observatory, home of the Department of Astronomy, and where I work in my day job as an astrophysicist.

I'm here to meet up with a colleague who's part of the Event Horizon Telescope.

This is the project that brought us the first ever images of a black hole.

Images that were once thought to be impossible because black holes are supposed to be black.

They've just released a brand new picture and I am so excited to show it to you.

But before we get to that, check out our story on the project from a few years ago when they released the first images that blew everyone's mind.

(Dimitrios) About 20 years ago when the existence of black holes was just being accepted, a lot of us asked the very simple question, What would it look like if we could take a picture of a black hole?

- It's not about what you see, but what you don't see.

(News) On Wednesday, scientists unveiled the first direct visual evidence of a black hole.

(Scientist) In April of 2017, All the dishes in the Event Horizon Telescope swiveled, turned and stared at a galaxy 55 million light years away.

And we are delighted to be able to report to you today that we have seen what we thought was unseeable.

We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole.

Here it is.

(Dimitrios) I was stunned by how fascinated people were with the black hole.

The day after the announcement, the picture was in the front page of every single newspaper anywhere in the world.

- I mean, we knew it was a good result, but it was amazing to see how the world reacted to it.

- Unlikely as it sounds, We now have an image of that invisible space anomaly, a black hole.

- This is amazing.

The first picture ever of a black hole.

(Scientist) We now know clearly that black holes drive large scale structure in the universe, and we now have an entirely new way of studying general relativity in black holes that we never had before.

And as with all great discoveries, this is just the beginning.

(Feryal) So of course our experiment isn't done.

Once that initial excitement died down, we went right back to the drawing board and we said, okay, we have more data in our hands from that observing campaign.

We have this other black hole.

We've been working very hard at it and hopefully will be able to share the results soon.

[ FERYAL INSTRUCTING ] But very much along the lines of what is inferred for M87 and Sag A star... (Dimitrios) A black hole is a warping in space time that is so strong that not even light can escape from it.

And you can go quite close to a black hole.

But if you cross that virtual surface that we call the event horizon, then you'll never be able to come out from it.

(Feryal) It's a place in the universe where our ideas of how the smallest things work with quantum mechanics and how the largest things work with gravity and Einstein's theory of general relativity get married to one another, like they both play a role in the event horizon of a black hole.

(Dimitrios) So when we asked ourselves which are the best black holes to take a picture of, only two of them crossed the limit.

One of them is the black hole in the center of our galaxy because it's the closest and the other is the biggest black hole.

And that is the black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy.

M87 is so slow that it stays still for us.

This is why we started with the M87 Galaxy and we moved later on to the black hole in the center of our own galaxy.

[ FERYAL INSTRUCTING ] (Feryal) The Event Horizon Telescope is an international collaboration.

Just by virtue of how we conduct this experiment, we need telescopes all across the globe.

In fact, what we really did was get telescopes from on different continents to work in unison as if they were one telescope.

It is centered here at the University of Arizona.

We are the PI institution and we actually held the first meeting of the Event Horizon here in Tucson.

We hosted the meeting.

(Dimitrios) We made possible three of the nine telescopes of the Event Horizon Telescope, two of them here in Arizona, one on top of KITT Peak and on top of Mount Graham and the telescope in the South Pole.

(Dan) When I got a job when I was 15, it wasn't to buy a car, but it was to buy a telescope.

You know, I have been interested in this for a long time.

Going to a telescope is perhaps a little bit like going to a monastery.

You're locked in a space with nothing to do except for your work.

The first part of my work in this project is making it possible to do the observations.

And currently, I'm responsible for making the two observatories in Arizona and the one at the South Pole work each year.

Things we have to worry about that are a little bit surprising are things like the temperature of the cables that carry our signals and how they change during our observation, or the little quartz crystals that do the oscillations that we use to reference are our measurements to.

You've always got to be checking something.

It's like if you're driving and you had, you know, 50 mirrors that you had to be checking all the time, it's a lot of little things, but if you get any of them wrong then it doesn't work.

The SMT is a little unusual because when the telescope turns, the building rotates with it.

It's gradual enough that you generally don't notice it unless you can see out a window.

A neat thing about being at the telescopes is that there's no better place to just sit and look at the stars the way I did when I was a kid.

If you were to ask someone, imagine the strangest thing that must exist in the universe.

There's no way they would imagine that there's a point in space where all the laws break down.

And so determining whether that's a real thing in the universe and proving it, that seems really cool.

So I'm really happy to have the chance to be a part of that.

(Dimitrios) Einstein told us how to interpret the world in a way that is very counterintuitive.

The equations of Einstein's theory are very complex, and the only way to make any progress is to throw them on big, super massive computers.

And calculate what they predict.

So what we do is we make a virtual black hole.

We calculate the motion of the plasma and the motion of light coming out of it.

And then we simulate the observations, just like the real observations happen.

We actually have a little machine that we control our simulations with our hands while the simulation is running in real time.

And now we're at the point where our tools here at the University of Arizona are so efficient that we can actually render a single simulated image in a fraction of a second.

We have spent the last year and a half finessing our tools, given what we know from the previous models.

And we are very, very eager to see what this second black hole picture will look like.

Is it the same is a different degree with Einstein's theory, does it not?

- University of Arizona have just announced new information about the center of our galaxy.

Literally just it just announced what they're calling a very groundbreaking discovery and very cool stuff here, Nicole.

- Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here.

While we share with you our exciting new results about our galaxy, the Milky Way at its heart towards the Constellation Sagittarius is Sagittarius A star, the supermassive black hole suspected to reside there.

The Event Horizon Telescope is delighted to share with you the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy.

Sagittarius A star.

(Dimitrios) There is a reason why we say seeing is believing.

When you see something that you've heard so much about, it suddenly becomes real.

And the black hole that we took a picture of is not imagination anymore.

It's something as real as our own Earth.

(Feryal) The thing that has drawn me to black holes is this test of theories of physics, theories of the universe.

And I really hope that my career and all the things that I worked on and contributed to actually ends up, you know, furthering that.

(Dan) The release of Sag A star brings us to the end of that top level goal But the amazing thing is that the data we've taken since the very first experiment has gotten so much better that astrophysically, We're going to learn a lot more from everything we do after than we did from just these first 2 pictures.

(Feryal) As humankind, I think we do a lot of things because we are intrinsically curious.

We have a sense of wonder about the things around us.

The story of the Black Hole just is a chapter in that book.

- I'm here with fellow astrophysics professor Dan Marrone.

Dan, thanks for having me.

- Hi Erica, thanks for coming to the lab.

- So, I'm really excited to learn about everything here, but first I want to hear about the new image that the Event Horizon Telescope released recently.

- Yeah, so we finally have a picture of the polarization of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our galaxy, which tells us about the magnetic fields that wrap around the black hole and do all the crazy things that we knew black holes need to do in the universe, but we still don't know exactly how.

So, this is like really getting to the meat of why we want to take pictures of black holes.

- What does knowing about the magnetic field tell us about the black hole?

- These images that we finally released are actually answering questions that I was asking in my thesis, like, "Okay, Sagittarius A*, has polarization, it changes a lot.

Why does it change?

Is it material going around the black hole?

Is it material in front of the black hole moving around?"

We're getting that answer out of these data.

It's very exciting for me because, you know, I have been imagining what must be going on and writing papers describing what could be going on, but now we can see what's going on.

So, this is my favorite of our results.

- That's pretty amazing and it's only going to get better.

- Yes, only going to get better.

- Okay, so tell me about this very shiny detector.

(Dan) The main thing is observe at more wavelengths at the same time and observe for longer.

So, we have enough time to see things falling into the black hole maybe being launched out of the black hole.

And, you know, the next big campaigns are, can we observe entire movies of black holes?

Could we keep observing and watch things orbiting M87?

Yep, it's going to be exciting.

We're going to make some big changes and this receiver is part of that.

- So, you'll be able to take the, like, donut picture and make it even more precise.

- There's also buried in that donut somewhere that we can't see yet.

There should be light that has actually orbited the black hole and just escaped.

And if we had more resolution, we could see that and it would open up whole new kinds of science.

- And you would be, like, really testing general relativity at that point, right?

- That's right.

Yeah, it tells us exactly what that should look like, but we need to see it.

- Well, thank you so much for showing me this really cool receiver.

I've got to head over to the Optical Sciences building for our next story, but I'll see you soon.

(Dan) Yeah, thanks for coming.

♪ INSPIRING SYNTH MUSIC (Erika) For our next story, instead of looking into outer space, we'll explore breakthroughs in virtual reality.

Here at the Wyant College of Optical Sciences, Hong Hua has spent two decades developing innovations at the cutting edge of virtual and augmented reality.

Her career has seen the field grow immeasurably.

Virtual reality is everywhere today I even used it to work out during the pandemic and there's still so much more to come.

(gentle music) (Hong) 30 Years ago when I was in the first year of my college, my initial fascination was to develop telescope systems and look in outer space.

And then when I saw this article talking about a virtual reality technology that can put you into another space digitally, the imagination attracted me.

- My name is Hong Hua and I'm a professor at the Wyant College of Optical Science at the University of Arizona.

My work here is mainly working on optical technologies for enabling advanced verbal displays for virtual reality and augmented reality.

So 'virtual reality,' you can think of it's a technology that puts the user completely immersed into a computer generated environment versus 'augmented reality,' or nowadays people like to call it 'mixed reality,' is trying to insert the digital contents or the digital avatar or digital objects into physical reality so that you have this harmony between your digital world and physical reality.

That's one of the first variable light field display systems that we developed a few years ago, but one of the major things that we are working on is trying to, how can we shrink down the volume.

Every time there is a new macro display technology coming up or there is another component, I would take that opportunity to develop a new system.

(violin music) (indistinct talk in background) In the last few years, I'm leading a group of graduate students working on optical technology that it can potentially address the most challenging problems that exist in VR or AR display systems.

One of the challenges is to render contents that give the user ability to focus at a different distance because in real life, your eye is able to focus far away or look at something really close.

So one of the approaches is to be able to creating a stack of focal planes dynamically, either time sequentially or spatially, so that you are able to render 3D volume in a range from very close to very far away.

And then we are trying to render, geometrically, the light field or the light directions that are presumably coming from the 3D objects.

So this device actually had a, we call it an intregal imaging unit, giving you the ability for your eye to able to see the 3D objects rendered by the display, appear to behave in similar ways as your real world physical objects.

Some of the particular areas and applications that I'm personally very interested in, is developing displays to help people.

And one particular project that I have worked recently was the work with E-Sight.

E-Sight is a Canadian company that developed a variable assistive technology for people who have compromised vision that are not able to see their surroundings with their naked eyes, but they have some residual vision.

When you put this device on, you would be looking through the camera and look at your real world through the camera.

And then I, if I look at your face now, your face will be a few times bigger than what I would normally be able to see with my naked eye.

Some other application areas that we had worked on in the past was to develop a anatomy visualizer for doctors, to be able to show their patients how their surgical procedure is gonna be.

So to me, my motivation of helping people, is kind of probably coming from my family value.

I grew up in a family where my father passed away at a very early age and my mom was a elementary school teacher.

So you can imagine she does not make a lot of money, but however, one of the things that she has taught me was education can change your life.

When you have education, you need to learn to give it back.

It doesn't matter where you come from.

Other people cannot tell you what you can do or what you cannot do.

Only yourself can.

♪ NSPIRING SYNTH MUSIC - The breakthroughs we've made in optical engineering are truly incredible, but understanding the world sometimes requires more than our eyes.

For our next story, we'll explore how researchers here at the University of Arizona are developing educational tools to make learning about engineering more accessible for students who are visually impaired, and in the process expand all of our minds about what it means to truly grasp reality around us.

(Kavan) I'm one of those people who really believes nobody should be left behind.

If you want to learn, we have a responsibility to provide that opportunity.

Traditionally they have this impression that engineering is not for the people we cannot see.

Wrong.

We have to change that.

If we as a community don't make those educational tools available to them, they are always feel alien about the engineering.

(student 1) I don't want it to touch the edge of this.

(student 2) Oh, yeah.

As long as you're pegs in then, I'm just gonna take them out.

- Yeah.

(Kavan) I was sitting in an airplane one day and I was telling myself, How am I supposed to teach the fly mechanism to the person who cannot see?

I assembled a team and we start to build a wind tunnel which is customized so they can understand the viscous, drag, lift mechanism.

(student) It will be very loud.

[loud fan turning on] (Kavan) We also had some noise associated with the wind.

And when the wind comes in, change the angle of attack.

You have different lift and how we can land also.

They could completely hold it, feel it and relate with the concept.

(Grad student) Okay.

So that's the drag portion.

And then we also have a lift force.

(Kavan) One of the students was working in my lab.

When she learned about my passion to develop educational tools.

She said, I have a blind roommate.

(Valeria) I came here because my friend, she got me into... more into aerospace and mechanical engineering.

You can feel the other symmetrical letters.

- Do you think that makes a big difference?

- It's easier to read this type of one.

(Valeria) Because I'm egally blind.

To understand something, I need to touch it.

Or have a motion that directs me to it.

(Sahand) Kavan looks at the social impacts of engineering work.

And that's something that I wasn't exposed before.

For my Ph.D. Kavan was my advisor, and I had a conversation with him, and I didn't know about the limitations in education for visually impaired students.

So when he mentioned that, I was like, Oh, that's great.

We can work something that has led to my work and connects to your work as well.

We picked this robot for educational purpose because we have this shell around the system because we have this, it's safe and people can use it without getting harm and they understand all these physics that is behind the system.

(Kavan) We can explain the stability of the helicopter's flight, hovering, pitch and all this beautiful concept that we teach in the Aerospace Engineer Department.

We could bring these type of lessons to the people who never had the \opportunity before.

(Isaac) There's more than just a visual learner.

There's auditory learners and there's tactile learners.

And so I think that it's important to be able to really focus on bringing as much inclusion into play when demonstrating and and or teaching concepts as complex as engineering and or other concepts within the STEM fields.

(Kavan) Another very exciting project that we are involved is we are very lucky.

We have a very good and comprehensive college of optical science.

So my team and I, we are working with Dr. Nasser Peyghambarian to develop some smart glasses which has an onboard sensor for navigate the environments.

(Nasser) This is sort of an example that the blind can be told what's going on.

The technology that is currently in use in the self-driving cars by but on a person.

(Kavan) we are sensing the objects around and we can have an audio feedback to say what I am seeing right now.

Just imagine a student that has those glasses as well.

They can navigate to the campus with no need to help that build up the confidence that we need to see the people who are not like us.

(Student) The button on your right hand.

If you push up.

- Okay.

(Sahand) A lot of engineers like me understand that there is this impact that you could have socially in people's life.

(Kavan) It's very warm heartening when I see next generation, when I see them, they have the same passion as I do to develop things that doesn't exist for the people who really need it.

Education really matters.

Things happen in the university.

You cannot have a technology.

You cannot have a health.

You cannot have anything without having the right education in the right place.

(Sahand) I see the difficulties and I see there's a solution, That's basically the purpose of engineering if it could make someone's life easier.

I mean, what's better than that?

♪ NSPIRING SYNTH MUSIC (Erika) Thanks so much for expanding your field of vision with me on this all new episode of New Frontiers.

I'm Erika Hamden, and I'll see you next time.

♪ MUSIC ENDS ♪ Make sure to stay tuned for future episodes where we'll explore more of the incredible innovation happening here at the University of Arizona.

And if you want to know what's happening with me, follow my Instagram @erika.hamden ♪ PBS CHIME