The 3 million dollar Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics, one of the most prestigious in the world, has been awarded this year to the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), made up of 347 specialists who obtained the first image of a black hole last April. Among them, Rebecca Azulay and Ivan Martí Vidal, from the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universitat de València.
On April 10, 2019, EHT showed the world the first image of a black hole. Specifically, the super massive black hole in the centre of the galaxy Messier 87, located 55 million light years from Earth. A few months later, on September 4th, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation awarded the Physics Prize to all the people who integrate the collaboration in which the articles announcing the results were signed.
Ivan Martí Vidal, principal investigator of a project of the CIDEGENT Excellence programme (subsidised by the Generalitat Valenciana -Valencian Government- and related to EHT) and member of the Astronomical Observatory and the Department of Astronomy, is coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Group and author of an algorithm (PolConvert) that has contributed to the participation of the ALMA telescope (the most sensitive instrument of the whole project) in these historic observations.
Rebecca Azulay, post-Doctoral researcher, was astronomer supporting the IRAM 30m telescope of Pico Veleta (Granada) during EHT observations. In addition, Professor Eduardo Ros (currently on leave at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany) has been awarded, and he leads the Observation Time Request Group, is secretary of the EHT Board of Directors and also responsible for disseminating scientific collaboration in Europe.
“This award is a great recognition of the continued efforts of all the award-winning members of the team, who, without exception, have made possible the wonderful result of EHT,” says Ivan Martí Vidal. For her part, Rebecca Azulay highlighted: “It has been great news to receive this award. We are very happy and excited because this is a huge recognition for the whole team and the whole project”.
The Breakthrough Awards, now in their eighth year and known as the Science Oscars, annually recognize cutting-edge milestones in life sciences, physics and mathematics. The €2,718,000 of the prize will be distributed among the 347 people who make up the collaboration and participated as co-authors in the articles that showed the super massive black hole in the centre of the galaxy Messier 87.
In addition to Rebecca Azulay, Ivan Martí Vidal and Eduardo Ros, eleven other Spanish are part of the award-winning team: astronomer Raquel Fraga-Encinas and astronomers Antxon Alberdi, Juan Carlos Algaba, Roberto García, José Luis Gómez, Rubén Herrero-Illana, Santiago Navarro, Juan Peñalver, Ignacio Ruiz, Salvador Sánchez and Pablo Torné.
