Since I’m not seeing her name nearly enough on the press, let’s give the attention Katie Boumandeserves. Thanks to her, we are now possible to see the first ever image of a black hole, something that people talked 200 years ago for the first time. It’s no longer a myth. We are girls and we can be whatever we want to be. Einstein would be proud of you, Katie. Thank you!
Here you can see a huge stack of hard drives she used for Messier 87’s black hole image data.
Since I was under a rock mowing the lawn today, and maybe you were you did too:
Bouman didn’t know the first thing about black holes when she joined the team six years ago. Her background was in computer science and electrical engineering, and she got involved in the project while pursuing a PhD in computer vision.
I bolded two important parts: when she joined this team, she was a 23-year-old grad student who knew diddly-squat about black holes.
Bouman says that most of the time she’s not focused on the fact that she’s in a field where women are the minority. “But I do sometimes think about it. How do we get more women involved?” she says. “One key is showing that when you go into fields like computer science and engineering, it’s not just sitting in a lab putting together a circuit or typing on your computer.”
She recalls standing in Mexico two years ago, at one of the sites where telescopes were collecting data on a galaxy 54 million light years away, information she would eventually help transform. Going into a career in science means “working with people around the world. It’s going to telescopes at 15,000 feet,” she says. “It’s working toward making the first image of a black hole.”
This kind of thing is really important. If you have no idea what computer scientists and engineers actually do, you are probably not going to consider becoming one. But worse: what if you would actually love being a computer scientist, and what if you would be the best darn computer scientist that ever lived, but the idea of sitting at a desk at a computer all day makes you want to scream, so you never bother learning that computer scientists can do all sorts of things that don’t involve chaining themselves to a desk? There are computer scientists who study the human brain. There are computer scientists who are learning how to insert computer code into DNA and analyze how natural mutations affect the programs, and subsequently (maybe?) how we can use this to predict upcoming flu strains. There are computer scientists who design better roadways for cities. Whatever you can imagine! And more that you can’t! If you started studying computer science today, by the time you were ready to start finding work, it’s possible that new jobs would have popped up that hadn’t existed before you started learning about computer science!
I don’t mean to toot computer science’s horn or anything (in all honesty *yawn*), BUT it’s a great field (JOBSSSSSS), it PAYS, and LADIES (etc), don’t let all the men hog that money! TAKE IT!
do older generations not get fatalistic humor?? like the other day my friend’s parents were hanging around and we were joking and i was like “well no matter what i can always fling myself off the nearest cliff” and they didn’t laugh then later the mom pulled me aside and was like “maybe you should get some help, sweetie” like stfu?? help? in this economy? i don’t think so, debra
I always think it’s insane that Trump got elected until I read things like this. Like, how do these people slip though basic education, manage to survive the real world, and even procreate successfully?
