Tag: basic science

  • Nation & World

    ‘Seeing the unseeable’

    A years-long effort by dozens of researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reveals the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole.

    9 minutes
    In the first picture of a black hole, it is outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon.
  • Nation & World

    The false choice of basic vs. applied research

    Venkatesh Narayanamurti, he former dean of Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is suggesting doing away with the traditional applied/basic research divide in favor of one that encourages greater collaboration and a two-way path between discovery and invention.

    4 minutes