Case Study: Western Digital Plays Pivotal Role in First-Ever Image of A

Credit: EHT Collaboration. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

CASE STUDY

Western Digital Plays Pivotal Role in First-Ever Image of a Black Hole International black hole imaging team turns to Messier 87* Western Digital’s Ultrastar® HDDs with HelioSeal® By the Numbers technology to capture massive amounts of data in extreme conditions The galaxy known as M87 is 53 million light-years away.1 With several trillion stars, a family of approximately 15,000 globular star clusters, and a supermassive black hole, it is one of the largest galaxies in our universe.2 53 million light-years Separate Earth and the M87* Supermassive black hole. That’s far. 12.5 million times farther than the closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri.²

The project involved… 8 telescopes around the world collected the data over several days in April 2017. 200 researchers4

Figure 1: Messier 87 60 When an international team of astronomers and computer scientists targeted the scientiﬁc institutions heart of M87 to capture the first-ever image of a black hole, it made headlines around the world. Less heralded was the astronomical amount of data needed to create that image—approximately 4.5 petabytes.3 To put this in perspective, the size of a typical low-resolution smartphone photo is 3.5 megabytes. The data needed to create an image 20 of the black hole was over 1,000,000,000X larger than a typical smartphone photo and is countries5 as much data as taking 4,000 typical smartphone photos per day for close to 900 years.4 The Event Horizon Telescope project gathered that much data in the span of ten days in April 2017.5 350 ~4.5 960 Capturing M87’s black hole was no small feat—one researcher compared it to taking terabytes collected petabytes of data hard drives a photo of an orange on the surface of the moon from Earth.1 To create an instrument 6 7 8 each day collected total stored that data powerful enough to collect images even of an object of that size 53 million light-years away, researchers connected eight highly sophisticated telescopes around the world That much data is equivalent to taking 4,000 photos a day for almost 200 years on your cellphone.9 to create one virtual, Earth-sized telescope using a method called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). (continued on next page) Trucks and planes delivered the hard drives to data centers in Cambridge, MA and Bonn, Germany. Western Digital Plays Pivotal Role in First-Ever Image of a Black Hole

Transferring all of that data over 10 the internet would’ve taken ~25 years

4 computer-imaging algorithms 11 were used by 4 independent groups of experts to help eliminate bias in reviewing the ﬁndings.

The result? 1 history-making photo†.

M87* Image Credit: EHT Collaboration. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Messier 87* By the Numbers

53 million light-years Separate Earth and the M87* Supermassive black hole. That’s far. 12.5 million times farther than the closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri.²

The project involved… 8 telescopes around the world collected the data over several days in April 2017. 200 researchers4

60 scientiﬁc institutions

20 countries5

350 ~4.5 960 terabytes collected petabytes of data hard drives 6 7 8 each day collected total stored that data

CASE STUDYThat much data is equivalent to taking 4,000 photos a day for almost 200 years on your cellphone.9

Each individual telescope was part of a virtual telescope called the Event Horizon Trucks and planes delivered Telescope. The individual telescopes were synchronized together with GPS and highly- the hard drives to data accurate atomic clocks to ensure consistency in the images they captured. Each data centers in Cambridge, MA and Bonn, Germany. point the telescopes captured was digitized, time-stamped and saved to hard disk drives (HDDs).6 The hard drives used for this astronomy data needed to be both powerful enough to Transferring all of that data over 10 the internet would’ve taken ~25 years collect megabytes of data per second flowing from telescopes around the world, and tough enough to withstand the punishing environments where many of these instruments are based. 4 computer-imaging algorithms 11 Western Digital’s Ultrastar HDDs with HelioSeal technology helped provide the solution were used by 4 independent groups of experts to help eliminate bias in reviewing the ﬁndings. for collecting massive amounts of data in extreme conditions. HelioSeal technology hermetically seals the hard drive and replaces air with helium, which is 1/7th the density of air. Western Digital was the first company to ship helium-filled HDDs, which enable higher densities, higher performance, less energy and greater reliability compared to air-filled drives. Helium-filled HDDs enabled data capture and storage in the extreme climates of some of

The result? these telescopes, from freezing temperatures in Antarctica to high altitudes in Mexico, 1 history-making photo†. where air-filled drives would not function properly. Once the drives collected the astronomy data, they were transported (not via the internet, but by plane and by car6) to research centers in the U.S. and Germany for processing—the end result of which, of course, is the iconic image that captivated the world in 2019. The M87 black hole image is the perfect example of the power that data represents. With the ability to collect and analyze data at scale, we can see what was previously unseen and reveal insights that previously lay in shadow. In a very real way, data is opening up a M87* Image Credit: EHT Collaboration. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Credit: EHT Collaboration. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 whole universe of discovery. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

This content is produced by WIRED Brand Lab in collaboration with Western Digital.

Article Sources: Infographic Sources: 1 How Scientists Captured the First Image of a Black Hole 1 How Scientists Captured the First Image of a Black Hole (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2019/4/19/how-scientists-captured-the-first-image-of-a-black-hole/) (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2019/4/19/how-scientists-captured-the-first-image-of-a-black-hole/) 2 Messier 87 (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-87) 2 How Long Would It Take To Travel To The Nearest Star? 3 AskScience AMA Series: We are scientists here to discuss our breakthrough results from the Event Horizon (https://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/) Telescope. AUA! (https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bbknik/askscience_ama_series_we_ 3 How They Took the First Picture of a Black Hole are_scientists_here_to/ekk3cgp/) (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/science/event-horizon-black-hole-images.html) 4 Average file sizes vary but cellphone photos are generally ~3-3.5 MB. Examples of the number of photos that 4 This is the first photo of a black hole can be stored are provided for illustrative purposes only. Results will vary based on resolution, content, file (https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/10/world/black-hole-photo-scn/index.html) compression, file format, file size, host device, pre-loaded files, settings, software and other factors. 5 Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of a Supermassive Black Hole (https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-6s-camera-filesizes-4k-live-photos-hdr/) (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/astronomers-capture-first-images-supermassive-black- 5 How They Took the First Picture of a Black Hole hole-180971927/#vDRqXF0GA5hxH9wp.99) (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/science/event-horizon-black-hole-images.html) 6 Black hole images captured in world first 6 The Hidden Shipping and Handling Behind That Black-Hole Picture (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/apr/black-hole-images-captured-world-first-0) (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/black-hole-hard-disks-picture/587119/) 7 Taking that picture of a black hole required massive amounts of data (https://www.techspot.com/news/79637-taking-picture-black-hole-required-massive-amounts-data.html) 8 Why the Event Horizon Telescope took so long to image a black hole (http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/04/the-road-to-imaging-a-black-hole) 9 Average file sizes vary but typical low-resolution cellphone photos are generally ~3-3.5 MB. Examples of the number of photos that can be stored are provided for illustrative purposes only. Results will vary based on resolution, content, file compression, file format, file size, host device, pre-loaded files, settings, software and other factors. (https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-6s-camera-filesizes-4k-live-photos-hdr/) 10Behind the Scenes of the First Black Hole Photo (https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/telescopes/a27131631/behind-the-scenes-of-the-first-black- hole-photo/) 11Algorithms gave us the black hole picture. She’s the 29-year-old scientist who helped create them (https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/10/algorithms-gave-us-black-hole-pic-this-scientist- helped-create-them/?utm_term=.ca75c249a84d)

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Western Digital Plays Pivotal Role in First-Ever Image of a Black Hole April 2020