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RE.SEARCH Issue 4: Transdisciplinary

Our latest issue of RE.SEARCH is out and focuses on how the University of Pretoria (UP) is implementing transdisciplinary research to co-create new knowledge to develop solutions and design new futures for us all.

Lecture

'Riendzo ri lehile: Tackling Natural Language Processing for African languages to make better sense of our world'

Low-resourced languages pose an interesting challenge for machine learning algorithms, representation, data collection and accessibility of machine learning in general. For African languages this challenge is even more consequential as it also coincides with the challenges of shaping the current revolution in artificial intelligence with the global landscape. In this talk I present our research...

Stories

UP part of global research team to present the first image of Sagittarius A*

Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. The announcement was made at simultaneous press conferences around the world. Professor Roger Deane, an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria and Director for the Centre of Astrophysics at the University of Witwatersrand and Wits Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Iniyan...

Infographic

The Timeline to Sgr A*

Supermassive black holes were predicted by Einstein in 1915. Despite their huge size, they remain unseeable. In an unprecedented international effort, scientists are making them visible.

Infographic

What did it take to bring us the first image of Sgr A*?

More than 300 researchers and 80 institutions, including the University of Pretoria have collaborated with the Event Horizon Telescope to bring us the first image of Sagittarius A. Learn more about what it took to do this in this infographic

Video

Zooming into the heart of the Milky Way to reveal the first direct image of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* captured by the Event Horizon Telescope.

Watch as this video sequence zooms into the black hole (Sgr A*) at the centre of our galaxy. Beginning with a broad view of the Milky Way, we dive into the dense clouds of gas and dust at our galactic centre. The stars here have been observed with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer for decades, the black hole’s immense gravitational pull distorting...

Gallery

First image of Sgr A*: The black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and how it was made

This is the first image of Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope. The...

Story

Re.Search Issue 2: Innovation

Innovation is the next step forward. The innovations highlighted in this edition show us that the knowledge we create today is a step forward to future.