Ruth Lingford

My world was jolted by two shadow images: one, thrilling, the other terrifying.  After a years-long effort—with 200 other scientists—we made the first image of a black hole, its shadow of no return.  Then I fell into debilitating pain. A deadly shadow blot appeared on an MRI of my spine.  Faced with emergency surgery and no assurance of success, I sought comfort in memory images from the past and, from collaborative work that engrossed me: images of the whole visible universe could be stored in light circling a black hole.  It was a universal memory. An experimental back and forth between the innermost-personal and the astronomical, where shadows and consolation cross.

Black holes stand at the limit of what we can know. The Event Horizon Telescope links observatories across the world to simulate an earth-sized telescope. With this tool the team pursues the first-ever picture of a black hole, resulting in an image seen by billions of people in April 2019. Meanwhile, Hawking and his team attack the black hole paradox at the heart of theoretical physics—Do predictive laws still function, even in these massive distortions of space and time? Weaving them together is a third strand, philosophical and exploratory using expressive animation. “Edge” is about practicing science at the highest level, a film where observation, theory, and philosophy combine to grasp these most mysterious objects.