171–180 of 525 posts
Good video that correctly predicted the image and describes why it looks the way it does [1]. TL; DR The dark area is the entire surface of the event horizon, including the side facing away from us, plus some more due to photons missing the event horizon "directly" being drawn in. One side is brighter due to its being Doppler boosted. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUyH3XhpLTo
I always thought we have photographed black holes. Any idea/link to article where it explains why this took so long and why it was difficult?
Does anyone remember Interstellar. Their black hole simulation was based on hard science. Looks fairly similar
It doesn't look anything like Gargantua in Interstellar, but it's not really supposed to, except for the most prominent features. Interstellar showed what a black hole might look like in visible light while in orbit around it. This is a radio telescope image from a far away galaxy.
"This is like viewing a mustard seed in Washington DC from Brussels"
Pedantic/fun comment: I will assume that one of the presenters said that (I will watch the full video later tonight). One would imagine that that person knows that you cannot see a mustard seed from Brussels because the planet's crust is blocking your line of sight ;) unless the scientist who said that is a flat-earth-believer! A statement like "it is like viewing a mustard seed X kilometres/miles away would be more…
I don't get the whole "oh it's too blurry and nothing is visible" comments. It's a black hole, what did you expect to see? Interstellar CGI?
Yes, we're using a telescope the size of the Earth to look at an object the size of our solar system in a galaxy about 55 million light years away. It's an infinitesimally small patch of sky. On the other hand, the jet from the M87 black hole is quite large and we have good images of it. It's even resolvable by amateurs, I hope to take a picture of it over Easter with a small telescope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
didn't he correct himself and said kilometers
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's still no proof of existence of black holes You've shifted the goal posts in this sentence. Previously, you said there was no evidence of black holes. Now you're upped the scale to demanding proof . The previous commenter wasn't claiming that LIGO detections were proof of black holes. They said that they were evidence of black holes. The LIGO detections, by all reasonable metrics, would certainly qualify as evi…
The fact that scientists were able to accurately predict what this black whole should look like using the math at our disposal is about as good a piece of evidence as one can get.
Taken as a whole, the body of evidence is really strong and it's amazing how much stronger it's become in just the last few years!
This is truly an amazing image.
Good video that correctly predicted the image and describes why it looks the way it does [1]. TL; DR The dark area is the entire surface of the event horizon, including the side facing away from us, plus some more due to photons missing the event horizon "directly" being drawn in. One side is brighter due to its being Doppler boosted. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUyH3XhpLTo
It is a bit old (2012), but comprehensive and with both good audio and readable* slides.
*: In the sense that you can see the letters on them
How big a VLBI baseline would they need to see much more detail? Are there any plans for a space based VLBI; not easy when you consider the utterly huge amounts of information they have to transfer, a radio telescope in a L5 would be a start. Also I'd be interested to read how they got around scintallation of the Interstellar Medium.
why is it oblong???