241–250 of 329 posts
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So you’re saying no, JWST won’t provide significantly sharper images of black holes than the Event Horizon Telescope?
Aren't these black hole images based on ultra sensitive radio telescopes?
I am very skeptical of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images because they are not following a scientific method that results in a true representative image of their target. In my opinion astronomy is jumping the shark with these images by making this a big PR stunt. I've looked at their methods for their earlier images and they seem to be hunting for a circle that looks like a black hole in their data. The EHT's f…
Why do you think you know more about astronomy than a team of scientists publishing peer reviewed information?
There was some hype about: FTL events, life based on cyanide not phosphorus…
Careful with “peer review” when the set of peers is invested in the same type of results.
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So you’re saying no, JWST won’t provide significantly sharper images of black holes than the Event Horizon Telescope?
Aren't these black hole images based on ultra sensitive radio telescopes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You realize peer review isn't just something you do and they automatically publish you, right? Peer review makes sure your science is sound. But I'm sure you're more of an expert than anybody serving in a peer review board.
>Peer review makes sure your science is sound No it doesn't. Most peer review doesn't even attempt to reproduce results, which is the real way to make sure the science is sound.
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Can we invert the diffraction process numerically?
No, this is fundamentally impossible. There are infinitely many possible objects that would produce the same blurry image.
But I suppose you could be right for a single image from one angle, and I suppose that we don't get to see this particular object from many different angles.
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Those configurations aren't "impossible" due to fundamental well tested physics like general relativity. They're "impossible" from the perspective of our understanding of the formation of planetary systems, which is understandably less well developed given how much more difficult it is to study since as a science, exoplanet detection is just 30 years old, with the majority of detections being less than 15 years old.…
If general relativity based models have struggled to help predict or explain planetary system formation and exoplanet observations, I think we should have the same level of expectation about how helpful a general relativity based black hole model will be.
Newtonian gravity is good enough for that problem, and the problems have nothing to do with not understanding gravity well enough. The problems have to do with things like complex chemistry in stellar accretion disks, how grains in these disks stick to one another to eventually form rocks, and so on.
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I think there's some confusion on your part about what the image purports to show. I shall put aside the parent comments concern about the signal analysis techniques. Those may be valid concerns, and I don't know enough to assess them. > I'm not sure it's physically possible to take a visible light picture of a "naked" event horizon The event horizon telescope isn't purporting the image emission from the event horizo…
Thanks for your reply! I also think it's scientifically interesting and appreciate the work. But it should be called a model or illustration, because a human could never see this with bare eyes.
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So you’re saying no, JWST won’t provide significantly sharper images of black holes than the Event Horizon Telescope?
JWST is nowhere near the caliber of telescopes necessary to resolve black holes. Very literally, we would need an optical telescope bigger than new york city to even make an attempt.
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Can someone do the math for me? Let's say I'm 6 feet tall... what object would I have to hold out at arm's length, to have the same angular width as the entirety of this image? A bacteria? A virus?
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=50+microarcseconds+*+%2... The answer is ~200 picometers. Wolfram lists some helpful comparisons: 1/2 the distance between base pairs in DNA 3x the atomic diameter of helium (the smallest atom) Suffice to say you'd have a hard time seeing it as it would be 3,000x smaller than the wavelength of visible light.
Can the smart people in here confirm if we are getting sucked into this someday or not?
Some perspective that may help: If the Sun were replaced by black hole with the same mass as the Sun at the center of the Solar System we wouldn't automatically get sucked into it. A very cold Earth would continue to orbit the black hole exactly as it does the Sun today. Only if the Earth's orbit were perturbed by some other body would it have a chance of joining the black hole.
Not any more meaningfully than the chance of current-Earth being put on a trajectory to crash into the sun if its orbit were perturbed. A black hole doesn't magically have a stronger (instantaneous) gravitational pull than that of any other body; the same formula for gravitational force at distance D given object masses Mi is preserved. Now the typical means of formation for a black hole generally result in masses much greater than that of our sun, which is why they are generally heavier and, accordingly, stronger (and they gain mass as they suck up things around them, hence the "instantaneous" disclaimer above).