First Images of Black Holes!

[Cliff Matthews]

[apis]

Already another thread about it:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-most-anticipated-astronomy-event-of-my-life-from-mm-waves/

[pelule]

Funny note...
German TV named it "Erlebnishorizont" (experiance horizon) instead of "Ereignishorizont" (enevt horizon).
/PeLuLe

[officially4h]

facebook has been largest media to spread about the first image of the black hole when it was released

[TerraHertz]

I'm surprised and disappointed this thread didn't turn in to a gallery of black-hole-chan fan art.
Some of which is really good. Though there's a high lewd-level, and I suppose that's why.

Google images, see what I mean.

[magic]

surprised and disappointed that less than 0.01% of people care about anime pr0n

Seriously, man, w t actual f. That's not how the world works and you ought to know it by now.

[TerraHertz]

surprised and disappointed that less than 0.01% of people care about anime pr0n

Seriously, man, w t actual f. That's not how the world works and you ought to know it by now.

Yeah, the world works by distorting quotes in straw-man fashion, failing to get tongue-in-cheek humor, and being very ambiguous.

[German_EE]

The science coverage of this bothers me. A lot of people (including some of the scientists on the project) call this a 'picture' but it is nothing of the sort. Signals are received using a network of radio telescopes and then the data received is fed into a computer program to produce an interpreted result as a visual image. The only photons that are involved are those on your computer monitor so this isn't really an image of a black hole.

Despite this we have one narrator describing how they had to change a mirror on a radio telescope and one scientist complaining that cloud cover meant that they could not use one set of dishes that day.

[hamster_nz]

The science coverage of this bothers me. A lot of people (including some of the scientists on the project) call this a 'picture' but it is nothing of the sort. Signals are received using a network of radio telescopes and then the data received is fed into a computer program to produce an interpreted result as a visual image. The only photons that are involved are those on your computer monitor so this isn't really an image of a black hole.

Despite this we have one narrator describing how they had to change a mirror on a radio telescope and one scientist complaining that cloud cover meant that they could not use one set of dishes that day.

At some level all 'pictures' are just a recording of a filtered piece of the electromagnetic spectrum that contains information of the location of stuff.

It may not be visible to the human eye, but then again neither is that from an infrared security camera.

I think that still qualifies as a picture - as do medical x-rays and CAT scans, but understand if you feel otherwise.

[0xdeadbeef]

Even worse, the news called it a "photography". While literally true, as it is a graphical image made (computed) from measuring photons, 99% of people will think it's like a picture of visible light taken by a camera of some sort. I also heard scientists saying that the image proves that "no light is emitted from the center region" but actually that picture only shows that no electromagnetic radiation of the measured mm wavelength (1.3mm AFAIK) is emitted.
It's still an impressive achievement of course but honestly, it didn't really shake my world view. Like in the end it's just the image that everybody would have expected and it doesn't really answer the question what it would actually look like if you could get close enough in a space vessel to see it with your own eyes.

[magic]

The only photons that are involved are those on your computer monitor so this isn't really an image of a black hole.

And those coming from the source and received by the antennas.

Despite this we have [...] one scientist complaining that cloud cover meant that they could not use one set of dishes that day.

No expert here but this is at least plausible, water is known to absorb some RF.

[BravoV]

That announcement is for public average Joe/Jane consumption.

You do not need to explain to such audiences, that a phone charger that toasted a phone, that it has crappy design where the control loop failed to suppress a high transient fluctuation at power on, and also it doesn't have the missing MOV, common mode choke + cap, at the mains side and etc (geek speak), that made it killed the phone.

[iMo]

You have to provide the information for broad public (the mainstream) in such way they do understand what you say or write. The broad public is paying most of academic institutions and basic research they do, so they require to be informed somehow (otherwise they will not be willing to pay). And a picture is worth thousand words

They needed years and a lot of computation power to get the simple picture, so most probably we will not get an apparatus able to show you a black hole by simple looking through it soon.
That is common with most of such basic research stuff in science - you cannot see it, smell it or touch it. You have to trust the scientists they do with an upmost professional care and based on current best practices.

[0xdeadbeef]

It's not about going into every detail but trying not to give the wrong impression. Actually, calling the black hole image a photography is just one example. About anything technical/science related is discussed in main stream media in a way that is not only oversimplified but actually wrong and thus can easily lead to further wrong assumptions etc.

Anyway, in this specific case it occurred to me that maybe putting too much emphasis on the computed character of the image might have given ammunition to conspiracy theorists and other people who generally only believe what they can touch or "see with their own eyes". Indeed, there is a certain danger even in controlled scientific environments that data is selected to produce the expected result.

[iMo]

Sure, there is always the danger the public is exposed to a scientific result which proves to be false. It happened many times in past.

Btw, as of today, the science has no clue where the gravity is coming from, or how it works.
And the gravity is the primary source of the black holes existence..

That is a "contra example" in science - we can feel it, touch it, but we know nothing about it

[0xdeadbeef]

Actually it might be a wrong expectation to really understand where any of the fundamental forces/interactions come from. We just have to accept that they exist.
I mean we can say that positive and negative charges attract - but this isn't really an explanation but just a description of an obvious fact.
Even things like saying that nature tries to establish an equilibrium or that entropy never decreases don't really explain why this is the case.

[Rerouter]

It was on the limits of our current technology, though I am confused why Australia's many radio observatories where not also used to paint a bit more of the picture,

we had to use math to emulate a receiver the size of the planet to piece it all together, to do better will take time, or many stupidly large orbital radio observatories.

[iMo]

Actually it might be a wrong expectation to really understand where any of the fundamental forces/interactions come from. We just have to accept that they exist.
I mean we can say that positive and negative charges attract - but this isn't really an explanation but just a description of an obvious fact.
Even things like saying that nature tries to establish an equilibrium or that entropy never decreases don't really explain why this is the case.

The electrostatic attraction force of an electron and proton placed 1meter apart is 10^-28N.
The gravitation attraction force of an electron and proton placed 1meter apart is 10^-67N.
That is 39 orders of magnitude difference.
And the gravity holds galaxies together or it creates black holes.
Fascinating, indeed..