Images of a Black Hole

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Am I the only one that thinks that it is grant money time for the The Event Horizon Telescope Team?

Better article, especially the Notes section: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/

An angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds isn't free, folks.

Let's just say I disagree and leave it at that.

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by kach22i

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/black-hole-first-picture-event-horizon-telescope

gotta love the symmetry of the universe

[Crowbob]

Ok. The subject of this alleged ‘photo’ of the ‘shadow’ of a black hole is 55 million light years away. I can’t think of any other object, even one that weighs 6.5 billion solar masses and is larger than the orbit of Neptune X4, that is more irrelevant to life on this planet.

[ckissick]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Ok. The subject of this alleged ‘photo’ of the ‘shadow’ of a black hole is 55 million light years away. I can’t think of any other object, even one that weighs 6.5 billion solar masses and is larger than the orbit of Neptune X4, that is more irrelevant to life on this planet.

Is a van Gogh painting relevant to life? A good song? A sporting event? To be relevant to life on this planet, it doesn't have to be just something you can eat, put over your head for shelter, or procreate with. It can also lift the human spirit.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by ckissick

Is a van Gogh painting relevant to life? A good song? A sporting event? To be relevant to life on this planet, it doesn't have to be just something you can eat, put over your head for shelter, or procreate with. It can also lift the human spirit.

LOL no one can accuse you of being insensitive.

I gotta go along with crowbob on this one.

[NY65912]

How about doing something for the sake of scientific discovery? We are inherently inquisitive creatures and the wonders of the universe are magnificent.

Perhaps to some this might appear to be a waste. But, peel the onion back to reveal a truly beautiful thing, perhaps only in a theoretical or abstract way.

Try a little introspection or maybe some abstract thought exercises to expand oneself, realize that we insignificant in the grand plan and are surrounded by beauty of all type, even mathematics ahs a beauty to it.

But, alas, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some think a painting of dogs playing cards at a table is equal to a work by Michelangelo. Proving that there are those that get it and others not so much, short-sightedness perhaps. Cheers

[javadog]

Originally Posted by kach22i

I'm still a bit puzzled by the use of the word "shadow" though.

Yeah, that is confusing. The image to me appears to be the image of the accretion disk.

I suppose the black thing in the center is the black hole although we really aren’t seeing it, as by definition it has no image.

[Rusty Heap]

The best scientific link, with links to 6 published scientific papers:


facts and data. not USA today.


https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2041-8205/page/Focus_on_EHT

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by ckissick

Is a van Gogh painting relevant to life? A good song? A sporting event? To be relevant to life on this planet, it doesn't have to be just something you can eat, put over your head for shelter, or procreate with. It can also lift the human spirit.

Let us review. This Event Horizon may not even exist. And guess what, if it exists, existed or will exist is irrelevant to life on this planet. If Event Horizon went supernova or whatever it would take 55 million years for any energy (no matter waves, particles, fields or any combo therefrom) emitted by it to reach us.

Event Horizon may have blown it's top as recently as when the dinosaurs roamed here and we still wouldn't know it.

This object has less relevance to life on this planet than the effect a single grain of sand has on the rotation of the earth. Considering the thing is more than four times the size of Neptune's orbit and not even light can escape it when its asleep, imagine the chaos for us were it to decide to pop 55 million light years away.

Clue: NONE.

[NY65912]

Originally Posted by Clint Lando

Cool, then you can pay for it.

Oh, to pay for the wall?

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by NY65912

How about doing something for the sake of scientific discovery? We are inherently inquisitive creatures and the wonders of the universe are magnificent.

Perhaps to some this might appear to be a waste. But, peel the onion back to reveal a truly beautiful thing, perhaps only in a theoretical or abstract way.

Try a little introspection or maybe some abstract thought exercises to expand oneself, realize that we insignificant in the grand plan and are surrounded by beauty of all type, even mathematics ahs a beauty to it.

But, alas, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some think a painting of dogs playing cards at a table is equal to a work by Michelangelo. Proving that there are those that get it and others not so much, short-sightedness perhaps. Cheers

Well said. I would imagine this is considered an epic work of art by many.

Scientifically, however, the only thing it does is confirm what we have pretty much already known. That the universe is big and contains many objects strange.

Philosophically, it's major achievment is to rudely remind us of our own irrelevance.

Which brings me back to my point.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by kach22i

I'm still a bit puzzled by the use of the word "shadow" though.

the edge of the shadow is the smallest diameter which allows coherent light to travel from the region around the black hole to us. Outside of the shadow, the spacetime twisting effects drop off until you get a "normal" image of photos traveling straight lines through space (this would be dozens or hundreds of times further away than what they're showing in all of these pictures). Closer than the shadow, spacetime is so twisted that photons coming from behind the black hole are sent back towards where they came, or worse. Once you reach the event horizon, photons at a grazing angle go into an infinite orbit and are "lost" forever. So, the shadow is the minimum distance where we can actually get photons to land on an imager in any coherent manner. What you are seeing at the actual edge of the shadow is photons coming into the area of the blackhole from all sorts of directions, being bent towards us. The parameters of that light will be completely blended (wavelength, polarization, amplitude, etc) because it's a mix of light from all areas of the sky.

[Pazuzu]

https://youtu.be/M1_HT3NdiXY?t=1538

Start watching here, but around minute 27:20 they show a simulation showing the paths of photons around the black hole. You can see how tehy end up populating an area that looks like a ring around the black hole, but none are inside a certain diameter. THAT is the shadow, where the light cannot be closer and travel in coherent directions.

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by tcar

That 55 million years is right now...

It did 'pop' 55 million-light years ago...

Huh.

Really?

I hadn’t noticed.

[javadog]

So, what you're saying is that the shadow is the hole in the donut and that the black hole is a little tiny area inside the donut hole, like say, a BB in the center of the hole?

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by javadog

So, what you're saying is that the shadow is the hole in the donut and that the black hole is a little tiny area inside the donut hole, like say, a BB in the center of the hole?

Yes. The shadow is 2.5 times larger than the event horizon, which could be considered the true "edge" of the black hole.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Well said. I would imagine this is considered an epic work of art by many.

Scientifically, however, the only thing it does is confirm what we have pretty much already known. That the universe is big and contains many objects strange.

Philosophically, it's major achievment is to rudely remind us of our own irrelevance.

Which brings me back to my point.

No doubt the direct impact on day to day living is as yet is none. It does help with scientific theory. That theory of black holes sorta starts with Einstein and was formulated about 100 years ago. Scientists have been trying to "prove" or disprove relativity and what it means to us day to day living humans. So far every test tried, has only reinforced Eisenstein's theory of relativity.

One simple example, the GPS itself. Real world day to day impact on most Americans and first world countries. Without the math of relativity and the method to calculate the effect of the speed of the GPS satellite every GPS would be off my over 1/2 a mile per day.

Einstein was a genius, but he never dreamed of a GPS system. The new math and algorithms and methods of making the photo of a black hole will be applied to other systems. Who knows, but it could help in many medical fields in ways that saves real lives, even yours.

Like every scientific endeavor it is added to, incorporated into other systems and soon is the standard way to do things, or disproved and discarded.

Science was the core and foundation of ALL medicine. Only by researching one thing, and discovering other things do we as humans advance. We all want medical science to advance and get more effective.

[Won]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47891902

I really like this photo:

Left: MIT computer scientist Katie Bouman w/stacks of hard drives of black hole image data.

Right: MIT computer scientist Margaret Hamilton w/the code she wrote that helped put a man on the moon.

(image credit @floragraham)#EHTblackhole #BlackHoleDay #BlackHole pic.twitter.com/Iv5PIc8IYd

— MIT CSAIL (@MIT_CSAIL) April 10, 2019

[javadog]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Yes. The shadow is 2.5 times larger than the event horizon, which could be considered the true "edge" of the black hole.

Hmmm, I would have thought the ratio to be much larger than that.

Thanks for clearing up the use of the word shadow. I guess the usage was similar to radar shadow, rain shadow, etc.... not what we normally think of when we hear shadow. I was first thinking more along the lines of silhouette, than shadow....

Astronomy and some branches of physics often make my head hurt.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by javadog

Hmmm, I would have thought the ratio to be much larger than that.

Thanks for clearing up the use of the word shadow. I guess the usage was similar to radar shadow, rain shadow, etc.... not what we normally think of when we hear shadow. I was first thinking more along the lines of silhouette, than shadow....

Astronomy and some branches of physics often make my head hurt.

That ratio of 2.5 (or close to that, I don't think it's exactly 2.5) actually came right out of relativity, it's part of the equations for a spinning magnetic black hole. One of the things they wanted to verify was that the shadow actually was that size. If it turned out to be (let's say) 10 times the size, or 1.2 times the size, then we would know that something was integrally wrong with general relativity.

It was the right size, and was part of the verification of the theory.

As an aside, we know the true size of the event horizon even though it's hidden because the same rules of relativity define the event horizon based on a few very basic facts (mass, spin, charge) of the black hole, all of which can be calculated separately and accurately.