News Look at this black hole... look at it.

[Hayabusa Rider]

First actual image, not "artist rendering"

Info here.

 

[dank69]

Looks like Uranus after too much fire sauce.

 

[soundforbjt]

Naw, it's an x-ray of Trump's brain.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Coincidence? I think not...

 

[Indus]

Naw, it's an x-ray of Trump's brain.

Looks orange. Check.
Sucks everyone in if they get too close. Check.
Devours you. Check.
Makes you look like an idiot afterwards. Check.

 

[nOOky]

Meh, the ones in the movies look better.

 

[trenchfoot]

Singularity shmingulairty, I need a really really close up view to be awed by it.

edit - Really though, considering how far away that object is, pretty impressed by the tech that captured it.

 

[BoomerD]

Looks like they need to hit that "zoom and enhance" button the cop shows on TV always have....

 

[Paratus]

A good video on what the picture means (released yesterday before the announcement)

A few fun facts about this supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy:

• It’s 55 million ligh years away
• The mass of the black hole is 6.5 billion times that of our sun
• The black hole event horizon is roughly the size of our entire solar system.
• They generated enough data that instead of using the internet to transfer it they had to ship half a ton of hard drives instead. (Great bandwidth but lousy latency)

 

[realibrad]

A good video on what the picture means (released yesterday before the announcement)

A few fun facts about this supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy:

• It’s 55 million ligh years away
• The mass of the black hole is 6.5 billion times that of our sun
• The black hole event horizon is roughly the size of our entire solar system.
• They generated enough data that instead of using the internet to transfer it they had to ship half a ton of hard drives instead. (Great bandwidth but lousy latency)

Question. Typically they are looking at light not in the visible spectrum. They convert different wavelengths into colors we see. Was this black hole observed in the human visible spectrum?

 

[Paratus]

Question. Typically they are looking at light not in the visible spectrum. They convert different wavelengths into colors we see. Was this black hole observed in the human visible spectrum?

Millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths so radio waves.

 

[dainthomas]

First actual image, not "artist rendering"

Info here.

Sauron has returned.

 

[woolfe9998]

It's seriously damn cool that they were able to do that, and how they did it. Not sure what scientific value it has since, according to the press conference I saw, we were already 99.9% certain of the existence of black holes. They say it brings us to 100% so that's something I guess.

Admittedly it's cool to actually see it though.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It's seriously damn cool that they were able to do that, and how they did it. Not sure what scientific value it has since, according to the press conference I saw, we were already 99.9% certain of the existence of black holes. They say it brings us to 100% so that's something I guess.

Admittedly it's cool to actually see it though.

A lot of science is bringing 99.9's up to 100's, with the occasional 'huh, that's funny' that nowadays creates new branches of science.

 

[Commodus]

It's seriously damn cool that they were able to do that, and how they did it. Not sure what scientific value it has since, according to the press conference I saw, we were already 99.9% certain of the existence of black holes. They say it brings us to 100% so that's something I guess.

Admittedly it's cool to actually see it though.

It helped them verify the mass of the black hole, but I'd say the main thing is to actually have confirmation that yes, black holes look the way scientists expected. We can shift the focus from theorizing to actually observing black holes. I don't know how realistic it is, but it'd be great to see the Milky Way's black hole... especially since it's much closer to home.

 

[hal2kilo]

Can't remember what I did 2 days ago but I remember this type of crap.
Dana Carvy doing George Michaels (SNL). Replace black hole with butt.

 

[woolfe9998]

It helped them verify the mass of the black hole, but I'd say the main thing is to actually have confirmation that yes, black holes look the way scientists expected. We can shift the focus from theorizing to actually observing black holes. I don't know how realistic it is, but it'd be great to see the Milky Way's black hole... especially since it's much closer to home.

I wonder why if we can photograph a black hole in M87, we haven't done it for ours. I recall there's a scientific reason but I can't remember what it is.

Clarification: there may be up to about 10,000 black holes at or near the center of the Milky Way. I assume we're discussing the one supermassive one supposedly dead center.

 

[zzyzxroad]

Furmark 2.0

 

[Pipeline 1010]

I wonder why if we can photograph a black hole in M87, we haven't done it for ours. I recall there's a scientific reason but I can't remember what it is.

Clarification: there may be up to about 10,000 black holes at or near the center of the Milky Way. I assume we're discussing the one supermassive one supposedly dead center.

Not sure if this is 100% accurate, but I read something today about how we are working on that already but it is harder because we observe it as moving far faster than the one further away since we are far closer. Kind of like how when you are driving, close-by trees whip by but that far off mountain seems to follow along with you. I guess that makes the image processing more difficult.

 

[Pipeline 1010]

Naw, it's an x-ray of Trump's brain.

It only took 3 posts for you spazzes to turn this thread into "Trump sucks". I'm pretty disappointed that you beat me to it. The first thing I thought was orange hair wrapped around a dark void of infinite nothingness.

 

[5to1baby1in5]

Time to crank some Rush.
Cygnus-X1

 

[Paratus]

Courtesy of XKCD:

The black area isn’t all the event horizon. Much of it is empty space where there’s no stable orbit so nothing light emitting can remain there long. The even horizon is probably out around the Pluto mark.

 

[Homerboy]

Keep in mind it's 55 million light years away. So that picture is 55 million years old*. We're just seeing it NOW. This was during the Eocene Epoch on earth. Mammals were just starting to kick ass and things were getting back up to speed. Man wasn't even a thought.


*minus 2 years because, IIRC this picture was actually produced in 2017?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Looks like they need to hit that "zoom and enhance" button the cop shows on TV always have....

and they all stole it from Blade Runner, which is really accurate ignoring the small CRT and jerky zoom.

 

[woolfe9998]

Not sure if this is 100% accurate, but I read something today about how we are working on that already but it is harder because we observe it as moving far faster than the one further away since we are far closer. Kind of like how when you are driving, close-by trees whip by but that far off mountain seems to follow along with you. I guess that makes the image processing more difficult.

Called motion parallax. I don't fully understand why that makes it so much harder, but this sounds like a plausible explanation.