First ever black hole image released

[Mr.United_Nations]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/

[Seti42]

I'm glad that image is all over the internet today. Amazing and fascinating. Despite so many sociopolitical forces working to divide us, sometimes we humans pull together on a (literally) global scale to get some science done, and blow our own minds.

Also, does anyone else experience the optical illusion of it contracting? Or is that just me?

Edited April 10, 2019 by Seti42

[freetoroam]

1 hour ago, XenoFish said:

And inside that black hole is another universe. A universe in which another group of humans are looking at an almost exact copy of that black hole, which also has a universe in it....

If you look a bit deeper, you can see 100pound hailstones.

[XenoFish]

1 minute ago, freetoroam said:

If you look a bit deeper, you can see 100pound hailstones.

You're right...

[Aquila King]

I'm not trying to downplay it's authenticity here, but let's face it - if a ghost hunter were to catch the same smudge on camera we'd all be calling BS. 

[bison]

That new black hole image has quite a kink in it, near the bottom and a little to the left. Most of the brightness is on the bottom right, with far less on the left, on the other side of the kink. The simulated images of what should be expected don't have that. They just show an even crescent. I wonder what this means, if anything. This was briefly mentioned at the hour-long press conference. The astronomers seemed interested in this point, but didn't go into any detail about it. 

[Hankenhunter]

Not a physicist by any means, so I tentatively posit this question. Is is possible that what goes in a black hole gets changed and exits as dark matter and energy?

[Aquila King]

1 hour ago, Hankenhunter said:

Not a physicist by any means, so I tentatively posit this question. Is is possible that what goes in a black hole gets changed and exits as dark matter and energy?

I'm not a physicist by any means, so I could be completely speaking out my ass here - but I'm actually skeptical that there even is dark matter and energy.

Probably gonna get a lot of heat for that, but whatever. I'm totally agnostic about it cause I openly admit I don't know dick about science, so don't think I'm akin to a flat earther or whatever. 

From what I gather though, it appears to only really have been discovered due to their math not adding up when accounting for gravity. So perhaps if gravity alone can't mathematically account for it, could it simply be that our current theory of relativity is just wrong?

Although to actually admit that we'd have to essentially dethrone Einstein as the greatest mind of the past century, so it's just easier to say there's invisible s**t out there you can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. 

Anyway, thats my random speculative conspiracy theory of the day... 

Edited April 11, 2019 by Aquila King

[toast]

12 hours ago, Aquila King said:

Thanks for sharing. This image is of high scientific value as it proves that the event horizon isnt a perfect spherical homogeneous surface. We can see peaks and dents, which are caused by different levels of gravity force inside the object.

[Susanc241]

7 hours ago, bison said:

That new black hole image has quite a kink in it, near the bottom and a little to the left. Most of the brightness is on the bottom right, with far less on the left, on the other side of the kink. The simulated images of what should be expected don't have that. They just show an even crescent. I wonder what this means, if anything. This was briefly mentioned at the hour-long press conference. The astronomers seemed interested in this point, but didn't go into any detail about it. 

As, once again, a totally lay person in terms of science and astronomy, could that variance in glow be to do with the angle the black hole is pictured from? That is, it is not a 'full frontal' angle.  Are they like donuts in the sense that you can look through the hole (into the black hole) and gas cloud, radiation or whatever is fluorescing, halos around it.  In other words, does it have a front and back?  Or does a black hole have the gas clouds, radiation all around like a sphere and the image shown is sort of showing a slice through it like chopping a hard boiled egg in half.  Sorry about the simplistic language but can’t think how better to explain what I mean.

[BrokenPorshane]

https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/black-hole-photo-just-isnt-very-good.html  

 

The excitment some feel is overwhelming.

[L.A.T.1961]

14 hours ago, bison said:

That new black hole image has quite a kink in it, near the bottom and a little to the left. Most of the brightness is on the bottom right, with far less on the left, on the other side of the kink. The simulated images of what should be expected don't have that. They just show an even crescent. I wonder what this means, if anything. This was briefly mentioned at the hour-long press conference. The astronomers seemed interested in this point, but didn't go into any detail about it. 

My thought on this is it could be down to gravitational lensing. Something bright and behind the black hole might be adding to the image? 

[Rlyeh]

49 minutes ago, BrokenPorshane said:

https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/black-hole-photo-just-isnt-very-good.html  

 

The excitment some feel is overwhelming.

Hey lets modify and "enhance" the picture because I don't like it.  Article written by a complete moron.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Rlyeh

[Dark_Grey]

15 hours ago, Aquila King said:

I'm not trying to downplay it's authenticity here, but let's face it - if a ghost hunter were to catch the same smudge on camera we'd all be calling BS. 

Like most images from NASA, it's probably a composite of images captured by multiple telescopes, pieced together in Photoshop with some "artistic flair" added in to make it more exciting for the public. I imagine the raw pictures are barely recognizable smudges lol

[bison]

9 hours ago, Susanc241 said:

As, once again, a totally lay person in terms of science and astronomy, could that variance in glow be to do with the angle the black hole is pictured from? That is, it is not a 'full frontal' angle.  Are they like donuts in the sense that you can look through the hole (into the black hole) and gas cloud, radiation or whatever is fluorescing, halos around it.  In other words, does it have a front and back?  Or does a black hole have the gas clouds, radiation all around like a sphere and the image shown is sort of showing a slice through it like chopping a hard boiled egg in half.  Sorry about the simplistic language but can’t think how better to explain what I mean.

There are four separate images of the black hole, for dates between April 5th and 11th, 2017. Looking over these carefully since my last post, it appears that the brightest part of the crescent moves counter-clockwise in that time span, from the lower left to the lower right. The deficiency of light in one part of the rough crescent shape, which I called a 'kink', appears to develop over time.  

All of this seems to rule out causes having to do with our point-of-view. Due to gravitational lensing by the black hole, we are seeing the entire toroidal (doughnut) shape of the debris cloud from 360 degrees around the black hole.

A bit difficult to visualize, but that's how they are explaining the images.  In listening to the press conference, I sensed that the astronomers were puzzled about the reason for this asymmetry, and had no ready answers for it.   

[Aquila King]

[Sir Smoke aLot]

Was watching voice of America in Bosnian (after which i watch Sahar Iran in Bosnian) which i do almost every day. Imagine my surprise when i hear them talking about this I checked, and it was legit information, just wow man this is such interesting time to be living in, from Cern over Ligo up to this... And what wait's us in next years.

I wish everyone great health and long life, to see as much as possible and to enjoy it, be happy for it. I know i am happy and entertained.

[Susanc241]

13 hours ago, bison said:

There are four separate images of the black hole, for dates between April 5th and 11th, 2017. Looking over these carefully since my last post, it appears that the brightest part of the crescent moves counter-clockwise in that time span, from the lower left to the lower right. The deficiency of light in one part of the rough crescent shape, which I called a 'kink', appears to develop over time.  

All of this seems to rule out causes having to do with our point-of-view. Due to gravitational lensing by the black hole, we are seeing the entire toroidal (doughnut) shape of the debris cloud from 360 degrees around the black hole.

A bit difficult to visualize, but that's how they are explaining the images.  In listening to the press conference, I sensed that the astronomers were puzzled about the reason for this asymmetry, and had no ready answers for it.   

Thanks for that, and Aquila Kings images.  Makes more sense to me now and I hadn’t picked up on it was made from a series of images.  Amazing, anyway.

[Still Waters]

Related:

Quote

The woman behind the first black hole image

A 29-year-old computer scientist has earned plaudits worldwide for helping develop the algorithm that created the first-ever image of a black hole.

Katie Bouman led development of a computer program that made the breakthrough image possible.

The remarkable photo, showing a halo of dust and gas 500 million trillion km from Earth, was released on Wednesday.

For Dr Bouman, its creation was the realisation of an endeavour previously thought impossible.

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

 

[L.A.T.1961]

37 minutes ago, Still Waters said:

Related:

 

I have to say I am a bit worried about the algorithm, I watch the UK bbc4 program on this last night and how they were adjusting the algorithms on test data, they had more than one algorithm to try, and they appeared to asses the performance of the tweaked output based on how close the result was to their idea of what it should look like.  

If this is the case then it is not ideal science practice.  

[cyclopes500]

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/dante_alighieri/poems/39.html

Inferno (English) by Dante Alighieri

 

[Nnicolette]

On 4/11/2019 at 1:19 PM, Aquila King said:

 

[docyabut2]

 To make it simple we just recently discovered we have a black hole in our galaxy:) and the out line has a sucken in, so could be billions of years our planet can be sucked in  he thinks the universe is connected to another universe, but I`d like to think it was heaven

[docyabut2]

To me I`ve read many people that have a out of body experiences of dying, claim they see of going through a black hole, or being sucked through a  black hole unafraid but back. Of course science says it just a eye vision. but  I would love to think it was a into another universe of heaven.")

[Rlyeh]

9 hours ago, docyabut2 said:

To me I`ve read many people that have a out of body experiences of dying, claim they see of going through a black hole, or being sucked through a  black hole unafraid but back. Of course science says it just a eye vision. but  I would love to think it was a into another universe of heaven.")

I thought it was a tunnel of light not a black hole?