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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.
This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.
The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. The EHT is the result of years of international collaboration, and offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe predicted by Einstein's general relativity during the centennial year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory.
[...] This research was presented in a series of six papers published today in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, along with a Focus Issue:
- Paper I: The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
- Paper II: Array and Instrumentation
- Paper III: Data processing and Calibration
- Paper IV: Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole
- Paper V: Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring
- Paper VI: The Shadow and Mass of the Central Black Hole
Press release images in higher resolution (4000x2330 pixels) can be found here in PNG (16-bit), and JPG (8-bit) format. The highest-quality image (7416x4320 pixels, TIF, 16-bit, 180 Mb) can be obtained from repositories of our partners, NSF and ESO. A summary of latest press and media resources can be found on this page.
Also at Ars Technica.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 11 2019, @09:52AM (6 children)
The difference between a "roadsign peppered with holes" and "the photo of the event horizon of a blackhole" is that:
- for the first you have plenty of direct observations and can organize experiments to validate your model; *while*
- for the second you don't have any other observations, not even a way to confirm your result by other means and there's no way you can organize an experiment
Crapload of what images? Of the black hole?
Threw away what? Models/algos or images?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 11 2019, @10:36AM (5 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 11 2019, @11:30AM (4 children)
And did you understand it? Enough to explain it in your own words?
---
'cause I'm hearing (09:50) "If all the image types produce a very similar looking image, we become more confident that the images we are using are not biasing the picture" - and the screen shows that all 3 types of images (including "everyday" type), after passing through the algorithm, result in the same picture of a black hole.
Which, heck of a coincidence, 2 years later, resembles the picture reconstituted from collected data.
Now, I'm not saying that "experimental data fitting" (non-linear regression by least squares, chi-square minimisation, whaevs) is invalid as a technique.
But that technique does not validate a model or and algorithm. It just says: "assuming the model is valid and the output depends so-and-so of this set of parameters, then this set of experimental data can be explained best by this set of values for parameters". However, there can be heaps of models that would explain the same experimental data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 11 2019, @03:05PM (3 children)
Depending on the exact model used for the reconstruction there are very slight differences, but they all show the same general form - an asymmetric donut. The only reasonable conclusion is that they detected something that looks donutty.
A mathematical model dating back to the 60s predicts exactly such a form from a high-rotational-momentum black hole. Why do you not think this image supports that model? The reconstructions produce donuts even if you don't tell them to expect a donut. As I said elsewhere - if you ask the reconstruction to generate a binary pair, it will find you a donut.
I genuinely can't understand what it is that you can't understand, or at least why you can't understand it, sorry. Rewatch the vid.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 11 2019, @10:01PM (2 children)
That TeD talk youtube? Is "Published on Dec 7, 2016"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 11 2019, @10:43PM (1 child)
Beleive it or not, they indeed did know what processing they would do with the data before capturing petabytes of it on thousands of hard disks. It's almost as if they are intelligent scientists who can do things like predict and plan and, shock horror - think!
You, however, have quite frankly started to become really tedious and annoying with ever more dumb questions that have obvious or already-supplied answers.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 11 2019, @10:49PM
Ok, will leave it here, then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford