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How Astronomers Will Take the "Image of the Century": a Black Hole
An anonymous reader writes with news that scientists may be close to getting the first image of a black hole. "Researchers studying the universe are ramping up to take the image of the century — the first ever image of a supermassive black hole. While the evidence for the existence of black holes is compelling, Scientists will continue to argue the contrary until physical, observational evidence is provided. Now, a dedicated team of astrophysicists armed with a global fleet of powerful telescopes is out to change that. If they succeed, they will snap the first ever picture of the monstrously massive black hole thought to live at the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. This ambitious project, called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), is incredibly tricky, but recent advances in their research are encouraging the team to push forward, now. The reason EHT needs to be so complex is because black holes, by nature, do not emit light and are, therefore, invisible. In fact, black holes survive by gobbling up light and any other matter — nearby dust, gas, and stars — that fall into their powerful clutches. The EHT team is going to zoom in on a miniscule spot on the sky toward the center of the Milky Way where they believe to be the event horizon of a supermassive black hole weighing in at 4 million times more massive than our sun. We can still see the material, however, right before it falls into eternal darkness. The EHT team is going to try and glimpse this ring of radiation that outlines the event horizon. Experts call this outline the "shadow" of a black hole, and it's this shadow that the EHT team is ultimately after to prove the existence of black holes."
Well, the thing about a Black Hole, its main distinguishing feature, is it's black. And the thing about space, your basic space colour is black. So how are you supposed to see them?
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
"And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."
I can not help but wonder at the question: "Will the produced image in any way resemble the black hole depiction in the 'Interstellar' movie ?"
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I didn't realize that there was still skepticism about the existence of super-massive black holes. If nothing else, we've detected about 200000 quasars - just about the brightest objects in the known universe - each indicating the presence (and proximity) of a supermassive blackhole.
I thought the general consensus was that there was a supermassive black hole at the centre of every galaxy although only some of these were active, thus showing up as quasars.
Don't know about this image of the century hyperbole. Quasars are stunning enough and have been seen and studied for what fifty years now.
Take the picture, then include the caption of 10+ pages of assumptions made when interpreting as a black hole. Without that the picture will be just PR
Actually, no, it is not black. In order to have a color, light must reflect off of the object. In a black hole, light does not escape it and therefor it has no color.
In fact, you cannot see a black hole at all. You would only know it's there because of the objects orbiting the event horizon.
> The EHT team is going to zoom in on a miniscule spot on the sky
"Minuscule" is the original spelling, going back to the early 18th century. It comes from the Latin minusculus.
> the EHT team is ultimately after to prove the existence of black holes."
It's already been proven. There is a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and it's been named "Sagitarius A"
Using infrared telesopes, you can "see" stars orbiting the black hole at the center of the galaxy. Orbits of about 28 stars have been observed and using math, the mass of the stars and the required mass of the black hole has been calculated. Only a black hole can account for the kinds of orbits you see those stars doing.
It is a sight to behold and at first I could not believe it. Watching the stars at the frickin center of the galaxy orbit a black hole is a stunning sight once you truly grok what you are seeing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Realize that this video is not an artist's intepretation, but is actual imagery of stars orbiting something of immense mass, something which can only be a black hole.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Go to goat.cx to see it ;)
Things get very weird around supermassive black holes. Here's a documentary I found.
They want to take an image of my evil ex?
I went there and all I saw a black page...
The surface of the collapsing star takes an infinite time to cross the event horizon form the point of view of an outside observer? No star which has collapsed has yet turned into a black hole, and no one will at a finite age of the outside universe. The only way to prove the existence of a black hole is to fall through an event horizon. Of course, then you only prove it for yourself, and cannot tell anyone else.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Earth is orbiting the BH in the galactic plane, so wouldn't the ring of fire be seen edge on from our perspective?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
SystemD
Here, I got your work cut out for you:
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=811&q=black+hole&oq=black+hole&gs_l=img.3..0l10.1410.3802.0.4788.10.9.0.1.1.0.267.1084.0j2j3.5.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.58.img..4.6.1087.Tj8XnhV53ww
Doesn't it exist after all?
Just go to Calcutta and check the tourist attraction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_of_Calcutta
But a few months ago Slashdot told me that black holes don't exist!
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/09/24/1530249/physicist-claims-black-holes-mathematically-dont-exist
evidence for the existence of black holes is compelling, Scientists will continue to argue the contrary
First, "Scientists" isn't a proper noun. No need for capitalization. Second, scientists will be arguing the contrary of what? That the evidence is compelling? No... That black holes exist? No... If the evidence is compelling, they're arguing that they likely exist--something which is definitely not the contrary of existence.
For fucks sake, I can figure out what it's supposed to say, but could you bear to do just a wee bit of editing around here? As is, the fucking summary reads like it's written by a creationist implying that scientists as a whole think black holes don't exist.
The surface will get very close to the apparent horizon very quickly though, and after that it will be so redshifted that it looks just like one of the idealized black hole solutions, and will be indistinguishable from one to any observer. It will be just as black, just as compact and just attractive, and still deserves to be called a black hole. When people say "black hole" they don't necessarily mean "Schwartzchild black hole" or "Kerr black hole".
Stars at the outer edge of the galaxy take the same amount of time to rotate around the galaxy as the inner stars. How can you calculate the mass of the center in this case? If you pick a closer star you will end up with a smaller mass than if you pick an outer star using the same equations.
Not sure that is proof at all, and from what I remember they recently came up with some new theory that said black holes can't exist (not that this new theory is any better). So I'm not sure there is proof they exist yet, but there is evidence they do.
Ads? What are you about?
If you can see ads on the Internet, you're doing it wrong.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What use is a link to a science article on Business Insider? Here is the EHT project home page It seems the goals of the project are a lot more interesting than simply proving black holes exist.
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Light != "other matter"
ÃoeThe absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes Ã" in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity.Ã ÃoeThere is no escape from a black hole in classical theory. [But quantum theory] enables energy and information to escape from a black hole," Hawking told Nature. His revised theory allows matter and energy to be held for a period of time before being released back into space.
Hawking's revised theory is an attempt to solve what is known as the black-hole firewall paradox, which has been vexing physicists for almost two years, after it In a thought experiment discovered by theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski of the Kavli Institute and his colleagues, who asked what would happen to an astronaut unlucky enough to fall into a black hole.
"The EHT team is going to try and glimpse this ring of radiation that outlines the event horizon."
When I see the phrase "try and", I feel like I do when I see the phrase "I could care less", i.e. I want to punch the writer in the face.
is to leave the lens cap on when you take the picture.
If you have any actual questions about how it's done. I might be able to shed some light on what this thing is. It involves masers and 4K fridges and some rather high IF frequencies.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
What about this story makes you think Hawking radiation doesn't exist? We can't be completely sure it exists because we don't have any observations of it, but there are compelling theoretical reasons to believe it should exist. But for non-tiny black holes, it is extremely faint, so faint that we have no hope of observing it. For example, the supermassive black hole in the center of the milky way would be expected to radiate 3.6e-48 W. That's 1 with 50 zeros behind it times weaker than a light bulb!
In the subject makes it difficult to parse.
Isn't it more accurate to say he'll be taking an image of "Not the Black Hole"?
What happens when negative space meets infinite density?
Would you call this art zero-point perspective?
Would the work be considered avant à l'horizon?
Would we be confused if the portrait did not display super-massive gravitas? /Deep thoughts.
When will observations start? How long will they last? When can we expect to see results on arXiv? How well will the fourier plane be covered (will you still need telescopes in the middle of nowhere to join/be built)? What will the spatial and temporal resolution be? Are there any important astrophysical foregrounds that could mess things up (blurring by plasma sheaths is something I think I've heard mentioned)? How are they handled? Did you know from the beginning that ALMA would join? Can you expect any other big boosts? How wide a frequency range do you have? How large an area in the neighborhood of the black holes you target will you be able to see? Could you expect to discover any nearby stellar black holes or neutron stars (I think one would expect a population of these in the general area)?
Supermassive Black Hole At The Centre Of The Galaxy May Be A Wormhole In Disguise, Say Astronomers https://medium.com/the-physics...
In 1914, nobody could predict the pictures from the moon.
Except for that guy that did and made a film about it. His images aren't really that similar to the lunar terrain that we considered safe to land on, but 1914 wasn't as backwards as you seem to think. That said, your general point stands: predicting the future is hard. Likely whether or not we have more incredible images in the future, we'll say they're more incredible anyway. Especially if funding levels were commensurate with headlines.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
How can anyone argue that black holes don't exist? I mean we've tracked stars at the center of our galaxy orbiting something at extreme speeds. We've never seen electrons, but we've all but confirmed their existence by how they interact with our environment.
We always assumed the Big Band was spherical and Perfectly round.. until recently
And now it looks like the Cosmic Background Radiation has literally the Finger prints of God.. or the Imprint of the features of a previous Universe on it.
Its like discovering Cave Paintings on the largest Canvas in the Universe.. the Sky itself.
If the Universe is Cyclical and Does eventually Collpase in on itself like a Black Hole.. why assumke it would be all at once and Perfectly Spherical?
Only at the Subatomic level (and perhaps its only our distance in scale) do things appears "Perfectly" geometric.
Perhaps different parts of the Comos have "Features" or like Asphalt Roads.. "potholes" of localized Collpase.. like an undulating and rolling Dune across all Space Time
See, the thing about grit is, it's black, and the thing about scanner-scopes...
I created the Event Horizon to reach the stars, but she's gone much, much farther than that. She tore a hole in our universe, a gateway to another dimension. A dimension of pure chaos. Pure... evil. When she crossed over, she was just a telescope. But when she came back... she was alive! Look at her, Miller. Isn't she beautiful?
But what's important is that no-one wears a sexist shirt while doing this.