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The Black Hole Image Data Was Spread Across 5 Petabytes Stored On About Half a Ton of Hard Drives (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On Wednesday, an international team of scientists published the first image of a black hole ever. It looked like a SpaghettiO, and yet the image was an incredible scientific achievement that gave humanity a glimpse of one of the universe's most destructive forces and confirmed long-held theories -- namely, that black holes exist. Storing the raw data for the image was a feat itself -- tiny portions of data spread across five petabytes stored on multiple hard drives, the equivalent of 5,000 years worth of MP3s. Katie Bouman, a computer scientist and assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, led the development of the algorithm that imaged the black hole. An image of her posing with some of the data drives went viral as observers praised her success.
The massive amounts of data were essential to creating the image of the black hole. Bouman and other scientists coordinated radio telescopes all over the Earth, each pointed at the black hole and gathering data at different times. The data scientists then pieced this information together and used an algorithm to fill in the blanks and generate a likely image of the black hole. The five petabytes of data took up such a massive amount of digital and physical space it couldn't be sent over the internet. Instead, the hard drives were flown to processing centers in Germany and Boston where the data was assembled. On Reddit's /r/datahoarder subreddit, a community dedicated to spreading the passion of hoarding vast amounts of data, the drives were bigger news than the scientific achievement itself.
The massive amounts of data were essential to creating the image of the black hole. Bouman and other scientists coordinated radio telescopes all over the Earth, each pointed at the black hole and gathering data at different times. The data scientists then pieced this information together and used an algorithm to fill in the blanks and generate a likely image of the black hole. The five petabytes of data took up such a massive amount of digital and physical space it couldn't be sent over the internet. Instead, the hard drives were flown to processing centers in Germany and Boston where the data was assembled. On Reddit's /r/datahoarder subreddit, a community dedicated to spreading the passion of hoarding vast amounts of data, the drives were bigger news than the scientific achievement itself.
Trying to look at star is also impossible because its surface masks everything underneath. And trying to look at a cup of coffee is also impossible because you're not really looking at the cup itself, just at the light which has reflected on it.
I can turn it upside down too: a black hole can be observed even better than a star because it doesn't have its own light so you can see the impact it has on its surroundings without interference from the central light source.
It's too much sophistry for me. You see a black hole because what it does with the things around it, and because you need a very busy place to create a big black hole you are going to see a lot of activity around it too once it's there.
All science is provisional, but some science is less provisional. Every test we've flung at general relativity over the last century has confirmed it. While it's not complete (Quantum Mechanics is not accounted for), it is as much settled science as one can get. Your problem is ignorance of how science works, coupled with pedantry, so that somehow you imagine you can usefully critique theories which you clearly know absolutely nothing about. You're arrogant and ignorant, but obviously not stupid, so instead of constructing versions of science that don't exist to cover up your lack of knowledge, just pick up some god-damned literature on the subject and fill the void that you have mistaken for intellectual curiosity.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're not stupid, but you are ignorant. When you know enough to even ask sensible questions, and know enough to understand what is meant by "provisional" in science then maybe you can have a conversation. But you're pedantry and ignorance is just too much of an obstacle, and your thin skin just makes it all the worse.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well it was a team. I am sure it had women and men.
From How Katie Bouman Accidentally Became the Face of the Black Hole Project
As Dr. Bouman herself was quick to point out, she was by no means solely responsible for the discovery, which was a result of a worldwide collaboration among scientists who worked together to create the image from a network of radio antennas.
The project, led by Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was the work of more than 200 researchers. About 40 of them were women, according to Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative.
Without knowing more about everyone on the team and who did what, etc... the rest of your speculations and commentary about "political science" in your post are pointless and/or counter-productive.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .