Thread: Black hole image released by Event Horizon

Originally Posted by NavyDiver

Firstly the amazing lady

42nAyF6.jpg

Event horizon-


Black hole image released by Event Horizon Telescope team in world first - Science News - ABC News

Wow! Just, wow!

I call fake, just like the moon landings, only joking, that is a great scientific achievement and just shows what a genius Einstein was, to have predicted this all those years ago.

I don't think anyone can claim to be singlehandedly responsible - the data used, collected from telescopes in N and S America, Hawaii, Antarctica, Greenland and Spain was measured in petabytes, and needed half a tonne of portable hard drives. It was a truly mammoth undertaking.

And, as suggested, the image supports General Relativity, published a century ago. Not the only data to support this, but even slight errors in the theory are likely to give a very different picture.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I don't think anyone can claim to be singlehandedly responsible - the data used, collected from telescopes in N and S America, Hawaii, Antarctica, Greenland and Spain was measured in petabytes, and needed half a tonne of portable hard drives. It was a truly mammoth undertaking.

And, as suggested, the image supports General Relativity, published a century ago. Not the only data to support this, but even slight errors in the theory are likely to give a very different picture.

There's been an awful backlash against her, internet trolls claiming falsely she's only responsible for a few lines of code, etc.
Her project leader has come out in support saying it was a team effort, and she contributed a lot.
I think it's great promotion for women in science, It's just a shame there's so much misogyny in the world.
So many blokes are just terrified of women.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I don't think anyone can claim to be single handedly responsible - the data used, collected from telescopes in N and S America, Hawaii, Antarctica, Greenland and Spain was measured in petabytes, and needed half a tonne of portable hard drives. It was a truly mammoth undertaking.

And, as suggested, the image supports General Relativity, published a century ago. Not the only data to support this, but even slight errors in the theory are likely to give a very different picture.

I could not agree more.
"single handedly responsible" The algorithms to splice the images from multiple sites at differing places and differing positions as the earth moves around the sun and differing positions as the earth and our solar system moves in the universe relative the black hole in another moving solar system - my mind boggles at the mathematical geniuses of all the people who worked to solve and resolve the billions of calculations needed. They are all superstars

"General Relativity, published a century ago" by Albert Einstein's was pure genius. Took the world 103 years to be able to prove it correct.

The Picture is more than impressive. What it proved is even more. Einstein quote albert-einstein-quotes-any-fool-can-know-the-point-is-to-understand-wisdom-quotes.jpg

You never "prove a scientific theory correct". A scientific theory is accepted as long as all its predicted results agree with observations. How well accepted it is, depends on how many predictions are tested. General Relativity mostly gives results the same within experimental error as does Newtonian Mechanics. The first experimental confirmation was as early as about 1921, when GR gave a better prediction of the observation of Mercury than did Newton.

But what is important about this experiment is that black holes are probably the most outlandish phenomenon that GR has predicted, and The image seen here is completely unlike what would be predicted by any other theory. We are not looking at small differences in telescope measurements like the Mercury observations (and many other observations since), but a complte image whose very character depends on GR.