Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
⇛Marnetmar⇛

First ever image of a black hole is released

Recommended Posts

That structure very tiny in the sky.  Take the whole sky from horizon to horizon and divide it into 180 degrees.  Take one of those degrees and divide it into 60 minutes of arc.  Take one of those minutes and divide it into 60 seconds of arc. Now, take one of those seconds and divide it by 100, and by 100 again, and then 100 again.  The image is about 40 of those tiny units.  The dark circle in the middle, the black hole's even horizon, is about the size of our solar system, but millions of light years away in the core of another galaxy.  Also, this was taken not with light, but with radio waves.  To get a picture with this resolution, they needed a telescope the size of the Earth, so they made a virtual telescope that size by combining data from several telescopes all over the world, using a technique called Interferometry.

Edited by Empyre : Edited by Empyre to remove quote of deleted post.

Share this post


Link to post

Somebody told you it was a conspiracy, and you believed it.  The real conspiracy is the conspiracy theorists trying to get you to doubt the truth, despite all the evidence.

Edited by Empyre : No longer relevant since it was a reply to a now-deleted post.

Share this post


Link to post
10 minutes ago, mistersector said:

No, they didn't. They released a blurred image and you believed the fake back story.

 

Congratulations, you have just singlehandedly sent a potentially enlightening and highly enjoyable discussion down the road of being locked within the next 48 hours.

Share this post


Link to post

I wish I could have seen everything that went down last night which resulted in my Flat-Earther thread getting locked. Anyways, science is awesome. 

Share this post


Link to post

Why do they call it a black hole when it’s clearly orange????? Check mate atheist scum!!!

Share this post


Link to post

It's kinda cool, as long as it's not coming to eat our solar system.
I wonder what we're going to do now that a black hole has been found and if we'll find something we didn't know about with those things since any knowledge about the things is pretty much theoretical.

Share this post


Link to post
2 minutes ago, wolfmcbeard said:

It's kinda cool, as long as it's not coming to eat our solar system.

 

If I remember correctly, they've found that while supermassive black holes voraciously devour everything that gets too close, as more  and more stuff (that being the highly technical term used by astrophysicists) falls into the event horizon, it creates essentially a "wind" (for lack of a better word) that serves to effectively push against what is being drawn toward the black hole. This pushing back actually serves to reduce the amount of the matter falling into the black hole and it falls silent (i.e., stops "eating"). Eventually, the "wind" decreases enough that matter once again gets sucked in and the cycle begins anew. It's been awhile, but that is what is in my head.

 

So, even though your tongue was probably firmly in your cheek, don't worry, it's not going to make the trip over to the Milky Way and start devouring us.

 

 

7 minutes ago, wolfmcbeard said:

I wonder what we're going to do now that a black hole has been found and if we'll find something we didn't know about with those things since any knowledge about the things is pretty much theoretical.

 

I wouldn't day this is the first black hole that has been found. There has been evidence, albeit indirect evidence of black holes for years. That being said, this is perhaps the first "picture" of a black hole.

 

Of course, black holes are the places where physics gets wonky (another highly technical term, of course), so the prospect of new knowledge is always interesting.

 

 

3 hours ago, Marn said:

Congratulations, you have just singlehandedly sent a potentially enlightening and highly enjoyable discussion down the road of being locked within the next 48 hours.

 

It appears I missed a lot, and many of the posts (or at least 1 post) has been deleted. I don't know whether to be sad that I missed the fun or happy that I missed it, because it would've just left me shaking my head.

Share this post


Link to post

From what I heard a colossal black hole lies in the center of our galaxy and other galaxies.

Share this post


Link to post

Here's something in video form:

 

 

Tim also explains the orange color around the singularity region as well.

Edited by Glaice

Share this post


Link to post
3 hours ago, wolfmcbeard said:

I wonder what we're going to do now that a black hole has been found and if we'll find something we didn't know about with those things since any knowledge about the things is pretty much theoretical.

It makes no great difference scientifically. Black holes are such a well-established part of cosmology and astrophysics that they have basically been regarded as proven fact for decades. Hell, even when I was at university back in the dark ages there was a whole course just on black holes. What's new is that previous observations were indirect (paths of other objects, gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, etc.). You can't generally have so much observation and theory aligning without there being rather a large grain of truth at the heart of it all.

 

As for "will it come and eat us?", no. It is no more of a threat than any other similar amount of mass at a similar distance. It is presumed that pretty much every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its centre, and I assume people don't worry about other galaxies coming to eat us. Andromeda is expected to collide with our galaxy a few billion years from now, which might be bad news for our own galaxy's supermassive black hole, but any impacts to our solar system would tend to be more indirect. Not that the Earth would be very inhabitable by then in any case (for other reasons). There are plenty of possible threats from the cosmos, of course. A GRB, for instance.

 

Edited by Grazza

Share this post


Link to post
11 hours ago, Urthar said:

Quite the monster at 6.5 billion solar masses.

 

7 hours ago, Grazza said:

"will it come and eat us?"

 

Looks like...

1kGW93z.jpg

Share this post


Link to post

I stumbled upon this related video today, and I thought it's worth sharing. What it does is it explains why black holes look like they do not wrt colour but rather why we see them like we do. Does a good job of explaining things, imo:
 

 

Share this post


Link to post

I will wait for the first ever clear image of a black hole.

 

What if we're actually in the black hole and what we feel is the black hole is the way out of it? The black hole isn't expanding so much as the opening is tearing open like a pin in a balloon will tear the balloon.

Share this post


Link to post

This is 240p quality, just gotta wait a couple more years until the technology is advanced enough to give us that sweet 360p quality.

Share this post


Link to post
10 hours ago, Grazza said:

Not that the Earth would be very inhabitable by then in any case (for other reasons).

 

If we ever become a space faring civilization and climb at least to the Kardashev 2 scale, it would be interesting to see how the natural course of cosmological events would be deviated, even with just sheer brute force.

 

e.g. if we achieve star lifting and the Sun actually grows colder and longer lived from the process as we collect its matter, thus giving more time to Earth. Or to stay in topic, if we are able to create black holes with lasers by harnessing the power of a star with a Dyson swarm, then proceed to farm the energy over absurdly long time frames by throwing mass in it.

I guess it's the kind of thing we won't see for so long, we today would seem like pre-pre-pre-History.

Share this post


Link to post

it might not look like much, but it's significant because this is the first direct observation of a phenomenon which, until now, we've only observed indirectly.

it's also easy to underestimate how difficult it is to capture an image like this. the black hole may be enormous, but it's in another galaxy, which means vast distances. I read that this is equivalent to taking a photo of a donut on the surface of the moon from earth.

Share this post


Link to post

If only Stephen Hawking lived long enough to see that picture, I'm sure he'd do some thinking and share something interesting with the world.

Share this post


Link to post
10 hours ago, geo said:

What if we're actually in the black hole and what we feel is the black hole is the way out of it? The black hole isn't expanding so much as the opening is tearing open like a pin in a balloon will tear the balloon.

 

So, what you're saying is, we're just all living on the thumbnail of a giant?

 

8 hours ago, Xcalibur said:

it might not look like much, but it's significant because this is the first direct observation of a phenomenon which, until now, we've only observed indirectly.

it's also easy to underestimate how difficult it is to capture an image like this. the black hole may be enormous, but it's in another galaxy, which means vast distances. I read that this is equivalent to taking a photo of a donut on the surface of the moon from earth.

 

In all fairness, it's still an indirect observation. We're not really seeing the black hole so much as we're seeing everything else around the black hole and the absence of anything in the center. It's semantics, in a way.

 

19 hours ago, Grazza said:

Andromeda is expected to collide with our galaxy a few billion years from now, which might be bad news for our own galaxy's supermassive black hole, but any impacts to our solar system would tend to be more indirect.

 

The collision itself is going to take place on such a large time scale, but it's possible that a hypothetical merger of the black holes will affect some of the stars. But I think there are different predictions based on different models.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×