First image of a black hole:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47873592
Some background:
https://youtu.be/pAoEHR4aW8I
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First image of a black hole:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47873592
Some background:
https://youtu.be/pAoEHR4aW8I
Whilst it’s a great achievement, I was left somewhat disappointed by the whole affair.
Listening to breakfast news this morning, apparently they used eight telescopes to collect data, collated it and created a virtual photo.
So what they’re really saying is “here’s a sketch of what we think it looks like!”
Also, if the black hole is surrounded by bright light on the edges of the event horizon, why can we see a black disc in the middle? Surely all we would see is a ball of light similar to a star?
I’m no physicist and I’d really like anyone who is and can explain it to me in layman’s terms, to do do if they’d be kind enough.
Einstein decried the existence of black holes, so he was right even if he didn’t want to be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Franco
Amazing image though.
That can actually be explained - the mass (i.e. the light) is swirling around the 'black hole'. Think of it like rings arounds Saturn. I believe matter on the 'ends' get flung out straight.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave+63
Edit - see this Guardian article, a decent graphic - https://www.theguardian.com/science/...e-breakthrough
the way they built the back hole for interstella (from a mathematical viewpoint ) gives a good explaination .Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave+63
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfGfZwQ_qaY
the image posted by the BBC looks like a low res image due to the constraints of distance and our current technology
Gotta say, I shouted "potato camera" at my screen when I saw the reveal.
Took this photo of Bigfoot on the way to work this morning, well actually not the real Bigfoot but I reckon this is what he'd look like https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...29961eb325.jpg
Thanks. It’s a little clearer now.Quote:
Originally Posted by pugster
I found this quite useful as well - has some 3d visualisation of the black hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l29wCKkQpMg
That article features Katie Bouman as "The student who developed a crucial algorithm".Quote:
Originally Posted by crazyp
Here she is in 2017:
That's basically how a digital camera works. Say the Event Horizon is an 8 pixel sensor, which moves position every minute of every day it ends up being a maybe 64 pixel sensor, or more much much more. Either way like a digital camera sensor it measures light waves, or radio waves in the Event Horizons case and produces a ton of data, which in turn is processed through an algorithm and a visual representation of the data appears. Adding more telescope around the world and linking them to Event horizon would mean adding more pixels to the sensor, ultimately it would give you a higher resolution image.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave+63
So it's more like 'here's an illustration of what it looks like based on the light measured from it', which can be said of any digital image whether it's from a radio telescope or an iPhone.
I cant visualise how it can be the same.Quote:
Originally Posted by chrisparker
My chocolate Lab is sat on the bottom of the sofa and I'm looking at her. The image I capture on my iPhone is exactly the same image my eyes see.
What they said here was they correlated the data collected from the cameras and created a visualisation of how they think it is. How can that be the same?
BigfOOK maybeQuote:
Originally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
Radio waves compares to light waves – data “conversion” from one form into the other.Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
Given the vast distance involved, any optical telescope (which doesn’t exist) able to let us see it, would be showing us what it looked like millions and millions of years ago, not what it’s like presently.
Latest copy of the image in focus..........
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...-Plain-Alt.jpg
In a physical sense what you're seeing and what your phone screen displays isn't the same at all. Almost every aspect is different to some degree. What you're seeing is a full size 3 dimensional pair of moving images that absorb and reflect light, made up of billions of colours and textures. Your phone screen shows a 2D representation of that image, that's back-lit in millions of colours that's a fraction of the size, based on the digital data your iPhone camera sensor picked up in the split second the shutter opened. Your brain interprets the two as similar.Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
You could have a 8 different digital cameras pointed at your Chocolate Lab and none of the images will be exactly the same, as each lens, sensor and processor will interpret that data slightly differently, but it'll still be a picture of a chocolate lab. And that's the same with the Event Horizon, they could have 8 different radio telescopes, in 8 different locations across the planet and the image will be slightly different, yet still reading the same data it would interpret the result and you'd get a slightly different yet very similar image.
This is fascinating stuff although I do feel a bit down when I'm struggling with an IKEA flat pack and they're out there detecting black holes! Lol.
Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk
I actually like that analogy. To me it makes a lot of sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
We’re still seeing it as it was many millions of years ago. Radio waves don’t travel faster than light.Quote:
Originally Posted by PJ S
Ah, that’s where Brexit alongside the remnants of common sense and national pride have disappeared.
:thumbsup:
But digital cameras are absolute paragons of accuracy compared to how the human vision system works.Quote:
In a physical sense what you're seeing and what your phone screen displays isn't the same at all.
Both are, to start with, sowing together the images produced by a ridiculously large number of light detecting circuits made of meat or silicon following a simple but repeatedly applied strategy which was first described by David Marr as a 'Mexican Hat'.
I could blather on for a thousand words, as is my habit, but instead I'll describe three experiments you can do at home which most will find a tad surprising.
First, get two toilet rolls and two small objects of different shapes and colours, say two dinky cars or a polo and a grape. Holding each toilet roll much as you would a pair of binoculars, arrange the two things in front of you so that you can only see one through each roll. Then focus your eyes as you would for a 'magic eye' picture so that you fuse the two images into one. Once you have done that just watch the fused image. Try merely saying words that describe the two objects and watch what happens.
The phenomena is called 'binocular rivalry' and most people finds the way that their clearly experienced conscious experience changes wildly at the drop of a hat slightly disconcerting.
Next, get a mirror (or an accomplice) and a pack of playing cards. Shuffle the cards and place them to one side of you. Look directly into the mirror and, through force of will, make sure your eyes stay locked on the eyes in the mirror. if your eyes move at all (they tend to make little jumps called 'saccades') If they do, stop and try again.
Next, while your eyes are locked in place, pick up a card, hold it at arms length as far to one side of you as you can (but at the same height as your eye) and turn it so that the card is facing your unmoving eye. Keeping the front facing your eyeball, very, very slowly move the card round the arc of your outstretched arm towards the front where your eye will eventually (without moving) be looking directly at it.
As you very slowly move the card towards this point, describe the card, its colour, number, whether it is royal and so on.
if you do this properly, you will be surprised to discover that the eye only has an area of vision good enough to make out colour, or any but the vaguest of details, that is about the size of your thumbnail held out in front of you and the rest of your putative visual field is infinitely less detailed than you ever expected it to be.
Finally, disco light rope, you know the stuff that seems to have light moving through it when it is clearly made of fixed lights. This is the phi phenomena and it is delightfully odd. Unlike the others there's plenty of quality writing on it, so read away.
The bottom line is that our visual apparatus is a huge pile of bodges from start to finish and pretty well everything everyone thinks about it is wrong. A bit like consciousness in general really.
So I rather suspect that this cool algorithm that sows disparate information together to find pattern in noise is almost certainly more accurate, veridical and reliable than the ones used by the eye and brain in delivering the user illusion we think we share and are all so fond of.
I was hoping it might have been a bit more spectacular, like a Krispy Kreme.Quote:
Originally Posted by oldoakknives
Indeed, but the time discrepancy mentioned wasn’t meant to be considered exclusive to optical telescopes, just trying to explain the difference of a phone camera image via reflected photon of light and that interpolated from radio waves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave+63
Brilliant stuff!
Black holes and warped space always bring to my mind Homer Simpson...
I've rarely read such waffle on TZUK. This is a picture of a black hole taken as accurately as we can from a zillion kilometres away. The largest in the known universe. End of. Unless you guys are claiming these highly qualified and brilliant astrophysicists woke up one day, got out their Etch-a-Sketch and thought they'd lie to us for a laugh.
A picture of a black hole is something I never thought I’d see as a Physics student in the ‘80s, so I think it’s brilliant.
Einstein didn’t dream up black holes entirely on his own.
Radio waves tell you what an object looks like, but we can’t see them with the naked eye, so they have to be translated back into something we can see, which is visible light. It’s still a picture of a black hole just like an electron microscope picture or a low-light camera image.
The pictures are sewn together, (or stitched), not sown.
The ‘back hole for interstella’ sounds like a prop from a porn film.
Only if the randomising algorithms are incorrectly "seeded"Quote:
Originally Posted by alfat33
:-)
B
True, that can crop up. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian
I reckon the human visual system is pretty good. Better than a typical digital camera for most human needs e.g. binocular, motion sensing, colour resolution, range of sensitivity to light (optimised to certain wavelengths/colours).
Not good for looking at a black hole though.
Isn't that essentially what is is then- a visual representation using the data they’ve obtained. How can anyone claim that to be a true photo of a black hole gazillions of miles away. Sorry but it’s total bo**ock*.Quote:
Originally Posted by Glamdring
You could say the same about this though, which was constructed from sensors picking up electrons bouncing off the subject. No light is involved.Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
https://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia...p_1592358i.jpg
I’d say most of us would call this a picture of a wasp.
Is this a 'true photo':Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
No idea- assuming its the photo that was taken at Lacock Abbey?Quote:
Originally Posted by PickleB
BBC4 Program on the complexities on iPlayer
It's not a black hole - it's a super massive black hole. Also technically it's not a photo, its actually a rendering of a black hole, from data acquired from 8 different telescopes.
Also given that light cannot escape a black hole, what we are actually seeing is the super hot materiel on the black hole's event horizon - just before its gobbled up by the hole itself.
Pretty cool all the same, given its a picture of something which is 50 million light years away and therefore an image of something 50m years old (which might not actually now exist). Looking back into time.
Fair play to Einstein for guessing right.
Think this is the window, went there today and took a picture of it...... or did IQuote:
Originally Posted by PickleB
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...28e86d69a1.jpg