First ever image of a black hole!

ksangur said:
pah, black holes are passe,

the real mind bogglers are neutron stars, they are so dense that a normal-sized matchbox
containing neutron-star material would have a weight of approximately 3 billion metric tons.
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But a black hole's density is even higher...hence why light cannot escape it's gravitation pull.
 
Tis quite a thing, but also a bit er, blurey. Hopefully at some point we can put space telescopes at different points around the solar system and get a higher res image.
 
Hades said:
I think this is incredible. I always remember talking to my science teacher in the 1970's about black holes and he kept remi ding me that they were just a theory and we didn't know if they actually existed. Now we have detected them everywhere, have evidence of one at the heart of our (and all) galaxies and have a picture of one. We have come such a long way so quickly.
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I bet he feels like a right doughnut today :p
 
Minusorange said:
Problem is looking at it 2d in photo, is it a sphere of nothingness that sucks everything into or a disc or is it a 4 dimensional object ?
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It's basically spherical yes rather than a disc and with the gravitational waves we recently detected we now believe there are no more 'spatial' dimensions, it's just the 3 we've got.
 
It's allegedly destructive and is black. I demand public outrage over this unnecessary stereotyping!

Also was this picture taken somewhere around Parliament as there seems to be a black hole in the vicinity of accountability and democracy these days.
 
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That is a very big donut.

It's quite easy to forget things like the fact that until now we haven't had so much as a picture of a black hole, what with the thousands of sci-fi movies books and TV Series!
 
Conscript said:
Insert "your mum" joke here.
Vertiasium did a great video the other day, this is worth a watch as it explains why black holes appear as they do.
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Was an excellent video, does really well on describing why we can see the back and sides of the black hole in a way that we can actually understand!
 
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