The black hole picture is both an astonishing achievement and a deceptive image

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/the-black-hole-picture-is-an-astonishing-achievement-and-one-of-the-most-deceptive-scientific-images-ever

by swombat • 7 years ago

52 31 7 years ago

prospectmagazine.co.uk

gloflo• 7 years ago

To save you from the clickbait: 'The simplistic portrait masks a mind-bendingly complex reality' is the subtitle.

If you plan grace the site with your visit be prepared to be forced to thank them for telling you about their tracking.

And if you actually plan to read the text be prepared to be forced to thank them for putting some advertisement in front of it.

I left feeling violated and disgusted.

snazz• 7 years ago

For those of you not using an adblocker for some reason, the Outline link works fine, as usual: https://outline.com/DHUuhM

simias2• 7 years ago

Given the original title of the submission I was expecting some clickbait drama but it's actually a pretty inspiring read.

jameshart• 7 years ago

The use of the word 'deceptive' in this headline is astonishingly disingenuous. I don't think the article intends to accuse the publishers of the image of deception, but the headline sure reads that way. The article is just trying to explain that imaging a black hole is inherently counterintuitive.

sk5t• 7 years ago

Well, from the other side of the peanut gallery, I think your outrage is misplaced. "Deception" needn't be malicious, and the title already calls this out as an "astonishing achievement."

markkanof• 7 years ago

That is the actual definition of deception.

kurthr• 7 years ago

I think you're trying to say that telling white lies is deception, but not malicious... however, in this case it is not the scientist nor the picture, but they claim nature that is malicious in showing us what we expect to see (or what the writers think we expect to see).

"The temptation is to interpret the EHT image as a straightforward telescopic view of the hot accretion disk, seen from above, with the black hole carving out a hole in the middle. But it isn’t quite that."

So that's not what I expected to see, nor what I think I saw, but then I'm probably not part of the typical public. I do realize that it's a radio image not in the visible spectrum... so maybe that's deceptive too, like thermal imaging. But it's still click bait.

wongarsu• 7 years ago

The image is deceiving, in the way that it is causing you to think something is true that isn't. Of course any 2d image is a black hole is deceptive by nature, no matter what you do.

The problem is that when the deception is caused by a person instead of an object it is malicious. "The picture is deceptive" is neutral, but "scientists created a deceptive image" sounds very malicious. And while the headline states the former, it's not a big leap to assume the latter.

lttlrck• 7 years ago

‘deceiving’ may have been more appropriate.

empath75• 7 years ago

‘Deceptively simple’ would have been a better term probably.

cmroanirgo• 7 years ago

While it might appear click baitish, the opening paragraph certainly clarifies exactly what is meant:

The groundbreaking picture of a black hole that graced most newspaper front pages on 11th April must be one of the most deceptive scientific images ever. That’s not to impute any intentional deceit to the international team of 200 or so astronomers who created it—it’s just that nature conspires here to produce something that looks archetypally, almost simplistically black-holeish, but which in reality is a mind-bendingly complex sight.

And the article then goes on to describe how such an image is deceptive (in its apparent simplicity), by describing the science behind it.

nvahalik2• 7 years ago

FTA: "An object in the centre of our galaxy (the Milky Way) called Sagittarius A* is thought to be such a “supermassive” black hole."

If this black hole is 55M LY away and the center of our galaxy should have one. So, why is it that we can see this one, but not the one at the center of our galaxy? Is it because there are things in our line of site with it?

hannasanarion• 7 years ago

Our local SMBH isn't presently eating anything substantial, so it isnt very bright. M87's black hole is eating something enormous, so it's easier to get a picture.

simias2• 7 years ago

My understanding is that the black hole imaged is both vastly bigger and much more active (i.e. actively consuming matter from its accretion disc) than Sgr A*. That makes it easier to get a compelling image out of it.

I don't really know if line of sight is a factor here though.

kristianc• 7 years ago

From what I've read, they actually are a similar size to image when size/distance was taken into account, and they did initially consider imaging SagA*, but M87 proved easier for them to image.

gibybo• 7 years ago

The black hole that they revealed is about 1,000 times larger than the one at the center of our milky way. So even though it's also 1,000 times further away, it's about the same angular diameter in the sky. Same size but less stuff in the way/more active makes it an easier target.

wiredfool• 7 years ago

1) This one is actively ingesting material (active galaxy) so there are emissions from the accretion disk. Our galaxy is quiet, so there isn't the same emission from the black hole.

2) The one in our galaxy is 1600x closer and roughly that much smaller, so they're approximately the same angular size.

3) They have tracked the orbit of a star that orbits our galaxy's central black hole through an orbit, and it goes ~2% (iirc) of the speed of light at closest approach, but it's nowhere near the event horizon. There are other things that have been tracked near A*, but nothing at the event horizon like this one.

vertline3• 7 years ago

I heard it can be hard to see our center black hole because we are on the Galaxy disk so we have to look through a lot of light pollution and dust things to see it?

nvahalik2• 7 years ago

Yeah, I was researching further and found this[0] SE question. Seems to also say the same thing that there is a lot of "space dust" between here and there.

[0] https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/30339/why-not-...

huhwatnow• 7 years ago

It's not deceptive as much as it is dumbed-down and devalued as a tool for increasing scientific literacy and curiosity - at the very least the image should have included a distance and radiation energy scales - preferably several at different distances from the event horizon to account for GR. As it was released the xkcd comic of it provides more value than the image itself.

ianai2• 7 years ago

I’m surprised by the amount of criticism and general push back this image has taken. I don’t remember anything similar from the LIGO nor LHC results.

tntn• 7 years ago

... there's no criticism in this article.

ianai2• 7 years ago

I wasn’t talking about just this article. Theres a movement to discredit the woman behind the algorithm and trump up a male researcher instead. But the word “deceptive” is in the title of this discussion, as well. I’m sure there are other examples and I’m not going to go searching.

Further, of course a photo of a black hole is going to take some serious science and technology. If it were possible to do directly more easily then this wouldn’t be news.

The black hole picture is both an astonishing achievement and a deceptive image

Related Stories