First Black Hole Photographed

YosemiteSam said:

Centrifugal forces can be very strong. Really if you think about it. Galaxies are huge and the objects within are all massive. While the power of gravity can be great enough to create a black hole, it's also the weakest of all the fundamental forces. So, you have these stars that are massive in their own right. (you have to be to have enough gravitational force for fusion to start in it's core) All that mass / weight is moving at extremely high speeds..

To understand it. Our Sun (mass of 1.989 × 10^30 kg) is moving around Sagittarius A* (our black hole) at 43k miles per hour. (think of how much kinetic energy that actually is) It's doing it at a distance of 26 light years from Sagittarius A*. A light year is an ungodly number of miles given light travels 186,000 miles second and there are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. (186,000 * 31,536,000) * 26

We are in the middle of the milky way's disk too. There are star system that are twice that far away from Sagittarius A*.

Our galaxy is one of likely trillions. Space is so mind-bogglingly large!

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BillyBates said:

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Runwildboys said:

I was going to say we're farther out than the middle, but I remember they recently re-estimated the size of the Milky Way.

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YosemiteSam said:

This is a great video about what you're seeing in the image. It's not exactly what most people would think due to what gravity does to light.

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SlammedZero said:

Scientists today released the first ever image of a black hole. I'm really surprised this isn't generating more buzz!! This is the first direct visual evidence that black holes exist. This is huge! The visual confirmation of this black hole acts as confirmation of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Black holes are virtually invisible, since light cannot escape them to be photographed, but here you can see the heated materials in the form of plasma. These surround the black hole and emit light and allow the event horizon to be visible.

This black hole is located in a galaxy named Messier 87 (or M87). This massive galaxy is near the Virgo galaxy cluster 55 million light-years from Earth. The supermassive black hole has a mass that is 6.5 billion times that of our sun. In their attempt to capture an image of the black hole, scientists combined the power of eight radio telescopes around the world. This effectively creates a virtual telescope around the same size as the Earth itself.

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YosemiteSam said:

This is a great video about what you're seeing in the image. It's not exactly what most people would think due to what gravity does to light.

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JoeyBoy718 said:

Can it play QB?

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YosemiteSam said:

This video is from the same guy, but post image release.

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Runwildboys said:

He needs better props, but he absolutely nailed what the picture would look like.

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YosemiteSam said:

His videos are good. Not sure if he made them. Although many are pre-existing. I mean some that I haven't actually seen before.

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Runwildboys said:

Watching his videos led me to watch several of the guy arguing with Flat Earthers.........Those people are just insane. There was one woman who claims that the photos sent back from probes of other planets can't be real because there's no conscious observer, so the photons can't go into the camera....seriously. I spent the whole 5 or 10 minutes of her talking with my mouth open, and a look of absolute incredulity on my face...a look that's coming back, just thinking about her video.

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Hoofbite said:

I'm out of my element when it comes to anything space, but it's not the lack of surprise or excitement in confirmation that shocks me. It's the fact that (at least to me) black holes were pretty much treated as a given. A given without any supposed confirmation at all. Almost like science decided to suspend the rules for a minute and say, "we know they're out there, and we'll tell you when we can prove it".

Additionally, I thought there had been observances of light bending unexpectedly prior to this. Could have been a movie, I suppose, but I thought distant light sources had been observed passing behind a presumed black hole and the resulting distortion was attributed to the presence of that black hole. Provided it wasn't a movie, I guess I just don't have the prerequisite background to appreciate the difference whatever it was that was observed before and what it is we are seeing now.

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Hoofbite said:

I'm out of my element when it comes to anything space, but it's not the lack of surprise or excitement in confirmation that shocks me. It's the fact that (at least to me) black holes were pretty much treated as a given. A given without any supposed confirmation at all. Almost like science decided to suspend the rules for a minute and say, "we know they're out there, and we'll tell you when we can prove it".

Additionally, I thought there had been observances of light bending unexpectedly prior to this. Could have been a movie, I suppose, but I thought distant light sources had been observed passing behind a presumed black hole and the resulting distortion was attributed to the presence of that black hole. Provided it wasn't a movie, I guess I just don't have the prerequisite background to appreciate the difference whatever it was that was observed before and what it is we are seeing now.

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Runwildboys said:

It would deflate the balls worse than the Patriots.

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