SHOC

SHOC
Discerning content for Bad Hombres and Nasty Women

Friday, April 12, 2019

I don’t think people are really grasping the reality of this

Our fundamental understanding of black holes can now start to be solidified as being inline with theories introduced by Einstein and confirmed by Hawking. Our  information path has been proven to be on the right track and we can push even further with confidence into our understanding of the Universe. As human beings, we are on track with the evolution of our knowledge and information.
The physics that we know to exist have been proven to exist Universally. Notwithstanding any yet to be discovered physics and phenomena, we can be assured that the our future understanding can be anchored on known physics. 

(via)

I've seen a few posts discussing the apparent "low quality" of the black hole image. This is one of the best visualizations I've found of just how incredible the resolution of the measurement was. 

The Event Horizon Telescope imaged the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy known as M87.

If Hubble pointed towards M87 and took a picture, that white box at the beginning of the gif would represent one singular pixel on its newest and most advanced sensor. The entire image that's adorned front-pages of newspapers across the world is the equivalent of a tenth of one-percent of one pixel on the Hubble WFC3 camera. (Or one ten-thousandth of one percent if you go by area.)

In fact, we don't have to speculate what a Hubble image of M87 would look like. We have one.
The image on top is M87 as pictured through Hubble. It looks like a yellow smudge, with a blue smudge on the side. That blue smudge happens to be a relativistic jet of matter being ejected by the black hole at its core. This jet is a major radio source, and is one of the reasons we first found M87. For comparison, the image at the bottom was taken with the Very Large Array - the largest radio telescope in the United States with an aperture of 36,000 meters, versus Hubble's 2.4 meters.

Aperture is the primary consideration determining angular resolution, and radio astronomy allows for extremely large apertures through a process called 'aperture synthesis', where multiple antennas are combined to act as a single effective telescope - this isn't just re-arranging data, its more akin to acting like one very large lens as big as the maximum separation between antennas.

Using telescopes on four continents (or five? I'm not sure how to count Hawaii here), the effective aperture of the Event Horizon Telescope was 12,700,000 meters. Versus Hubble's 2.4.

(via)


And then there's this:
Wait... wasn't "A New Hole" one of the Star Wars movies?



















No comments:

Post a Comment