[HN Gopher] Event Horizon Telescope captures 'beautiful' images ...
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       Event Horizon Telescope captures 'beautiful' images of second black
       hole's jet
        
       Author : hheikinh
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2021-07-29 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.sciencemag.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencemag.org)
        
       | belter wrote:
       | To make it clear...They did not "take a picture" of a Blackhole
       | the first time, at least not in the way most people think of
       | "taking a picture" as in the sense of visual evidence like in
       | imaging the moon, galaxies on long exposure, planets etc...
       | 
       | The team multiple times used terms like we have "visual
       | evidence", "photons" and "telescopes" when referring to their
       | radio telescopes.
       | 
       | They did something great, no doubt about it. Still, as we
       | confront other science challenges like demonstrating safety of
       | vaccines, evidence for human impact on the planet and as it
       | causes global warming, I do not think science teams should push
       | that much the use of certain words and concepts in the context of
       | making their work more accessible. Its demeaning to the "general
       | public" who actually is probably quite well educated and does not
       | need these word plays.
       | 
       | They scanned the sky using an existing technique ( VLBI ),
       | processed the data through a series of very innovative and smart
       | data algorithms and created a synthetic image using these
       | libraries:
       | 
       | https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging
       | 
       | Then, the data was given to four different teams who come up with
       | 4 different "blackhole pictures". Then they averaged it and
       | published their "photo" while calling it "visual evidence", their
       | words not mine.
       | 
       | As these libraries have different color profiles ...
       | 
       | https://github.com/liamedeiros/ehtplot/blob/docs/docs/COLORM...
       | 
       | they could have gone for the violet profile ;-) But then they
       | would have more difficulty calling it the "blackhole photo"
       | instead of what it is: A synthetic image that it is made from 230
       | Ghz radio data and very smart statistic inference algorithms.
       | Naturally using the yellow clour tone it easier to call it a
       | "blackhole picture". It looks like something in Space...
       | 
       | No science journalist questioned them on that, and now they are
       | getting even more "creative" with their imaging techniques:
       | 
       | https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/styles/os_files_xxlarg...
       | 
       | They could have just said: We measured the size of the shadow,
       | plus or minus, and we "think" its a blackhole but it could also
       | be other object in the universe that looks like this. As they had
       | to admit here at 1h.00.45 in reply to a question:
       | 
       | "What other objects in the universe could look like this?"
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/q6ZnAdNQNVo?t=3644
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-29 23:02 UTC)