First image of a supermassive black hole

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/10/first-image-of-a-supermassive.html

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What no picture of an elder god waiting for the stars to be right? Boring.
Actually it is pretty awesome that we got a picture that clear of something 53 million light years away.

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But we can be pretty sure that the void is not staring back at us…

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“My God, it’s full of (compressed) stars!”

*Also, “let’s” wince.

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Eh, that’s not all that massive. I’ve seen bigger.

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Yup. Thanks, @beschizza, this song is going to be stuck in my head all day now.

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It boggles my mind that we can get pictures of anything in the universe considering we’re on a moving, rotating planet. I’d think all we could get would be blurry pictures like when I take a photo out a car window or the way I can’t hold my arms still enough to take a decent shot of the moon with my iPhone zoomed in. I mean right? The more of a zoom lens I use the more it amplifies even the slightest vibration right? I’m sure there’s a way they get around this.

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I think we’re able to observe this because, luckily, the accretion disk is near-perpendicular to our line of sight(?) Then again, that makes me very suspicious: this could be a false flag.

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It looks like a doughnut. Mmmmmm doughnuts… .aarrrgggllggllll…

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Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

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This image is actually more impressive than I was expecting it to be.

One of the greatest intellectual accomplishments in human history was Enstein’s framework that predicted the ability for these to exist… and turned out to be correct. To think that you can work out on pencil and paper what could exist hundreds of millions of light years away is incredible.

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If anything i’m more curious what it really looks like. It’s like looking at old fuzzy resolution pics of Saturn vs the detail we’ve been able to get recently. I hope this news justifies the excellent work being done by astronomers, physicists and space agencies and why we need more spending in the sciences.

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It’s totally the Eye of Sauron. Don’t look at it!!!

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CAUTION: Do not look into black hole with remaining eye

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It’s due to a restraining order. People were stalking the abyss a bit too enthusiastically.

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