First ever photo of a black hole

[Imploding Turtle]

Ha!


No, but seriously. Tomorrow we'll be getting the first ever photograph taken of a black hole from the Event Horizon telescope collaboration. Which is pretty cool.

(inb4 "but we can't aktully see a black hole" - stfu)

https://www.space.com/event-horizon-tel ... holes.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Imploding Turtle]

This is a fascinating and great explanation of what is expected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUyH3XhpLTo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Marney&Mee]

Just glad it wasn't Tessa Sanderson...

[Bosscat]

Just glad it wasn't Tessa Sanderson...

[South West Claret.]

I managed to keep watching for about 4 minutes, anyone beat that?

[Lord Beamish]

This is a fascinating and great explanation of what is expected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUyH3XhpLTo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Total mind-f *ck.

[South West Claret.]

Total mind-f *ck.

What do you mean by that

[cricketfieldclarets]

Just glad it wasn't Tessa Sanderson...

[Rick_Muller]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47873592" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

its a bagel

[wilks_bfc]

“The black hole is 500 million trillion km away”

[Dazzler]

“The black hole is 500 million trillion km away”

Phew! We should be safe for a while then

[Joe Buck]

Looks like Uranus

[gawthorpe_view]

Sorry but the photograph in the O.P. is of a different type of hole.

[mdd2]

Doesn't exist now. Disappeared 49 million years ago as we will find out a million years from now

[Imploding Turtle]

508,155,000,000,000,000,000 km away.

Isn't science amazing? That light, which has captured and shared with 7 billion people, spent over 53 million years travelling to get here. When it set off it would be another 51 million years or so before the first humans even evolved.

[icu81b4]

The eye of Sauron?

[Tricky Trevor]

The universe is an amazing place. The fact that there are more lumps of rock floating around in the place than grains of sand on Earth sets my head spinning.

[gawthorpe_view]

It might not even be there anymore.
We could find this out tomorrow or in 53,000,000 years.
Mind bending numbers in the universe.

[Buxtonclaret]

Hmmmm....51 million years, eh.
And how long does it take to give the camera lens a quick wipe before snapping a pic!

Tut

[Tricky Trevor]

IT, going of your thread title you never had access to Colour Climax, as a young man.

[Dyched]

Space bores me to death. What a waste of time it all is. Searching for life or water or whatever. Why? We live on the greatest planet there is. We’re doing everything we can to destroy it and every living thing on it at a quite alarming rate. I find more life during a brisk walk up towneley than any of those muppets will ever in space. As for that photo it’s shite, nothing on Cartier Bresson.

[Murger]

Chuckled at this 1 earlier

[tim_noone]

On BBC 4 now.....Evidently no one understands them.

[BennyD]

FFS don’t show Corbyn that photo, he’ll think it’s Diane Abbott and try to f*ck it again.

[Imploding Turtle]

FFS don’t show Corbyn that photo, he’ll think it’s Diane Abbott and try to f*ck it again.

After the Tessa Sanderson post i was wondering how long it'd be before this post happened.

[Imploding Turtle]

[duncandisorderly]

The orangey circle thing you can see is apparently brighter than all the stars in all the galaxies in the entire known universe put together.

[Imploding Turtle]

The orangey circle thing you can see is apparently brighter than all the stars in all the galaxies in the entire known universe put together.

Amazing. Source?

[duncandisorderly]

Amazing. Source?

Oh ********. Gimme a few mins....

[DCWat]

Oh ********. Gimme a few mins....

I think that was on BBC yesterday - or a linked article.

[duncandisorderly]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47873592" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined - which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth.

[duncandisorderly]

So, upon further reading, I was wrong, by about a billion galaxies....but it is brighter than all the stars in OUR galaxy combined....

[AndrewJB]

I remember trying to describe the infinite nature of the universe to my eldest once many years ago based on a reading of Hawking’s book many years before that, saying “if you keep moving in the same direction at a speed far greater than that which the universe is expanding, eventually you’ll arrive at the place you started”

“So it’s like IKEA?” she replied.

[Spiral]

To get a sense of the distance between the Earth and M87 consider this:

The distance between the Earth and the Sun is about 93 million miles. This distance is called an astronomical unit, or 'AU', as some of you may already know. Now, there are approx 63,000 AU in 1 light-year, 63,241.1 to be exact. By sheer coincidence, there are approximately 63,000 inches in a mile, 63360 to be exact. Practically identical for the sake of this example. So, it's possible to scale these distances down: 1 AU (Earth to Sun distance) to an inch, and 1 light-year to a mile. You're standing on a straight-line racetrack built into space pointing towards Mars. If Earth is on the start line then at this scale the Sun is an inch in front of it, and the black hole in the photograph is 55 million miles away from you, which is...wait for it...

21,100,000 (twenty-one-million, one-hundred-thousand) miles past the planet Mars.

Absolutely mind-bending.