[Bryan See]

There is widespread attention about the first-ever direct image of a black hole and its shadow, taken by the ground-based Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

[DefCynodont119]

here's some context.

[DefCynodont119]

Scott manly context:

[Colt]

I honestly wasn't expecting the quality of the image to be this good. Thought it'd be more blurry. Very exciting!

And to think, this one's in a galaxy much much farther away from us compared to our own resident black hole. I look forward to when they can get an image of Sgr.A

[perihelion]

There’s an awful lot of interstellar gas and dust between us and Sagittarius A*. Not to mention a lot of stars very close to the target and within the visual arc the make for a very poor signal to noise ratio in virtually every wavelength we’ve tried so far. Direct line of sight may not be possible.

But it is still sending goosebumps down my spine to see hard visual confirmation of these monsters! (In a good way!) 

[Bryan See]

Does it mean all black holes look the same?

[Black Wolf]

All black holes look exactly the same, apart from size. I imagine there's probably some variation in the accretion disc, but probably not massive variation. I doubt there's vast visual difference between black holes.

[Luis Dias]

I'm slightly skeptical about the end result, there's a lot of algorithmic pressupositions that were used to fill in the gaps of just using around 8 telescopes around the globe.

But the feat is amazing in itself. I can't wait for new radiotelescopes to enter the network, and to see if there are noticeable differences if they use, say, 20 or 30 telescopes instead of the ones they used.

[The E]

I'm slightly skeptical about the end result, there's a lot of algorithmic pressupositions that were used to fill in the gaps of just using around 8 telescopes around the globe.

But the feat is amazing in itself. I can't wait for new radiotelescopes to enter the network, and to see if there are noticeable differences if they use, say, 20 or 30 telescopes instead of the ones they used.

I don't think more scopes will fundamentally alter the basic facts here; It's not like anything we'd be able to see at higher resolution would invalidate the point that Relativity has been confirmed again.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

xkcd doodled a size comparison, to give some perspective on the scale of this thing.

[HLD_Prophecy]

I guess people think about this on a higher plane than I do.

lotta people on the net be like: confirms relativity science billions and billions science noise ratio science telescopes

and I'm just looking at this thinking dang, there's the thing that haunted my nightmares as a kid, confirmed.  Sense of wonder level turned up to eleven 

[perihelion]

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. For me, one reinforces the other. The more I learn, the more I understand, the more amazing the universe becomes!

[Luis Dias]

I'm slightly skeptical about the end result, there's a lot of algorithmic pressupositions that were used to fill in the gaps of just using around 8 telescopes around the globe.

But the feat is amazing in itself. I can't wait for new radiotelescopes to enter the network, and to see if there are noticeable differences if they use, say, 20 or 30 telescopes instead of the ones they used.

I don't think more scopes will fundamentally alter the basic facts here; It's not like anything we'd be able to see at higher resolution would invalidate the point that Relativity has been confirmed again.

Have to say, quite tired of more of this "Einstein's proven right yet again!" marketing schticks. It's not as if we hadn't had conclusive evidence of black holes before, let alone all the millions of different confirmations of GR.

But YES, the picture is brilliant... I have to disagree with your assessment though, there was a lot in that image that was "inferred". I wonder how much, and how much of algorithmic prejudice was put in the works so that the picture ended up very similar to the previous simulations.

[Phantom Hoover]

It's not as if we hadn't had conclusive evidence of black holes before,

We, uh, hadn't. Look it up. Previous observational evidence proved, I believe, the existence of various ultra-compact objects bounded by a sphere less than about 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius, but this is the first time observations have been able to directly probe the event horizon.

[BlueFlames]

Five petabytes of data isn't enough for Luis.  Too many holes to fill in.  (You know, besides the one being observed.)

[HLD_Prophecy]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. For me, one reinforces the other. The more I learn, the more I understand, the more amazing the universe becomes!

Lol, you're right. Didn't mean it that way at all, just saying that it was only after reading people's reactions that I was like 'ohey, this is scientifically very notable and important'  my personal reaction having just been some variation of:

duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude that's rad and creepy-cool 

[Mongoose]

How many seconds from release until the first goatse of it?

[X3N0-Life-Form]

It's not as if we hadn't had conclusive evidence of black holes before,

We, uh, hadn't. Look it up. Previous observational evidence proved, I believe, the existence of various ultra-compact objects bounded by a sphere less than about 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius, but this is the first time observations have been able to directly probe the event horizon.

Don't mind Luis, I can't recall the last time I've seen him be positive about anything.

How many seconds from release until the first goatse of it?

Well, goatse died some 15-20 years ago, so that seems unlikely.

[General Battuta]

All black holes look exactly the same, apart from size. I imagine there's probably some variation in the accretion disc, but probably not massive variation. I doubt there's vast visual difference between black holes.

Nah you can get a lot of funny stuff. Spin and related frame dragging will change its appearance (though almost all holes in nature are probably spinning Kerr types, unless they've been spun down with Penrose robbery). There'll be effects on the accretion disc and its apparent separation from the event horizon depending on spin type, presence or absence of polar jets, jet mechanism (also linked to spin type), the event horizon becoming oblong with higher spin, and, best of all, exciting differences if you dip your head into the photon sphere to see what's trapped there!

The big changes in appearance would be due to spin rate, matter in the ergosphere, and jets.

e: Also holy **** we skipped over the BIG difference - a tame, domestic stellar mass black hole couldn't look more different from an active galactic nucleus, our ol' buddy the quasar, which is among the most luminous things in the universe. Different types of black holes have the VASTEST visual difference!

[Colonol Dekker]

I wish you wrote high school text books......before I needed them in mean.