undefined | Better HN

0 pointsttul7y ago0 comments

Perhaps consider this: "VLBI allows the EHT to achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds — enough to read a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk café in Paris [6]."

What's surprising about this image is how utterly microscopic the thing is that was observed - from our location. The width of the event horizon is 40 billion kilometers. That's only 267x the diameter of our orbit around the Sun. But the M87 black hole is 26,000 light years away. 26,000 light years is 2.45979e+17 km, or 639,903,746,098 times farther away than the moon.

0 comments

3 comments · 2 top-level

phonypc7y ago· 1 in thread

53 million light years. 26 thousand would still be in our own galaxy.

ttulOP7y ago

Quite right. Thank you for the correction.

chirau7y ago

I am fully aware of the theory and excitement over all this. I just expected something... different. I thought i'd be wowed by something new. It literally looks just like a regular photo.

Is there a lot of context behind it? Sure. Is it a HUGE leap in our advancement? Definitely. Is it an eye-turning picture? NO. That is all.

Black holes are fascinating, their picture simply isn't, for me at least.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse