@snder Not true, we have real, nonsimulated pictures of blackholes, many of them in fact.

@freemo Haha, show me please?

@snder Sure, let me find the image, the one taken last year by NASA should be easy to find.

@freemo See the conf: https://youtu.be/Dr20f19czeE

@snder Here you go, these are all images of blackholes.

Note blackholes can never be seen (even the picture they just released). What you can see is the gravitational lensing around a blackhole. All of these pictures are real and show a blackhole (a black dot that creates a gravitational lens around it). aside from being at less-than-one-pixel resolution these are still blackhole pictures.

@freemo @snder as far as I know, while there have been previous indirect images of black holes, and images where they may have been detected as part of a wider view this is the first direct image of a black hole and the culmination of a decade of work that involved hundreds of people spanning the planet.

Unlike with prior indirect imaging, the result today is "high resolution" definitive proof that black holes do in fact exist and match up with some predictions we have made.

This is very much a big deal and should be applauded as such 😊

@carbontwelve
Yes thats what I said, this is not the first ever picture, just the first one with multi-pixel resolution of the event horizon.

The same happens with stars. virtually all starts we see are sub-pixel in the sky. We have only two stars I know of with multi-pixel resolutions. But it would be wrong to call those "the first ever" pictures of stars too.

@snder

@carbontwelve
And yes it is absolutely an achievement worth recognizing and applauding. It just isnt the "first-ever" is all.

@snder

@freemo
If it helps increase public curiosity into science and has a positive effect on future science funding, then I don't see the harm in media lauding it a the "first-ever" even if its a concatenation of the fact. 😁
@snder

@carbontwelve
Well I would be ok with it if it were corrected, in detail, in the article. But usually it isnt. With that said I'm not upset about it so much as just wish people understood what they were saying and what it really means.

@snder

@freemo This was litterly a world-wide announcement from the scientific community

@snder yes, but what they meant was this is the first time a blackhole was photographed such that hte blackhole takes up more than a single pixel of the camera. We have a TON of blackhole pictures where we see the lensing effect of the blackhole (same effect we see in the new picture). They were just a MUCH smaller resolutions.

Its just saying "first ever" sounds cooler. The scientists understand and know the distinction.

Its a bit like showing the picture of beetlegues from a few years back that had multi-pixel resolution and saying "the first ever picture of a star", its simply not true but has a hint of truth in it.

@freemo Haha if you look at it that way we’ve probably have more undiscovered bodies in those photos then stuff we know x)

We knew indeed how the gravitational lensing worked in the photos but if you compare the photos I would say this is a first in bh photography

@snder "bh"?

I mean the only reason its any different than a star is because it is invisible. So really you can NEVER get a picture of a blackhole. The **only** thing you can take a picture of is the gravitational lensing effect.

So by that logic we still dont have a picture of a blackhole, unless you consider the lensing effect to be a picture of the blackhole in which case we already had such pictures :).