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[StreetsofBeige]

So how many billions of dollars over the years were spent for this image? Money well spent.

Who gives a shit about helping poor people, better healthcare, or even something mundane like fixing potholes. Who needs that when we now know blackholes are reddish/orange.

 

[greyshark]

So how many billions of dollars over the years were spent for this image? Money well spent.

Who gives a shit about helping poor people, better healthcare, or even something mundane like fixing potholes. Who needs that when we now know blackholes are reddish/orange.

2019 Government budget for Welfare: $754 billion
2018 Government budget for Healthcare: $708 billion
2017 Government budget for Infrastructure: $441 billion
2019 Government budget for NASA: $21 billion

Ignoring the fact that this project was a shared effort between agencies across the world and not funded solely by NASA - would you eliminate the entirety of NASA for a 3% increase in our healthcare budget?

 

[MetalAlien]

So how many billions of dollars over the years were spent for this image? Money well spent.

Who gives a shit about helping poor people, better healthcare, or even something mundane like fixing potholes. Who needs that when we now know blackholes are reddish/orange.

We could spend some of that on sterilizations and solve a shitload of those other problems for a lot less money.

 

[Halo is Back]

2019 Government budget for Welfare: $754 billion
2018 Government budget for Healthcare: $708 billion
2017 Government budget for Infrastructure: $441 billion
2019 Government budget for NASA: $21 billion

Ignoring the fact that this project was a shared effort between agencies across the world and not funded solely by NASA - would you eliminate the entirety of NASA for a 3% increase in our healthcare budget?

Not to mention the other 500billion we also spend on the military

 

[EverydayBeast]

It’s just amazing how humanity captured this image. Our ancestors are probably furious they didn’t get to see this. Yeah theirs jokes about this black hole but I hope theirs more commitment to finding out more details about black holes because I feel like we’re a century or two away from smooth sailing through one of these bad boys

 

[womfalcs3]

So how many billions of dollars over the years were spent for this image? Money well spent.

Who gives a shit about helping poor people, better healthcare, or even something mundane like fixing potholes. Who needs that when we now know blackholes are reddish/orange.

Actually, the image is not even in color. Those reds, yellows, and orange you see are intensity heat maps added by the researchers; more intense light is yellow/white, less intense it gets darker. They don't reflect the true colors of the image.

 

[Rentahamster]

So how many billions of dollars over the years were spent for this image? Money well spent.

Who gives a shit about helping poor people, better healthcare, or even something mundane like fixing potholes. Who needs that when we now know blackholes are reddish/orange.

We can do both. Space exploration is positive for humanity too, whether or not you can see it.

 

[Demigod Mac]

So how many billions of dollars over the years were spent for this image? Money well spent.

Who gives a shit about helping poor people, better healthcare, or even something mundane like fixing potholes. Who needs that when we now know blackholes are reddish/orange.

Time warp your statement 100 years ago and apply it to the emerging field of quantum mechanics. Had we followed this line of thinking, your cellphone today would be the size of a brick.

 

[nkarafo]

For anyone complaining about this interfering with Cancer research in any way:

I'm sorry for what you are going through.

But i don't agree that the world should stop for you. Maybe i would sing the same song if i was in your shoes. But that would be me being emotional, not logical. And as others have said, the budget for space research and similar science projects are minuscule compared to, say, military budgets.

 

[DiscoJer]

I think both sides have a point. Space research is important, if not obviously so, and the picture was really lame. It's really not even a picture, since it's from a bunch of radio telescope and turned into an image from fairly abstract data.

 

[Demigod Mac]

They got a lot more data than just a picture. The picture provides valuable information to scientists, despite the blurriness. Read the six papers published by the EHT group. Many more studies and discoveries are still to come from these results.

General Relativity governs everything larger than an atom. So learning more about how it works is extremely important and absolutely worth it.

 

[TeamGhobad]

 

[CyberPanda]

There it is.

 

[Rentahamster]

There it is.

There what is?

 

[haxan7]

There what is?

Girl power

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

There what is?

Equality.

 

[Paracelsus]

There what is?

tl;dr They're using a woman (she didn't take all the credit, the media ran with it anyway) that sure had a part in the project but wasn't the original creator of the algorithm (although she did adapt existing work) nor the main developer to push "girls in STEM" narrative.

 

[greyshark]

That reddit post is misleading. Looks like Andrew Cheal was the maintainer of the repository which meant he was in charge of merging their branches. Those merge commits would have given him credit for far more if the code than he was writing himself.

It looks like Katie Bouman was the project lead - most leads end up only doing a minority of actual commits.

 

[Rentahamster]

tl;dr They're using a woman (she didn't take all the credit, the media ran with it anyway) that sure had a part in the project but wasn't the original creator of the algorithm (although she did adapt existing work) nor the main developer to push "girls in STEM" narrative.

More like people who don't know how to use Github are trying to push their own narrative. She's the team leader, and she's on the record as saying that it was a team effort.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

59 MILLION LIGHTS YEARS

So it might not even be there anymore considering how slow light travels?

 

[MetalAlien]

So it might not even be there anymore considering how slow light travels?

The galaxy has surely moved far from that position but black holes will be the last thing in the universe after everything else is gone... they live a very long time.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Black holes don't move?

 

[MetalAlien]

Black holes don't move?

Nothing in the universe just sits there... everything is moving around including black holes.

 

[MastAndo]

While not related directly to this image, if you haven't seen this, it's definitely worth a watch. Captivating stuff about our universe's ultimate demise...

 

[haxan7]

Need more black hole pics

 

[WhiskeyDiver]

It truly is a spectable to behold when you can see a direct image of an object, that at its center, completely and utterly throws every law of physics and science right out the window where none of it applies.


Also its billions of times the mass of our sun...still less than the total sum of mass of the entire fat acceptance movement membership.

 

[CyberPanda]

 

[Chittagong]

The thing I don’t get is how we are able to see the actual black event horizon. I would have assumed it’s obscured by glowing gas or dust swirling all around it in all directions - or is all that stuff a disc, and we just happen to be looking at the disc directly from above?

 

[TeamGhobad]

The thing I don’t get is how we are able to see the actual black event horizon. I would have assumed it’s obscured by glowing gas or dust swirling all around it in all directions - or is all that stuff a disc, and we just happen to be looking at the disc directly from above?

the only way you can see a black hole is if it has material floating around it. otherwise it would just be a black hole..

 

[Chittagong]

the only way you can see a black hole is if it has material floating around it. otherwise it would just be a black hole..

yeah that's what I mean, so how come the material is not floating between us and the black hole, obscuring the blackness from view? Do we just happen to be looking from the right direction?

 

[greyshark]

yeah that's what I mean, so how come the material is not floating between us and the black hole, obscuring the blackness from view? Do we just happen to be looking from the right direction?

They used a radio telescope which can “see” through the material.

EDIT: misread what you said. I’m not sure actually - I think there’s a gif earlier in this thread that shows what it would look like depending on your perspective.

 

[Demigod Mac]

yeah that's what I mean, so how come the material is not floating between us and the black hole, obscuring the blackness from view? Do we just happen to be looking from the right direction?

Depends on the wavelength the telescope is tuned to. Check the Varying Wavelength demo here:
https://eventhorizontelescope.org/simulations-gallery

 

[Chittagong]

Depends on the wavelength the telescope is tuned to. Check the Varying Wavelength demo here:
https://eventhorizontelescope.org/simulations-gallery

That is f’ing nuts and insanely cool. My brain struggles to perceive the effect of bending space. Thanks for posting!

 

[TeamGhobad]

yeah that's what I mean, so how come the material is not floating between us and the black hole, obscuring the blackness from view? Do we just happen to be looking from the right direction?

for the same reason that saturn only has one ring around it. i believe Kant came up with the answer but i dont remember the argument.
edit: by ring i mean rings on the same plane field.

 

[CyberPanda]

 

[Manus]

 

[Rentahamster]

Obsessed with identity politics much?

That guy sounds bitter and ignorant while trying to push his own agenda. He apparently doesn't know how leading a team of coders works. Let's see what the "guy who did most of the work" has to say about this:

So apparently some (I hope very few) people online are using the fact that I am the primary developer of the eht-imaging software library (https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging …) to launch awful and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend Katie Bouman. Stop.

Our papers used three independent imaging software libraries (including one developed by my friend @sparse_k). While I wrote much of the code for one of these pipelines, Katie was a huge contributor to the software; it would have never worked without her contributions and the work of many others who wrote code, debugged, and figured out how to use the code on challenging EHT data. With a few others, Katie also developed the imaging framework that rigorously tested all three codes and shaped the entire paper (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0e85 …); as a result, this is probably the most vetted image in the history of radio interferometry. I'm thrilled Katie is getting recognition for her work and that she's inspiring people as an example of women's leadership in STEM. I'm also thrilled she's pointing out that this was a team effort including contributions from many junior scientists, including many women junior scientists (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213326021042929&set=a.10211451091290857&type=3&theater …). Together, we all make each other's work better; the number of commits doesn't tell the full story of who was indispensable.

So while I appreciate the congratulations on a result that I worked hard on for years, if you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away and reconsider your priorities in life. Otherwise, stick around -- I hope to start tweeting more about black holes and other subjects I am passionate about -- including space, being a gay astronomer, Ursula K. Le Guin, architecture, and musicals. Thanks for following me, and let me know if you have any questions about the EHT!

As usual, Tim Pool has an accurate and even handed take on the topic. Take note of the observation of how critics of Katie are ironically arguing their case based on a quasi-socialist concept of share of labor = directly equivalent share of credit.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Who knows how much work she did for the discovery. By the sounds of the articles, there's a bunch of people with different algorithms, which came together to make the blackhole projection.

Yet somehow, she is the posterchild of the discovery as if she did it all. Aside from the Chael guy which got pulled into the discussion, I don't think any other person involved got one mention of their contribution...... at least not in any article I read.

 

[Rentahamster]

Yet somehow, she is the posterchild of the discovery as if she did it all. Aside from the Chael guy which got pulled into the discussion, I don't think any other person involved got one mention of their contribution...... at least not in any article I read.

Then you should consider the possibility that you're in an information bubble since there aren't any articles that proclaim that she "did it all". In fact, there are plenty of articles that quote and reference many team members.

https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=298276

"We have taken the first picture of a black hole," said EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. "This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers."

"Once we were sure we had imaged the shadow, we could compare our observations to extensive computer models that include the physics of warped space, superheated matter and strong magnetic fields. Many of the features of the observed image match our theoretical understanding surprisingly well," remarks Paul T.P. Ho, EHT Board member and Director of the East Asian Observatory.

The construction of the EHT and the observations announced today represent the culmination of decades of observational, technical, and theoretical work. This example of global teamwork required close collaboration by researchers from around the world. Thirteen partner institutions worked together to create the EHT, using both pre-existing infrastructure and support from a variety of agencies. Key funding was provided by the US National Science Foundation, the EU's European Research Council (ERC), and funding agencies in East Asia.

Dimitrios Psaltis, University of Arizona in Tucson, EHT project scientist
"The size and shape of the shadow matches the precise predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, increasing our confidence in this century-old theory. Imaging a black hole is just the beginning of our effort to develop new tools that will enable us to interpret the massively complex data that nature gives us."

https://www.nao.ac.jp/en/news/science/2019/20190410-eht.html

"If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow — something predicted by Einstein’s general relativity that we’ve never seen before," explained chair of the EHT Science Council Heino Falcke of Radboud University, the Netherlands.

Japanese researchers contributed to various aspects of this research. ALMA, operated through international collaboration between East Asia, Europe, and North America, is the most sensitive element in the EHT Array and greatly enhanced the array sensitivity. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) developed the data transmission instrument for ALMA to deliver the massive data taken with the array to its base facility. Japan, together with Asian partners, established the East Asian Observatory, which operates the James Clark Maxwell Telescope at Maunakea, Hawai`i.


"We also contributed in software," said Mareki Honma, Professor and Director of NAOJ Mizusawa VLBI Observatory.

“Furthermore, we carefully checked the reliability of the image features of the black hole shadow by changing the input parameters of the imaging software,” said Kotaro Moriyama, a researcher at NAOJ Mizusawa VLBI Observatory (now a researcher at MIT Haystack Observatory). “In total, we performed the imaging process with 50000 sets of different parameters.”

“I was really excited when we succeed to obtain the very first image of the black hole with the novel imaging technique we developed,” said Fumie Tazaki, a researcher at NAOJ Mizusawa VLBI Observatory. “I couldn’t be more delighted than to share the images obtained by the whole team.”

“We applied three independent algorithms in the data reduction process before imaging and confirmed that the results are identical,” commented Shoko Koyama, a researcher at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taiwan. “Usually this kind of processing is not spotlighted, but this wonderful result is the culmination of many small steps done by each team member.”

https://www.space.com/first-black-hole-photo-by-event-horizon-telescope.html

"We're looking for the loss of photons," EHT science council member Dan Marrone, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, told Space.com.

"There's no way that we can transfer this data through the internet," EHT project scientist Dimitrios Psaltis, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said at the SXSW event. "So, what we actually do is, we take our hard drives and we FedEx them from place to place. This is much faster than any cable that you can ever find."

This slows and complicates analysis, of course. Data from the EHT scope near the South Pole, for example, couldn't get off Antarctica until December 2017, when it was warm enough for planes to go in and out, Marrone said.

 

[llien]

Obsessed with identity politics much?

200 people (many of them, women), observatories across the globe, 8 scientific papers.
Pointing out that the person credited for doing it was merely one of the contributors is "identity politcis" or attack on the said person?

Unless it was she herself promoting herself as the "photographer of the black hole", it's an attack on those, unfairly promoting her.

Also, creating the image part was a minor, straightforward task, that's why they gave it to junior scientists to begin with.

 

[llien]

there aren't any articles that proclaim that she "did it all"

Yeah, it's not an article and it merely hints at it:




And rather insulting original comment:

 

[Alx]

Who knows how much work she did for the discovery. By the sounds of the articles, there's a bunch of people with different algorithms, which came together to make the blackhole projection.

Yet somehow, she is the posterchild of the discovery as if she did it all. Aside from the Chael guy which got pulled into the discussion, I don't think any other person involved got one mention of their contribution...... at least not in any article I read.

That's academic research for you. Or life in general. You usually hear of the person leading the project, not of all the rest of the team (even when the project leader makes sure to explicitly praise the rest of the team, like she did here). Generals win battles, but they rarely fire a single shot.

Now the fact that she is a young woman certainly played a role in the press coverage, but that doesn't change her own responsibility in the project.
Each time you read "Dr XYZ, researcher at Whatever Univsersity, discovered this or proved that", just realize that all the work of his predecessors, colleagues, students etc. isn't mentioned.

 

[Chittagong]

That's academic research for you. Or life in general. You usually hear of the person leading the project, not of all the rest of the team (even when the project leader makes sure to explicitly praise the rest of the team, like she did here). Generals win battles, but they rarely fire a single shot.

Now the fact that she is a young woman certainly played a role in the press coverage, but that doesn't change her own responsibility in the project.
Each time you read "Dr XYZ, researcher at Whatever Univsersity, discovered this or proved that", just realize that all the work of his predecessors, colleagues, students etc. isn't mentioned.

Exactly. My wife finished her PhD six years ago, and left science entirely. Her research data is being used in an upcoming Nature article. She will be author number n. Her boss will be the one mentioned in coverage. As he should, he kept the research together. That doesn’t invalidate my wife’s contribution.

Similarly here, it sounds like the media mostly mentions the person who managed the project. Nothing wrong in that.

 

[greyshark]

200 people (many of them, women), observatories across the globe, 8 scientific papers.
Pointing out that the person credited for doing it was merely one of the contributors is "identity politcis" or attack on the said person?

Unless it was she herself promoting herself as the "photographer of the black hole", it's an attack on those, unfairly promoting her.

Also, creating the image part was a minor, straightforward task, that's why they gave it to junior scientists to begin with.

It seems to me that people you don’t like (and probably are associated with politics more than science) posted some shallow information about this and you’re reacting to it.

A post above yours just went through a dozen or so sources that reference many of the people that contributed to this project - shared credit isn’t really the issue here. The people that are “only” crediting Katie Bouman will likely forget about this in a couple of weeks - I wouldn’t worry too much about them.

Also LOL at your last point about the imaging software being a straightforward task.

 

[llien]

A post above yours just went through a dozen or so sources that reference many of the people that contributed to this project - shared credit isn’t really the issue here. The people that are “only” crediting Katie Bouman will likely forget about this in a couple of weeks - I wouldn’t worry too much about them.

She is the only person out of nearly two hundred, to get into spotlight.
She doesn't seem to either have worked work on anything even remotely crucial to this project, or even contribute much to the piece she worked on (contrary to Margaret Hamilton who actually led the team).
People inevitably jump to wrong conclusions about what her contribution was wrong.

I don't think that is fair to the team.

Also LOL at your last point about the imaging software being a straightforward task.

In this context it is a straightforward task, which even people who have little idea bout science behind this, nor what is behind imaging software would have noticed: you don't use team that meanly consists of junior scientists, on the most complex parts of the project.

And what mentioned young scientiests literally did was: using existing libraries, take one pic, blur, overlap with another. Yay. Breakthrough Science.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

That's academic research for you. Or life in general. You usually hear of the person leading the project, not of all the rest of the team (even when the project leader makes sure to explicitly praise the rest of the team, like she did here). Generals win battles, but they rarely fire a single shot.

Now the fact that she is a young woman certainly played a role in the press coverage, but that doesn't change her own responsibility in the project.
Each time you read "Dr XYZ, researcher at Whatever Univsersity, discovered this or proved that", just realize that all the work of his predecessors, colleagues, students etc. isn't mentioned.

Good point. That's something I forget about.

I work at a company and unlike certain things like scientific discoveries, movies and media and such, you never get anyone publicly credited for anything. And nobody gives a shit about recognition like that except certain industries. If everyone thinks Ferraris look and perform awesome, pretty sure nobody gives a fuck that a team of designers helped make it, nor have I ever seen Ferrari employees begging for recognition like screen guild members forcing their name at end credits.

Internally at 99% of organizations, teams are congratulated on successful product launches, and when the company does well, the CEO will give up fist pumps (not literally!) at our company-wide meetings. It's more about working together as different departments to grow the business....... NOT "hey folks, just a heads up that business is up 15% because Brad Johnson has singlehandedly carried the torch", and "Oh, and let's do a PR release congratulating Brad to Wall Street too"

 

[Rentahamster]

Yeah, it's not an article and it merely hints at it:

In the spirit of making sure I understand your point, are you agreeing or disagreeing with my statement here?

And rather insulting original comment:

How is that insulting? It's a juxtaposition of two photos that share similarities and noting the significance.

 

[llien]

Article. Interesting detail: 3 GPL libs used for working with the black hole image.
Note that there is a number of females among authors.

In the spirit of making sure I understand your point, are you agreeing or disagreeing with my statement here?

I agree that they formally didn't cross the lines in the current wording.

How is that insulting?

Perhaps insulting is not the best word to describe what I wanted to say: "very unfair" to the rest of the team, by putting a person who did minor work into spotlight.

 

[Rentahamster]

200 people (many of them, women), observatories across the globe, 8 scientific papers.
Pointing out that the person credited for doing it was merely one of the contributors is "identity politcis" or attack on the said person?

The video in question is complaining about Katie getting too much credit, and basing it on criticism of the feminist agenda and putting way to much emphasis on her identity as a woman. He doesn't evaluate the situation based on the facts, or I should say, he misevaluates the situation based on an ignorant understanding of the facts. He chooses to instead view the situation emotionally through his own personal lens of victimhood and persecution. It's very feels over facts.

Unless it was she herself promoting herself as the "photographer of the black hole", it's an attack on those, unfairly promoting her.

Your assessment that it's unfair is contradicted by the statement of the very same dude who "wrote 850,000 lines of code".

Also, creating the image part was a minor, straightforward task, that's why they gave it to junior scientists to begin with.

And you know this because?

 

[Rentahamster]

I agree that they formally didn't cross the lines in the current wording.

That doesn't answer my question. Do you agree or disagree with my point?

The way you say that makes it sound like you think they worded it it literally in a way to not give her sole credit, but that the way they wrote it gives her disproportional credit. This would be a dogwhistle argument.

Perhaps insulting is not the best word to describe what I wanted to say: "very unfair" to the rest of the team, by putting a person who did minor work into spotlight.

It's just a juxtaposition of two photos that point out notable similarities. It literally only says, Left: "MIT computer scientist Katie Bouman w/stacks of hard drives of black hole image data. " It doesn't say that she did the whole thing herself.