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I am skeptical of any black hole research because it cannot be currently tested. I recently went down the rabbit hole on how the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) g

I am skeptical of any black hole research because it cannot be currently tested. I recently went down the rabbit hole on how the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) got a picture of a black hole because this could be used as experimental evidence of how a black hole works. After looking into how the EHT was calibrated, I am extremely skeptical of their results. I'm not an Astrophysicist, but I have a lot of understanding of statistical causality and Scientific Philosophy. The EHT processes that made the image of a black hole break a lot of the scientific methods IMO. The algorithms they use to make the image of the black hole were never tested against a known celestial body to calibrate the algorithms. They took a "a posteriori" approach to their imaging algorithms, which do not produce accurate results. I noticed their unscientific approach to the imaging algorithms after when I watched "Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know", which is a first-hand account on how the EHT developed their black hole image. They were literally testing different imaging algorithms to find the one that looked most like a circle. The correct method would be to calibrate their imaging algorithms against a known celestial body to make sure their techniques produced comparable results from other instruments. Then they should have taken their calibrated imaging algorithms and gave it data from the M87 black hole, but they skipped the hole calibration step and went right into imaging the black hole, which makes me very skeptical of their results.

dane-pgp 4y ago
drcode 4y ago
I share your skepticism about the image, the problem is that without spending months learning the science & tech there is no way to substantiate our skepticism.
- fasteddie31003 4y ago
  Just show me a calibration image of a know celestial body using the exact same algorithms and I'll be satisfied.
  - lupire 4y ago
    It doesn't really matter. You are talking about a thing that severely distorts light and gravity. There is no real human-visible picture of it.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      Well, if it was nearby, we would see something. A camera would capture an image. Perhaps our brains would not do well understanding the actual object producing the picture though.
wumpus 4y ago
> The algorithms they use to make the image of the black hole were never tested against a known celestial body to calibrate the algorithms. This is not true, as is much of the rest of your comment. Please read the papers, they say everything that the collaboration did.
- fasteddie31003 4y ago
  I've taken hours and read https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0c57 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0c57 . My take away was they did a good job calibrating their signals, but I've never seen anything about calibrating their imaging algorithms. They have not calibrated the whole imaging stack. My skepticism is in the algorithms, not the signals.
  - rrss 4y ago
    When you say the “whole imaging stack,” which one do you mean? EHT imaged M87 with four teams working independently using different methods. Each of those teams used algorithms that were published and validated before the EHT results were published.
    - fasteddie31003 4y ago
      Did the 4 teams create their algorithms before getting the observation data and not modify them at all after seeing the results from the first run of their algorithms? Or was there data and algorithm tweaking to get the results that they wanted?
      - wumpus 4y ago
        That famous photo of the scientist with the ring image on their laptop screen was exactly that: after all 4 teams had tuned their algorithms to make sure they could accurately image the simulated data (ring, crescent, disk, double point source)... then all 4 teams imaged the actual data. That was the first moment, Eureka! Now that you've read the correct paper, you know that. You could have also learned it from the news releases, as it was an important part of the science.
_vdpp 4y ago
I feel like the use of astronomy and cosmology to model and understand sub-microscopic processes seems a little… backwards? Frankly, I’m ignorant of both but my gut feeling tells me it’s a bit of a scientific dead end. Would love to hear why I’m wrong or if anyone else more educated than I am in this area shares the same suspicions.
meroes 4y ago
My understanding of cosmology and astronomy is there is an inherent "ladder", nesting of assumptions, or indirect argument structure. Like, IF the Moon is a sphere, then by the shadows Earth leaves upon it during eclipses, Earth is a sphere. This reasoning came before Aristotle knew the Earth was sphere. https://youtu.be/7ne0GArfeMs?t=632 https://youtu.be/7ne0GArfeMs?t=632 This is still a way to do science. I'm willing to believe the experimenters dealt with the inherent novelty in a scientific way. What do you mean known celestial body?? We've only ever "been" to 2. We don't get to run all the experiments you'd like. As long as the process is self-correcting, it works. You have not shown this method to be uncorrecting. Better and better standards are used to strengthen these claims. And it is expected some degree of future corrections will occur. That's the nature of the beast.

dane-pgp 4y ago

drcode 4y ago

I share your skepticism about the image, the problem is that without spending months learning the science & tech there is no way to substantiate our skepticism.

fasteddie31003 4y ago
Just show me a calibration image of a know celestial body using the exact same algorithms and I'll be satisfied.
- lupire 4y ago
  It doesn't really matter. You are talking about a thing that severely distorts light and gravity. There is no real human-visible picture of it.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Well, if it was nearby, we would see something. A camera would capture an image. Perhaps our brains would not do well understanding the actual object producing the picture though.

wumpus 4y ago

> The algorithms they use to make the image of the black hole were never tested against a known celestial body to calibrate the algorithms. This is not true, as is much of the rest of your comment. Please read the papers, they say everything that the collaboration did.

fasteddie31003 4y ago
I've taken hours and read https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0c57 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0c57 . My take away was they did a good job calibrating their signals, but I've never seen anything about calibrating their imaging algorithms. They have not calibrated the whole imaging stack. My skepticism is in the algorithms, not the signals.
- rrss 4y ago
  When you say the “whole imaging stack,” which one do you mean? EHT imaged M87 with four teams working independently using different methods. Each of those teams used algorithms that were published and validated before the EHT results were published.
  - fasteddie31003 4y ago
    Did the 4 teams create their algorithms before getting the observation data and not modify them at all after seeing the results from the first run of their algorithms? Or was there data and algorithm tweaking to get the results that they wanted?
    - wumpus 4y ago
      That famous photo of the scientist with the ring image on their laptop screen was exactly that: after all 4 teams had tuned their algorithms to make sure they could accurately image the simulated data (ring, crescent, disk, double point source)... then all 4 teams imaged the actual data. That was the first moment, Eureka! Now that you've read the correct paper, you know that. You could have also learned it from the news releases, as it was an important part of the science.

_vdpp 4y ago

I feel like the use of astronomy and cosmology to model and understand sub-microscopic processes seems a little… backwards? Frankly, I’m ignorant of both but my gut feeling tells me it’s a bit of a scientific dead end. Would love to hear why I’m wrong or if anyone else more educated than I am in this area shares the same suspicions.

meroes 4y ago

My understanding of cosmology and astronomy is there is an inherent "ladder", nesting of assumptions, or indirect argument structure. Like, IF the Moon is a sphere, then by the shadows Earth leaves upon it during eclipses, Earth is a sphere. This reasoning came before Aristotle knew the Earth was sphere. https://youtu.be/7ne0GArfeMs?t=632 https://youtu.be/7ne0GArfeMs?t=632 This is still a way to do science. I'm willing to believe the experimenters dealt with the inherent novelty in a scientific way. What do you mean known celestial body?? We've only ever "been" to 2. We don't get to run all the experiments you'd like. As long as the process is self-correcting, it works. You have not shown this method to be uncorrecting. Better and better standards are used to strengthen these claims. And it is expected some degree of future corrections will occur. That's the nature of the beast.