Thanks for calling them out (again). Honestly people in this forum are too eager to upvote contrarian opinions. I hold a PhD in physics, and I wouldn't feel qualified to challenge ETH's work.

I’m fine with questions and challenges, but not aggressive ones from people who don’t like my explanation and will not read the literature.

Science is not religion and contrarian opinions strengthen science results. I think it's healthy to always have a dose of skepticism, and is not uncommon for astrophysics papers to be retracted or refuted.

Absolutely, but those retractions are led by other astronomers/astrophysicists, not lay people presenting straw men.

I think people's priors here are out of whack -- perhaps the truth does lie somewhere in the middle, but if so, it will be much closer to ETH's version than the OP's.

Astronomers/astrophysicists started first, by misrepresenting the process and bringing the talk of taking photos and having "visual evidence".

"...We have seen, and taken a picture, of a Black Hole."

https://youtu.be/lnJi0Jy692w?t=456

Yes? He’s correct.

There we go again...If you had a photo you not would need to make the merge of the four different images achieved by the four different teams.

Now the you have published the data from 2017, If I publish my own "photo", and I chose blue with spots of white, using the same library you used and the same color maps:

https://github.com/liamedeiros/ehtplot/blob/docs/docs/COLORM...

Why yours will be more a picture than mine in blue? Maybe I will even splint a little bit of red in there...

I’m looking forward to reading your scientific paper.

And I am looking forward to have many other different teams reproduce your results independently.

I also would like to notice you did not explain why my blue "picture" would be less a "picture" than yours.

Enjoy:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022arXiv220510267P/abstra...

A picture of a black hole would be always artificial, for color don't really exist as it's only the brain interpretation of a part of the EM spectrum heavily averaged, that's why we don't see green stars even if there are many stars whose strongest light is green, like our own sun.

Taking a real picture of a black hole like with a cellphone camera would likely be just like a bright white star.

I think you are talking about the conversation we had here. So in this case you replied to a different person.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31281773

No, this one, same user, same skepticism, 19 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31134691

Btw we released the 2017 calibrated data today, too.

Thanks! You anticipated my question:-)

I did read them and I'm not satisfied with their methods.

How about this independent analysis:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022arXiv220510267P/abstra...

You read the 10 just published papers? Impressive.

Either you are an expert in this field than it should be you who writes a clear argument and present it or you are not an expert.

Aren't they are peer reviewed?

What is your expertise in astrophysics?

He has a theoretical degree in astrophysics.

He still didn’t read and understand 10 papers this fast

it was a joke from a Fallout game - he has a "theoretical degree in astrophysics" not a "degree in theoretical astrophysics" :)

Welcome aboard!