How did they actually take this picture? (Very Long Baseline Interferometry)

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This is an image of the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
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Image of Sgr A* from EHT collaboration
Event Horizon Telescope collaboration: https://ve42.co/EHT

Animations from The Relativistic Astrophysics group, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Massive thanks to Prof. Luciano Rezzolla, Dr Christian Fromm and Dr Alejandro Cruz-Osorio.

A huge thanks to Prof. Peter Tuthill and Dr Manisha Caleb for feedback on earlier versions of this video and helping explain VLBI.

Great video by Thatcher Chamberlin about VLBI here – https://d-yt.com/watch/Y8rAHTvpJbk

Animations and simulations with English text:
L. R. Weih & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt)
https://d-yt.com/watch/jvftAadCFRI

Video of stars going around Sgr A* from European Southern Observatory
https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1825e/

Video zooming into the center of our galaxy from European Southern Observatory
https://d-yt.com/watch/dXAU0gzsPOw

Video of observation of M87 courtesy of:
C. M. Fromm, Y. Mizuno & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt)
https://d-yt.com/watch/meOKmzhTcIY

Video of observation of SgrA* courtesy of
C. M. Fromm, Y. Mizuno & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Z. Younsi (University College London)
https://d-yt.com/watch/VnsZj9RvhFU

Video of telescopes in the array 2017:
C. M. Fromm & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt)
https://d-yt.com/watch/Ame7fzBuFnk

Animations and simulations (no text):
L. R. Weih & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt)
https://d-yt.com/watch/XmvpKFSvB7A

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Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Inconcision, Kelly Snook, TTST, Ross McCawley, Balkrishna Heroor, Chris LaClair, Avi Yashchin, John H. Austin, Jr., OnlineBookClub.org, Dmitry Kuzmichev, Matthew Gonzalez, Eric Sexton, john kiehl, Anton Ragin, Diffbot, Micah Mangione, MJP, Gnare, Dave Kircher, Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Dumky, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Bill Linder, Paul Peijzel, Josh Hibschman, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, jim buckmaster, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Stephen Wilcox, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Clayton Greenwell, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal

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Written by Derek Muller
Animation by Ivy Tello, Mike Radjabov, Maria Raykova
Thumbnail by Ignat Berbeci
Filmed by Petr Lebedev

#veritasium#science#physics

Emilley Anderson . 3 days ago

this is a picture of the super massive black hole in the Milky Way called Sagittarius a star

Robert Cox . 6 days ago

Does it show a multicore? It occurs to me that without angular momentum a black hole collapses into nothing.

R. C. Engineering . 1 week ago

That zoom-in was unfathomable.

Stefan . 1 week ago

Why is the accretion disk not an accretion sphere? The shortest distance to a point (the singularity) is a straight line. If matter is everywhere, shouldn't it be a sphere? If it would be a sphere then we would look at a star that actually had a black hole inside and we couldn't know that?

Dancing Equilibrium . 2 weeks ago

Go to a black hole and look in a direction, come back a time later and stand opposing to see myself looking at me... return again later to see my reaction.

Big Jon, Tow operator . 3 weeks ago

The hell is an arc minute?

Deepak Mehta . 4 weeks ago

No one explained it so clearly before. Thank you!

INDY . 4 weeks ago

Thank God someone can explain this to a caveman like me

Slayr . 1 month ago

Black holes are flat.

Des Troya . 1 month ago

lol "light orbiting curved space time". Absolute nonsense. Space-time curvature is just a device of GR rather than reality. Curved space-time doesn't explain basic gravity near Earth, so it can't be used to explain or create behavior of a so called blackhole.

Smudger 05 . 1 month ago

Ain’t cgi a great tool

SUPREETH . 1 month ago

great work!

Jack L . 1 month ago

In April 2023, the image of the M87 Black Hole is reconstructed or sharpened with PRIMO machine learning algorithm.

According to SciTechDaily, "PRIMO relies on dictionary learning, a branch of machine learning which enables computers to generate rules based on large sets of training material. For example, if a computer is fed a series of different banana images—with sufficient training—it may be able to determine if an unknown image is or is not a banana."

VLBI is akin to taking spot colors of a few pixels of an image and guessing the colors of the missing pixels to create an estimated complete image. We don't really know how much the image resembles the real thing since we have not seen a black hole up close. It would be very interesting to show how good or bad VLBI is by using it to create an image of something we are familiar with, such as Saturn and its rings, at the same resolution as the EHT.

Daniel Atlas . 1 month ago

I would have supposed that the difficulty isn’t the distance but the time difference since the image has taken 26 thousand years to get here with the black hole in the center of our galaxy,it really can’t be up to date.

Daniel Atlas . 1 month ago

Question the picture is basically 26 thousand years old and black holes grow ,has somebody calculated what the size would be today and how that affects the closer stars to it ?

manglem . 1 month ago

Isn't 1.3mm wavelength under microwave category?

Cory Dinsmore . 2 months ago

In 1783 John Michell first theorized the existence of a black hole. What a absolute beautiful mind. It's too bad he never got the chance to be proven correct.

Mark Rossi . 2 months ago

So round objects can appear as disks….Flat Earthers would agree, haha. But I gonna make things a little bit harder here. Singularities ( or black holes as you wish), not only encounter space time effects, there is also the phenomenon of quantum fluctuations. Events may appear out of nothing suddenly….and disappear. Simplifying things like we are doing here gets flawed again due to quantum imaging effects. All at the same ‘time’. Besides, recalling the other phenomenon; photons behaving different once being observed by an observer. To sum things up; we are being deceived constantly by what we experience, see, feel or encounter, or think what we know about the Universe. Making snap shots of events won’t bring any answers. Just like a photograph cannot be compared to video. As even the void is not empty, it is just not revealing what is present already. Singularities represent the full video trapped in eternity, while all we can comprehend is the snap shot we take of these events. Yet all this co-exists simultaneously. You need a lot of ketamine or DMT to actually witness this yourself, hahaha. Only then you will get a small glimpse of the multiple layers that surround our visible world. And you will understand better in the end. After all we are also just a bunch of stacked atoms that have their offspring once in some cosmic event. I can see the beauty of it now. The full video rather than looking at photographs or snapshots of it.

Andrew Sampson . 2 months ago

Looks like the galaxy runs Ubuntu Linux... 🐧

Big Dog . 2 months ago

it's all CGI. it gives all the NPC's that thinks anything from any of these "telescopes" is real, their download.

Dingoniner . 2 months ago

This video absolutely.boggled.my.mind. I mean, holy cow.

Drayson Crook . 2 months ago

So we can see the entire black hole at all times

Rico Willow . 2 months ago

Quite fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

Mark One . 2 months ago

explained in very awesome way. Thanks ... :)

Boris Karagiannis . 2 months ago

1:56 what is the speed of this video here in witch we see damn star size objects moving that fast? are we watching years or month passing in seconds?

Teufelshunde27 . 2 months ago

what would happen if a black hole collapsed, or stoped pulling matter into its self

Hiếu / Cosmos Multiverse . 3 months ago

If we can fly into blackhole. I'm will sign up volunteer

Thane Thurber . 3 months ago

with its size it is somewhat like a filament

Ace . 3 months ago

This is the most amazing thing, and brings to mind how much of a very real testament to the enormous collection of what is yet a small percentage of the whole, of savants, geniuses, or those with a deep appreciation for specificity that discovered to give it expression through mathematics and physics, and how so many have spent their lives toiling over some problem that most wouldn’t attempt, but instead stretching some concept as far as the mind could venture, until in combination with knowledge previously stored, until a thought is born that never would have been given any form of existence unless discovered by a brain with the intent push boundaries and the tools to assist, given current understanding of a field that’s fallible, or not, and a problem that certainly is reality, and infallible; that is until it is overcome.
It just makes me imagine all of the millions or billions of families going back hundreds, thousands or millions of years that lie in their sleeping quarters throughout their entire lives in darkness, so much and for so long that the idea of lighting the night were absurd. Generations and generations that came and lives and died and even on their death bed, cot, rock or whatever, couldn’t have imagined the world we live in now. That we are flying through space at speeds beyond conprehension, and those speeds and distances don’t even exist when considering the size of our entire galaxy, which is just as miniature still yet when talking of the entire universe, which may be yet again another piece of sand in an endless desert.
But all those people and how that particular topic hit a focal point from which it was forever altered when a guy named Thomas Edison dedicated his life to it, and set up the lap that would produce the exit ramp from darkness for every human that would follow.

Rizwan Nazeer . 3 months ago

14:35 nice hair, black hole. :)

Nintendope . 3 months ago

Interesting

Amr Ibrahim . 3 months ago

love your content

Nintendope . 3 months ago

Mad

Alex Mottley . 3 months ago

Imagine if the pyramids were radio telescopes of some kind, perfectly aligned to true North, with many dotted around the world in seemingly perfect locations, with all lore pointing towards them having some relation to the Cosmos. Imagine if Nicola Tesla had some theories pointing towards this....

Ram K . 3 months ago

How did radio waves reach an object that is our black hole which is about 1600 light years far away from earth to get these image data!!

parkeasd . 3 months ago

Wow

Deで . 3 months ago

Bro teached us more than school.

Kagamikiller . 3 months ago

Well that's weird.

Lyle Jones . 3 months ago

💥💥••○💥○••💥💥

Alastor 3D . 3 months ago

Amazing video! Thank you!

Jerichocassini . 3 months ago

This is an amazing video about incredible people, thank you.

Someone Unimportant . 3 months ago

Question: Why haven't we used this Very-Long-Baseline method to see much closer objects which are still pretty blurry by normal telescope?
Note. I have tried to search for an answer to this question, but still haven't found any. Or my phrasing is just too awkward which makes google can't direct me to the right discussion

Mahesh Walatara . 3 months ago

All them Billions of Dollars and they couldn't get it in focus. SMH.

ItzDust . 3 months ago

Shout out to the camera man

Rakketz . 3 months ago

This video made my head hurt, but I love it. Well done!

Happy Entertainment . 3 months ago

Could you look back at earth if light was orbiting and shot back by a black hole?

magnum . 3 months ago

thank you so much for this explanation!

marathonman . 4 months ago

While I do love your video's the proof of the existence of black holes is entirely conjecture and the computer generated material has no proof to substantiate it. Hawking's absurdities strikes again.
Our entire universe is a secretion disc which accounts for the so called expansion of our universe. The image you show looks like three large bodies merging, tearing each other apart not a black hole. Taking things at face value is what most humans do instead of spending the time to do real research is the root of all misconceptions.
I would love to be proven wrong yet I see no evidence as such!

Brian Carruthers . 4 months ago

I love your channel
Maybe you can answer a question
If the universe started from a singularity, then everywhere is at the center of an expanding universe.
So how can light from the beginning of the universe be reaching us now?

BandofHorses 1985 . 4 months ago

Is anybody going to eat that donut?

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4, 872, 790 views

How did they actually take this picture? (Very Long Baseline Interferometry)

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