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Certain scientific breakthroughs always seem to be a few years away. The first direct observation of a black hole has long fallen into this category. Whoops, left the lens cover on. Think anyone will notice?
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I'll just send them a picture of my last car.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Don't worry, they'll just make sh1t up and use photoshop to paint a picture, like astronomers always do.
But light does reflect from black holes. There's no way it couldn't. The only problem is that you wouldn't be able to tell where the black hole is that the light's reflecting off of*.
* But there's an extremely high possibility that black holes don't exist, anyway, so don't fret too much over it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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It's a common misconception that light can't "get away" from a (theoretical) black hole.
As with any body, photons hitting a black hole's humongously fast-moving "atmosphere" at an angle will bounce off, and the only effect that the black hole's gravity will have is to skew the outward path of the light, so that the angle of reflection is nothing like the angle of incidence -- in fact, it's curved.
It's only light hitting head on and light generated by the black hole itself that would not be able to escape.
Of course, because the angles of reflection are curved, using reflected light to "see" where a a black hole is is pointless, because it's impossible to tell where it is unless you know:
0. The exact angles of incidence of the reflected light stream you are using
1. The nature of the "atmosphere" of the black hole -- which, again, can only be wildly guessed at
2. The precise gravity, spin, etc. of the black hole, and therefore the precise curvature of the particular stream of light you're using
3. How much reflective/absorptive cr@p is in the way
Saying "Hey! I'm picking up a few photons that I'm declaring to be from a black hole, and this is it's location!" would be totally idiotic, because it could be millions of parsecs from where it appears to be.
But, of course, that doesn't stop astronomers making such ridiculous declarations.
I will be very happy on the day that astronomy becomes a real science, where proper scientific principles are adhered to -- rather than an endless stream of wild, fanciful guesses being declared to be science.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: I will be very happy on the day that astronomy becomes a real science All you have to do is wish upon a star and all your dreams will come true.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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N_tro_P wrote: You are basically making my point Your point was: "So really we aren't going to take a "picture" of a black hole considering no light reflects off of it but instead gets sucked into it so we are capturing the absence of stuff... Which coincidentally looks a lot like... Well the absence of stuff"
I'd be interested to see how I'm making that point.
... Actually I wouldn't. Bored with this, now.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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N_tro_P wrote: You claimed it is in fact reflected but then went on to say you can't determine the where the BH is because of missing data Sorry, but I can't equate that with "no light reflects off of it but instead gets sucked into it". All the words are different, even down to the spelling.
N_tro_P wrote: the reflection curve could in fact be inverse (i.e. goes inward not outward). That would be refraction, not reflection.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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N_tro_P wrote: Semantics Indeed it is.
"Reflection" is "bouncing away from". That is its meaning.
It therefore does not -- cannot -- mean "getting sucked in".
That's about as semantic a point as you can get.
If you want to use words to mean something other than what they actually mean, don't expect to be understood.
... And don't intentionally misinterpret correctly used words that are carefully crafted not to be misinterpreted. That's just damned insulting.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I suggest that you (consult a decent dictionary) AND (study physics) .
Reflection is always AWAY FROM. Something cannot reflect light toward itself. Light that goes inward is refracted, and light that is diverted around something is diffracted.
I've given you all three key words: reflection, refraction, and diffraction. Have fun learning -- but don't come back claiming to be an expert on something that I've known, and worked with, for decades.
And I repeat: As always, I used precise wording. That is what I do. Always. If you want to reinterpret words in your own way, feel free; just don't expect anyone else to follow your personal preferences, or to understand what you are saying.
Claiming that light can be reflected inward is as bad as claiming that gravity pushes things away.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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You really are embarrassing yourself, here, because it's not only clear that you don't know basic Physics, but that you also don't know basic grammar, either -- i.e. you seem to think that the word "semantics" can be used derogatively.
Here's a tip: It can be used derogatively to the exact same extent that the words "syntax" and "punctuation" can be used derogatively -- and using the word as if it had negative connotations is exactly the same as using the words "syntax" and "punctuation" as if they had negative connotations.
I suggest that you do not base your English grammar on the way words are used in American-sit-com-style smarmy "humour", but instead that you, once again, consult a decent dictionary to learn what the word "semantic" actually means -- after all, what words mean is Precisely what the word "semantics" is all about.
Feel free to rant on, in the uneducated way that you have so far demonstrated. I will no longer read this thread.
p.s. bear in mind that no-one else in the entire world is reading this thread, either, so I would further suggest that you don't waste your time writing any replies -- although, from what I have seen so far, I somewhat doubt that you will take that advice.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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What they will likely try to take a picture of is the accretion disk of an actively feeding black hole.
edit: or possible a perfect Einstein ring of a single background star - though that would require some pretty specific alignments.
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Google has now formally responded to two antitrust charges brought against it by Europe’s Competition Commission, rebutting charges of exploiting the popularity of its search engine to boost its price comparison service, Google Shopping, and its ad placement service, AdSense. "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?"
Your choice as to which of those two is unstoppable, and which is immovable.
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After the EU finishes with Google they start to take on the shipping companies that use their container ships to transport goods across the oceans.
Or perhaps farmers for hiding their seeds underground when they plant, thus depriving consumers the right to be sure they planted what they said they planted.
Ravings en masse^ |
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"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Never overestimate the ability of a governmental bureaucracy to be immovable except when confronted with a government bureaucracy higher in the chain, if there is one. (This is especially when extorting money from a person, company or subordinate governmental bureaucracy.)
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Change will bring smaller downloads and quicker checking for updates. Didn't they promise that years ago?
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For all their failings, I'm actually fairly impressed with their progress in this regard as it stands already. I've a number of aspects to complain about with the update mechanism, but size isn't one of them. Checking? Well, that has enjoyed a chequered past.
Anyone that's bought a brand-new pc/console game and copped a multi-gigabyte release-day patch may feel just the same way. My internet's expensive. In many cases, the patch will cost me 50% of what the game did. Elephant that - I'm not going to drop another $15k on a car because they've rushed it to market, why should this be so different?
modified 3-Nov-16 22:33pm.
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The nation state has a single point of failure fiber, recently installed in 2011, and could spell disaster for dozens of other countries. "Our rights to prove, we will o'er all prevail"
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A VSCode person can (and probably will) answer in more detail, but at heart it's... | Hacker News[^]
Microsoft publishes a list of known good declaration files for popular npm packages to npm, under the scope @types: https://www.npmjs.com/~types
The 1.7 release of VSCode helpfully tries to automatically load type declarations for any npm package you use by requesting the equivalent declaration package under @types. When the package exists this is fine, because it's cached in our CDN.
What they forgot to consider is that most CDNs don't cache 404 responses, and since there are 350,000 packages and less than 5000 type declarations, the overwhelming majority of requests from VSCode to the registry were 404s. This hammered the hell out of our servers until we put caching in place for 404s under the @types scope.
We didn't start caching 404s for every package, and don't plan to, because that creates annoying race conditions for fresh publishes, which is why most CDNs don't cache 404s in the first place.
There are any number of ways to fix this, and we'll work with Microsoft to find the best one, but fundamentally you just need a more network-efficient way of finding out which type declarations exist. At the moment there are few enough that they could fetch a list of all of them and cache it (the public registry lacks a documented API for doing that right now, but we can certainly provide one).
Marc
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