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am_Unition  ·  1812 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: First Ever Images of a Black Hole

Hah, actually, nobody asked me nothin' this time around. Which was kinda nice.

We do have many confirmations of GR, like the precession of Mercury's perihelion, twin paradox experiments using atomic clocks, required GPS corrections, and so on. But the idea that we shouldn't continually constrain things both experimentally and theoretically is silly. Besides, the space near black holes is such an extreme environment that it's one of the best opportunities to see if GR breaks down.

Of course the first blurry images from something only several microarcseconds wide are gonna match the models. So don't do it? That's like saying we shouldn't take the first steps towards a necessary goal because the first steps are boring (which I disagree with anyway). Too bad, you gotta lay the groundwork for better imaging in the future. And I don't think anyone asking about "the point of it" has even a vague grasp of the technical challenges already overcome by the Event Horizon Telescope team.