Black holes have always remained the center of attention for scientists, along with being the most perplexing phenomenon. Recently, astronomers released a new image of a black hole, but instead of raising excitement for researchers, it has become a cause of concern. Some discrepancies have been identified in these images, and it has led to a debate among two rival groups of researchers. The first-ever picture of a black hole was released by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2019, which is a product of eight telescopes. Although the images depicted a ring of light, apprehensions have been raised about their accuracy.
We are talking about the black hole named “M87”, whose image has been released after three years of research by Japanese scientists. This group of researchers took data from the original images of the black hole released back in 2019 by the EHT and used it to form a new image after rigorous analysis, and it looks quite different from the original, as reported by New Scientist.
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan researcher Makato Myoshi and his colleagues used a wider field of view to get the new image of M87*, which cut out the ring of light around the donut-shaped structure that appeared in older image. Considering this, the Japanese researchers have alleged that other images of black holes may be prone to the same error. “It may be that the same mistake formed the ring image in the case of Sagittarius A,” Myoshi said. It has also been reported that due to these problems, scientists might likely start demanding videos from now on instead of pictures because of such anomalies.
For their part, the EHT scientists are pushing back against these claims. “[Myoshi’s team] used this extraordinarily large field of view,” Geoffrey Bower, an EHT project scientist, told New Scientist. “You can get almost anything you want if you give yourself that kind of freedom.” The major cause of concern now lies with how further images of the black hole will turn out. The debate will likely go on between the two groups of researchers, but that’s how science flows.
