Saturday, February 16, 2019

Did the new image of black hole confirm the general theory of relativity? (M87)



How can we do it just by looking at the image. But I heard in news saying "Einstein was right! black hole image confirms GTR. The image is so less detailed that I can't even make some pretty good points. Please correct me if I'm wrong on any aspect. Please provide a link if this question sounds duplicate...



Answer



I think it's fair to say that the EHT image definitely is consistent with GR, and so GR continues to agree with experimental data so far. The leading paper in the 10th April 2019 issue of Astrophysical Journal letters says (first sentence of the 'Discussion' section):



A number of elements reinforce the robustness of our image and the conclusion that it is consistent with the shadow of a black hole as predicted by GR.



I'm unhappy about the notion that this 'confirms' GR: it would be more correct to say that GR has not been shown to be wrong by this observation: nothing can definitively confirm a theory, which can only be shown to agree with experimental data so far.


This depends of course on the definition of 'confirm': above I am taking it to mean 'shown to be correct' which I think is the everyday usage and the one implied in your question, and it's that meaning I object to. In particular it is clearly not the case that this shows 'Einstein was right': it shows that GR agrees with experiment (extremely well!) so far, and this and LIGO both show (or are showing) that GR agrees with experiment in regions where the gravitational field is strong.


(Note that, when used informally by scientists, 'confirm' very often means exactly 'shown to agree with experiment so far' and in that sense GR has been confirmed (again) by this observation. I'm assuming that this is not the meaning you meant however.)





At least one other answer to this question is excellent and very much worth reading in addition to this.


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