How to Understand What Black Holes Look Like

Why HN readers recommended it

Recommended for correctly predicting the features of the real black hole image and clearly explaining the lensing physics behind it.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Veritasium

Topic

black hole imaging

Format

explainer

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

8

HN mentions in dataset

10

Recommendation years in dataset

2019–2021

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Related video, made by Veritasium yesterday, is one of my favorite videos in a long time. He explained how the prediction of this image was made (before the image got released) and the video is great and fun to watch. [VIDEO]

• Good video that correctly predicted the image and describes why it looks the way it does [1]. TL; DR The dark area is the entire surface of the event horizon, including the side facing away from us, plus some more due to photons missing the …

• If you mean the brightness asymmetry, it's because the accretion disc is spinning. This video predicts pretty well all of the features we expected to find, and it lines up with the actual image. [VIDEO]