http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/blackhole_milkyway_021016.html Only so long till we send spaceships out to the event horizon.
I suppose that some habitual sceptics will continue providing way-out alternative explanations for the observable stellar dynamics... right up until the black hole is directly imaged. If we can one day build a picture from the emission of virtual-pair neutrinos along the event horizon, or from gravity waves, or some such non-visual medium. Should be sooner than actual spacecraft go there!
...and my tooth-fairy was cheap - I only got a dime! The reality of "true-believers" is that they will always find what they are looking for; black holes included. Yeah! I'm still sceptical! "We can then use this information to infer that an event horizon is present." - so don't hold your breath!
I agree. "verified with near certainty" "observations rule out nearly all other possible explanations" "it is extremely hard to avoid the conclusion" "most astronomers believe a black hole to be the only viable model to explain" etc. etc. I didn't even get past a third of the article collecting such expressions of faith, 'cause that's all it amounts to.
How about "Our work proves that there is indeed a supermassive black hole in our own galaxy"? Or the conditional "If one accepts the universal validity of the laws of physics," before the "it is extremely hard to avoid the conclusion that the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way does indeed exist." /me rolls his eyes.
Roll eyes as much as you want, but if I do not unquestioningly accept one thing, and that makes me 'reject' therefore 'the universal validity of the laws of physics', I think someone is trying to either morally blackmail me like some priest on the rampage, or pull a fast one since it happens to be the mark of the confidence trickster, too. So that makes me extra cautious, 's all. Gullibility never got anyone anywhere.
No, you heard the man. Conclusive evidence it is. Stop making waves. Go with the flow. Be a good machine. Black holes are en vogue, what are you trying to do here, make an alternative fashion statement? Well, we're not amused and we're the majority. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think you will have to get a spacecraft of some sorts alot closer then we got to it now to even think about trying to image this.
Science should not be about fashions, or going with the current trend. It should be about drawing conclusions which fit the evidence - and if one man's conclusions disagree with those of the majority, he may still be right.
I'd really, really like to see an open debate on these things for a change. But fashion statements is all we get in return, as soon as it gets to real science the story gets very vague and undecided. People who don't understand anything are wowed, those that ask simple questions booed out of the building, and those that ask REALLY hard questions ignored. That's not science, that's the medieval way of doing theology.