Talk:Very-long-baseline interferometry

Comments

The first section could use a rewrite, since it is hard to read for those outside the astronomy field. "Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is a type of interferometry in which the data received at each antenna in the array is paired with timing information, usually from a local atomic clock, and then stored for later analysis on magnetic tape or hard disk.". A casual reader may wonder: which antenna, which array? Why is timing so crucial that it is mentioned in the very first sentence?

I'm not an expert in this field, so I hope someone else can do this. I suggest to first tell this has (1) something to do with radioastronomy and (2) involves multiple, geographically seperated, telescopes.

Macfreek 12:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The pictures are inappropriate. Neither ALMA nor the SMA is a very long baseline array. The SMA has been used as one station of the event horizon telescope, in combination with CARMA in California and the Hertz telescope in Arizona, but the vast majority of the time it functions as a traditional interferometer. Someone should find a press photo montage of the VLBA instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.133.89.178 (talk) 21:52, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that the most important difference of interferometry and VLBI is not explained here. AFAIU, interference patterns happen when “collapse of quantum probability” (same as “measuring”) happens after mixing two signals. And storing signals on tape/disk requires that the measuring happens before the storage. Essentially, if correct, this would mean that classical sources would not lead to any interference patterns in VLBI. One would need a measurable fraction of pairs of photons in the same quantum state (“lasing”/“masing” effect) so that one photon may be captured (“measured”) at one antenna, and its identical twin is then captured at the other antenna. IIRC, this explains most illustrations of VLBI involving the “maser” word. 76.218.120.86 (talk) 01:08, 7 June 2013 (UTC)iz

resolution

changed wikilink resolution to Angular resolution. please change if you know a better place to point artical too. STHayden ^{[ Talk ]} 01:58, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Space-VLBI

HALCA is no longer active as of 2005. Refer to http://www.vsop.isas.ac.jp/ for updated information. ChrisTracy (talk) 06:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Local storage, really?

I'm not involved in the VLA but I have to wonder, in this day of computer networks, if the initial explanation of saving data and atomic clock timing to a tape is perhaps outdated. They must have power supplies and command signals running out to these things, why wouldn't they send timestamped signals back over the network. Also, why would they need an atomic clock at each antenna? Doesn't seem right.

Kruglick (talk) 19:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems fairly like the RX12874 - Passive Detection Linesman/Mediator radar system http://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/linesman/pd.htm . Just replace jamming aircraft with radio stars, and you've got a real time system that did much of the same stuff back in 1956.Think the storing of the "un-correlated" data allows off line processing (when computing capacity is available/cheaper) Also expect radio telescopes might go down from time to time (or be used for other things), so it probably very important that the processing can cope with a reconfigurable array-without losing data for sources that are still part of the array. Could also allow for something like a phased array - where the array could be "virtually" pointed in any direction, even if it wasn't originally pointing in that direction.

82.47.136.229 (talk) 01:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved to Very-long-baseline interferometry per the discussion below. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 23:26, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

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Very Long Baseline Interferometry → Very long baseline interferometry –

Per WP:MOSCAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") and WP:TITLE, this is a generic process, so the article title should be downcased. In addition, WP:MOSCAPS says that a compound item should not be upper-cased just because it is abbreviated with caps. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. Tony (talk) 02:42, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Completely non-controversial. (You could have just placed a {{db-move}} template on the target).TR 13:52, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose – why you fix the caps and not the punctuation at the same time, per good sources? Dicklyon (talk) 05:10, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Quite so: thanks for pointing that out. I've moved the article as you suggest. Tony (talk) 13:27, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Event Horizon Interferometer

An image of the M87 black hole has been added, with this caption: "VLBI was used to create the first direct image of a black hole, imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope and published in April 2019."

There has been a huge amount of hype from the team behind this effort.

• This is not a direct image of the black hole. You can't make an image of a black hole, only of the matter swirling around it.
• The image is not 'direct' - it's constructed from radio signals, and those do not have an orange colour.
• Using VLBI to investigate cosmic radio objects has been around since the 60s.
• Gravitational lensing and the presence of axial jets has been used before to conclude that a black hole must be present.

I've watched two documentaries about this experiment (both Horizon, so both basically pop science). All of the scientists appearing on these programs insisted that they had made a direct image of a black hole.; they're all on-message. I don't doubt that the experiment was momentous; but the puff that appears in newspaper reports and TV documentaries fails to explain why.

As far as I can see, it might be the first time VLBI has been used to observe a black hole at millimetre wavelengths. That would be interesting, but it wouldn't justify all the puff that has been generated. I believe that millimetre wavelengths means hydrogen plasma (i.e. protons); but none of the material I've seen or read goes into that kind of silly scientific detail. I think I read somewhere that the experiment showed that there was a stream of very hot protons orbiting the black hole; I suspect that observation may relate to the claims that EHT has successfully confirmed a prediction made by A. Einstein (but AFAIK Einstein had never heard of a black hole, and didn't believe in singularities).

Can someone who knows more than me about this please strip out some of the puff and pop science, and replace them with some facts? MrDemeanour (talk) 13:03, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

To be clear: I do realize that the image caption is cited. But that just exposes the weakness of the Wikipedia "citation == truth" policy. It's all very well to try to defend a political or historical position by citing sources; people can legitimately have varying positions on such subjects. But much of science is concerned with facts, such as whether it can ever be possible to image a black hole. The fact that you can't arises directly from the definition of a black hole; it's not an empirical fact that could be falsified, it's effectively a mathematical truth. You can't change a mathematical truth by using 'reliable sources'. MrDemeanour (talk) 13:11, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree, the word "direct" is incorrect. The image was constructed using very indirect means. However, it is still real and meaningful as if it were "direct". For most WP readers this is nuance. How many people know that MRI images are not really "direct" for example? I will take it upon myself to remove this word. LaurentianShield (talk) 02:20, 27 April 2019 (UTC)