[defrost]

Stuff in the vicinity of what was assumed to be a black hole.

Pretty compelling evidence for a black hole right there, given the energy levels, orbital speeds, etc .. but not "a picture of a black hole".

( More a Margritte picture of a Black Hole ).

NB: I still believe in black holes despite this new study.

[eesmith]

Not a new study. It's from 2014.

We also know there's a very massive and small something at the center of the Milky Way, because we can see things orbiting it. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A* video "Stars moving around Sagittarius A*, 20-year timelapse, ending in 2018")

And we can measure gravitational ways from what appear to black holes - something needs to explain the observations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_obs... .

[defrost]

Well, relative to my first Marcel Grossmann Meeting [1] (MGM5 in Perth, 1988, along with JG [2]) it's a new paper.

In any case, the paper doesn't claim that black holes can't form.

It claims that under conditions X, Y, and Z they don't form.

And, as usual, there's been a slew of robust responses.

[1] http://www.icra.it/MG/

[2] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.gauntlett

[eesmith]

I think I may be forgiven for assuming you got "new study" from reading the HN title, and not from dating the 2014 paper relative to your participation in the field.

[defrost]

No drama.

Dates blur at my age, I opened the linked article, saw Mersini-Houghton, and was happy to run with 'new study' as it was certainly within the last decade .. :)

I'm more numerical engineering | geophysical data aquisition than astro .. although there's overlap as projects such as SKA need a bit of ground signal elimination in their processing pipelines.