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Errors with In the news

We do our readers a disservice by repeating the hyperbole in some portions of the press, that this is an image "of a black hole". A black hole being black and all, you don't get to see it.

This is a high-resolution (microarcsecond) observation of the region around a black hole, and in particular of material near the event horizon, with a touch of gravitational lensing and relativistic beaming thrown in: the dark gap in the middle, or shadow, is where the black hole should be, but it will be smaller than that space. Here are some good accounts of it.[1][2]

And here are a couple of articles on the predictions of the expected emission from the edge of the accretion disc close to the black hole, which match pretty closely what has been seen.[3][4]

Even Time gets it approximately right:[5] "True to the nature of the science, the picture does not show the black hole itself. ... What the picture reveals instead is the black hole’s so-called event horizon, the swirl of gas and dust and stars and light itself, circling the gravitational drain, before they’re sucked inside never, ever to reemerge."

The discussion in ApJL[6] talks about: "ultra-high angular resolution images of radio emission ... an irregular but clear bright ring, whose size and shape agree closely with the expected lensed photon orbit of a 6.5 billion solar mass black hole." The abstract of Paper IV talks about "a prominent ring with a diameter of ~40 μas, consistent with the size and shape of the lensed photon orbit encircling the "shadow" of a supermassive black hole."

Don't get me wrong: this is an important observation, but can we be accurate please. 213.205.240.149 (talk) 19:38, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

The article on Event Horizon Telescope gets this right too: the caption for the same image says: "First image of the event horizon of a black hole (M87*) captured by the Event Horizon Telescope." The Main Page should say something similar. 213.205.240.149 (talk) 21:29, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

If someone shows an image of, say, a black rock, no one says, "Here is a picture of the absence of light caused by the absorption of all wavelengths of visible light by the pigment compounds contained in a rock." According to general relativity, we can't ever interact with anything beyond the event horizon. There is currently no scientific consensus on the ultimate fate of an observer that crosses the event horizon, and so we don't even have an answer to what things "really look like" beyond it, or what's "really at the center of a black hole". From outside the event horizon, this is what you see when you look at the thing. Natural language is vague and imprecise, and when talking about things so alien to human intuition it tends to be unsatisfying. I think it's more wrong to say "image of the event horizon", as the article does, because an event horizon is not a physical object or surface, and the image includes things well outside the event horizon. It's like an image depicting the Sun and Mercury being labelled as "an image of Mercury's orbit". A more precise description of the image would be "radio emissions from a black hole and its accretion disk", but that's a bit of a mouthful. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 23:53, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

• Suggest the wording be "The Event Horizon Telescope project publishes..." to avoid the impression that a telescope is publishing something. Jmar67 (talk) 11:40, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

  It's standard synecdoche- JCPenney sells clothing, despite being dead for 50 years. The EHT is a project, not a telescope. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:23, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

  The blurb could easily make that clear. Jmar67 (talk) 12:43, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

• The current wording is optimal, the sort of hedging and circumlocution the OP seems to favor impedes clear communication. I'm with Steven Pinker on this one; writing in clear, straightforward prose aids communication. Getting too deep in the weeds (yeah, I know, we can't see "black" things because there's no light coming off them, yada yada yada, it's the event horizon of the object, not the actual object, yada yada yada) all impedes understanding. The image of the ring of material around a black hole also contains the black hole in the middle of the ring. The pedantry to say "well, actually..." is not useful in a blurb. The current blurb is fine with regards to that. I'd be fine, however, with changing the other issue. Adding the word "project" in there probably works better. But otherwise, the blurb doesn't need much changing beyond that. --Jayron32 12:48, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, even to this non-science guy "direct image" sounds like an oversimplification. How about "composite image" – ?? Sca (talk) 13:22, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

That would sound as if there were previous images of a black hole, but this one is the first composite image. I think just "the first image" or the "the first photograph" would be fine. Brandmeister^talk 18:04, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Errors in On this day

Today's OTD

• In the football item, defeated is repeated. Also, the blurb calls the score "the largest ever", which makes it unclear if it means it's the largest margin of victory or the largest number of goals scored by one side. I suppose it's both, but from my quick read, the target article says only that it's the largest victory. -⁠-⁠184.248.0.155 (talk) 01:40, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

I have the same question about the phrasing used on the main page, but the phrasing "largest victory" is just as confusing to me. Is that simply "highest winning score" (no games have ever ended with the winning team having more than 31 points, regardless of the score of the losing team) or is it "largest margin of victory" (no game has ever ended with a difference between the winning and losing scores of more than 31 points). For comparison and contrast, a hypothetical game that ended 32–2 would have a higher winning score, but a lower margin of victory.--Khajidha (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Per the source, it's the largest margin of victory. I have changed both the article and the blurb. —howcheng {chat} 15:52, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Can we change the blurb? Someone has changed it to "largest winning margin", which is a very clunky and unusual phrasing compared to "margin of victory". --Khajidha (talk) 15:58, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

The source uses "Biggest winning margins", but OK. —howcheng {chat} 16:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

That was a title for a table, this is running prose. The two can be quite different.--Khajidha (talk) 16:15, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Errors in the featured picture

Today's POTD

• Hyphenate "20 franc" and "40 franc" in the two blurbs for consistency with the links to each page. 72.94.18.179 (talk) 16:16, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

• France joined the euro in 1999... Can a nation be said to join a currency? I suggest changing it to France decided in 1999 to adopt the euro... (and not France decided to adopt the euro in 1999... to avoid the momentary impression that the franc was replaced in 1999). -⁠-⁠184.207.214.23 (talk) 00:25, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I now see that France did adopt the euro in 1999, but alongside the franc. Still, my doubt about the use of join remains. -⁠-⁠184.207.214.23 (talk) 00:30, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

"Join the euro" is I think a set phrase, at least in the UK (examples: Financial Times, Independent, BBC). You're right that people don't say "join the dollar" etc, but the difference is probably that "the euro" is both a currency and a formal international institution. For what it's worth the EU itself uses the phrase "joining the euro area" (eg), which might be another alternative. 82.4.185.182 (talk) 03:56, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

• Paris Mint could be replaced with "Monnaie de Paris", the article is located at the French name. RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 05:31, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
• We have an article on the 20 and 40 franc coin: can we add a link to Napoléon (coin) please. 213.205.240.242 (talk) 07:37, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

Please report any such problems or suggestions for improvement at the General discussion section of Talk:Main Page.