Schwarze Löcher: Die Grenzen unseres Wissens

On the very year the documentary was released, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Roger Penrose "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity".

Yet the name of Penrose is not to be heard once in that movie. And the director (Peter Galison) is not the type to be ill-informed.

On the other side, it also struck me that the Nobel committee waited until the death of Hawking to award a prize for black holes.

Anyone has an insider's view on that?

I don't know about other reviewers, but for me the theoretical physicists seemed like a bunch of groupies, fawning over Hawkins and belittling their own work. Meanwhile, the lead project astronomer comes off looking a lot like a bully with some of his comments to his colleagues. Yeah, it's high-stakes, I get it, but the guy just didn't seem like he had leadership quality.

Is this a true depiction of science? Maybe it is. I have no idea.

But what's clear to me is that this documentary really dumbs it down, to the point that you have ask the question: why bother doing this kind of documentary if you're going to assume that your audience are idiots? Despite all this, I still give it a 7 overall just because there's a dearth of good documentaries about black holes.

Too bad this one wasn't a bit better.

Greetings again from the darkness. When most of us need an item, we first check the Amazon website for price and availability. For Physicists and Astronomers, it's not always so easy. We are informed that photographing a Black Hole would require a telescope the size of planet Earth. Even with my limited science knowledge, I was able to understand the impossibility of fulfilling such a request. Of course, there is a reason they are Physicists and yours truly reviews movies. These folks are pretty darn smart and they find a way to solve problems. Harvard University Physics Professor and documentarian Peter Galison manages to make accessible the work of some of the world's brightest minds.

Thinking back to 2019, you likely recall seeing the Black Hole photograph. It was everywhere ... online sites, social media, TV newscasts, and magazine covers. We knew it was a breakthrough, but most of us had no idea what went on behind the scenes to capture that image. Galison's documentary fills us in. Going back to 2017, and starting in Mexico, the film explains the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). With the goal of photographing a Black Hole, a network of observatories from around the globe will be coordinated to simultaneously capture data, and then that data will be compiled to determine if the image(s) is an accurate representation.

There are a couple of things we follow ... related by topic but differing in objectives. A group including Stephen Hawking, Harvard Theoretical Physicist Andrew Strominger, British scientist Malcolm Perry, and Cambridge scholar Sasha Haco are observed hard at work on solving the mysteries of Black Holes. Specifically what they are pursuing is the Information Paradox, which states the universe cannot be defined by physical laws. This pursuit of this group of geniuses is shown in symmetry with the work of the EHT teams, where mostly we follow Shep Doeleman and the challenges his team faces in holding up their end of photographing Messier 87, a supergiant elliptical galaxy.

The EHT teams are located around the globe, including Chile, Spain, the South Pole, Hawaii, and Arizona. Obviously the technical aspects of these projects are beyond my capacity, however, it should be noted that the film is easy enough to follow for us non-geniuses while also including some geeky detail for the advanced among us. What really stands out and makes the film fun to watch is the passion shown by these scientists. At the conference where the teams are gathered, these folks are giddy as they anticipate the results of their work and the compilation of data. Their excitement makes it clear what an enormous accomplishment the image is for all involved.

Sadly, Stephen Hawking passed away in 2018, so the clips we see are some of the last images of his final work. If you are curious as to how his work with Strominger, Perry, and Haco ended up, you may track down their final paper, "Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair" ... but I'm sure most of you have already read it. To add a touch of entertainment value, director Galison includes beautiful music from YoYo Ma as well as "Over the Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Overall, this is the perfect blend for novices and scientists who are interested in the fascinating topic of Black Holes and how the experts go about chipping away at the mystique and limits of knowledge. Available VOD on March 2, 2021

A disjointed documentary that used confusing graphics and failed to link the two storylines. The subject is interesting, but the science wasn't explained so it was hard to tell who is the intended audience. Overall, this doc felt aimless and without a point.

Not sure what people were expecting to see. The basic concepts of how the image of the black hole was captured and the scientific process to produce the image (separate teams without any contact with each other, etc) are fairly easy to grasph without a strong scientific background. The secondary 'story', about the people working with Dr Hawking on the information paradox was indeed a bit harder to follow - the concept is understandable but their talk was far too advanced and based on mathematics for the viewer to easily follow. But I doubt this is something that can be accurately simplified for the average person. I have a (little-used, if at all) physics degree, and I couldn't understand almost anything apart from the broad concept. I saw this as a documentation of a grand effort for posterity - not something aimed at explaining this effort to everyone else.

And in the end, you don't need to understand everything. If you watch this and you are not even a little moved and carried away by the scientists' genuine enthusiasm and passion for the mysteries of the universe, then the problem is yours.