Buracos Negros: No Limite do Conhecimento

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?

This show gave me an idea, for the first time, of what the process is like for scientists to bring forth new discoveries. It's not for the faint of heart, but definitely brings you into the world of some of the most intelligent people in the world. For that, I give it and 8 out of 10 stars. Anyone, that has curiosity in space and time should find something out of this production I'd think?

It's uber frustrating because this kind of documentary, which I love to seek out, is rarely made well. The show suffers from what I call a "wedding slideshow" - it's meaningful only to those working in the inner circle.. those who get the inside jokes. But I believe one of the main reasons this show is made is to elucidate certain things to the public? Otherwise, there won't be interviews and feeble attempts at explaining?

It's horrible because 25% of the content is mindlessly repeated assertions of how terrifying/magnificent an object/phenomenon is, 25% is interviews in which the experts rehash the same terminologies with some self-gratifying anecdotes thrown in, 25% is showing - often without a context - the experts "in action" (for goodness sake, many of these are theoretical physicists, theoretically all they need is pencil and paper, some others are programmers/ engineers who build intricate things, so there's no point trying to portray them like astronauts walking on the moon, really), 20% is inane and literal graphics that not only fail to demonstrate anything, but also reinforce any misconception that people might have, and 5% or less is the much needed context to whatever people are talking about.

But it could've been so much better. For example, why should information always be conserved? What's the information paradox? Why is it a paradox? Why many papers have been written about it, and what's problematic with some of these? It doesn't need to explain anything in-depth, it's impossible to do so in a show anyway, it could be just a glimpse into the important questions/answers. See, when multiple telescopes can work as one is explained using the mirror shards analogy, it's super succinct and clear even to laymen. That's what we need more. Is the explanation in any way comprehensive? No, of course not, but it will suffice for the viewers to move on to the next terminology or discussion, and if they're interested in it, they can go on to devote their lives to getting a much more complete picture of it. I had some understanding of some of the concepts prior to watching this, but still it's not meant for either beginners or advanced learners or... anybody. I mean, you have some of the greatest scientists in the world at your disposal, and you spend time showing the first page of some papers? Does the director even care about the subject?

Some efforts are desperately needed to give a proper context to all the terms/remarks/concepts/stories/challenges thrown into the kitchen sink that is the show. Otherwise, it's just a wedding slideshow for the experts to pull up from time to time to enjoy over a glass of wine - which I doubt they'll do, and I think isn't the intention of the documentary.

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.

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.