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First, congrats to the event horizon team for the first photograph of a black hole.
Not to downplay the significance of the photo, but it is a bit blurry. Still, it got me thinking.

One might expect that the area in the accretion disk close to the event horizon would be rife with gravitational waves and other distortions. Given the inverse square rule , Would those undulations and distortions iin the accretion disk be so pronounced as to be visible in a future video of greater resolution and clarity?

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  • $\begingroup$ 20 micro arcs ends, a bit blurry? $\endgroup$
    – my2cts
    Commented Apr 14, 2019 at 14:55
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    $\begingroup$ I didn't say it wasn't impressive given the distance. And it is awsome.for the distance. But our tech will get better, and features we can not discern at the moment may come into focus as resolution improves. Thus my question. $\endgroup$
    – Ba'lroc Demos
    Commented Apr 14, 2019 at 15:37

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First of all, there is no reason to think that area around the event horizon should be particularlly rife with gravitional waves. There might be a slightly stronger background of gravitational waves than on Earth, but not insanly so.

However, even if it was this would in all likelihood not be visible. Even if there were gravitational waves with a strain of $10^{-3}$ passing through the system (which would be trully gigantic) dis means only 1 part in 1000 deformation of the total geometry. The EHT sensitivity is nowhere near.

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