For the last several days, my social media and likely many others’ social media has been blowing up with a blurry image of a black circle with some orange wisps around it. Evidently, this is the first real, non-computer generated image of a black hole. After seeing it just over 15 times, my reaction can be summed up in two words: big whoop.

First, the photo itself isn’t very high quality. If they wanted to get a better picture of the black hole, they need a cameraman with a much steadier hand. The orange around the hole is too blurry to make out what it is. Next, there is clearly something on the lens directly on the location of the black hole. You can tell when something is a hole because it has a bottom, sides, and a ledge. What these researchers have released is merely a picture of a black circle. They need to learn to check their equipment before they begin taking pictures of space.

That isn’t the only problem they have with their camera. All of the comments I read, which are definitely accurate because no one lies on the internet, clearly state that the camera they used wasn’t good enough to get a clear image. While this may mean that the cameraman may have had a steady hand after all, it means that the research group was clearly lacking funding. My phone has a pretty decent camera, and it can take great pictures of the moon. Seeing as my phone costs me less than $200, if the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics truly cared about the black hole, they could have coughed up the dough.

In fact, taking a picture of the black hole was so easy, its discovery has been attributed to just one person in particular. Katie Bouman, as shown in her viral post, single-handedly took the image that had the Internet enraptured for some consecutive hours. She, however, is very modest, attempting to also credit her 39 fellow researchers for helping to snap the image. While it is nice to include everyone on the team, it would be impossible for each member to participate in the taking of the photo, seeing as cameras are meant to be held by an individual. It’s not like the team used a scientifically-advanced telescope called the Event Horizon Telescope to see the outline of a black hole in 2017 that generated the complete image available to the public only now.

All of this information has lead me to question the authenticity of the photo and the project overall. What if the black circle is intended to be the black hole and is in fact not a smudge on the lens? What sort of organization would try to create a hoax with such a low budget that the picture appears forged, even to me, a layman? After considering these questions the answer is clear: this image has been crafted by the Flat Earth Society.

This picture clearly depicts the black hole as a black circle, or a two-dimensional object. They are using this image of the “black hole” to slowly poison the water and lead people to believe that the Earth is flat. Unfortunately, their ploy worked, and everyone was fooled by their sensational plot. Well, almost everyone. In summation, the black hole is a lie, the image lacks artistic integrity and question what the media tells you.