As the 1st BW to graduate from Yale astro w a PhD in astrophysics, I was asked to comment on the racist dept emails sent by senior faculty in this @buzzfeednews story. TBH, I wasn't planning to. Not surprising and not worth my time. #BlackintheIvory buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… Then I remembered being a student there and watching blatantly racist things happen that I didn't feel like I could or even knew how to speak to. I remember wishing someone would stand up for my right to be there. Very often no one did; certainly not publicly. #BlackintheIvory

I'm literally abt to hop on a plane for the rest of the day, but here are a few things that make this #EHTBlackHole press release monumental to me from the perspective of an astrophysicist who studies active black holes. 1. It's still true that we can't *see* a black hole. What sight-abled folx are seeing in this image is the shadow of the black hole (what I typically call "SOS" signals from the material about to fall onto it). This process of material infall onto a black hole is called accretion