Comment by 20k

All they need to do is not put the label physically accurate on it then. If you call something physically accurate and decorate it with your credentials as a harvard phd in astrophysics building radiative transfer sims, people expect it to have a degree of accuracy. This sim, from a physical perspective, is wrong

That's 100% fine if you present it as a visualisation with limitations and I absolutely love people making fun side projects like this and presenting them. I built a whole tutorial series on doing this, because I think people getting stuck into the field is absolutely great, and more power to everyone who wants to write anything no matter how accurate it is

Its the fact that this is being presented and stated as if its a physically accurate sim made by someone with experience in the field so it must be spot on, when in reality its little better than an artists impression of a black hole, that bothers me. Its science miscommunication. Coming away from this, you might think:

1. Black hole accretion disks are red

2. Black holes do not warp the background around them, only the accretion disk

3. You might get notions about the intensity distribution of the doppler shift, or the way that cameras work near black holes etc

None of which is particularly correct, and there's a lot more wrong with it too