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No Naked Black Holes
Science News reports on a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters in which an international team of researchers describes their computer simulation of the most violent collision imaginable: two black holes colliding head-on at nearly light-speed. Even in this extreme scenario, Roger Penrose's weak cosmic censorship hypothesis seems to hold — the resulting black hole (after the gravitational waves have died down) retains its event horizon. "Mathematically, 'naked' singularities, or those without event horizons, can exist, but physicists wouldn't know what to make of them. All known mechanisms for the formation of singularities also create an event horizon, and Penrose conjectured that there must be some physical principle — a 'cosmic censor' — that forbids singularity nakedness ..."
Oh jeez.
They're all Greek to me.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
""Mathematically, 'naked' singularities, or those without event horizons, can exist, but physicists wouldn't know what to make of them. All known mechanisms for the formation of singularities also create an event horizon, and Penrose conjectured that there must be some physical principle â" a 'cosmic censor' â" that forbids singularity nakedness...""
Basically because there's two extreme conditions. Out here and in there. One can't help but have a boundary.
Does anyone else get sad at the thought that there are so many weird things in the universe you may not learn the answers to in your lifetime? What if everyone posting here never finds out the reason for the cosmic censor? Sort of depressing.
It's already asking a lot for nerdlings to not snicker at any reference to a "hole".
Adding in nakedness just goes beyond any reasonable expectation of restraint.
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
Penrose conjectured that there must be some physical principle â" a 'cosmic censor' â" that forbids singularity nakedness...
God, is that you?
Seems to me, most people on Slashdot likely *only* experience singularity nakedness.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
If photonst have weight, they can be effected by gravity, and a black hole can form around any object with sufficient mass to trap light. That's all there is to it. There is no magical singularity where the laws of physics break down. There doesn't need to be.
...the maximal Cauchy development of generic compact or asymptotically flat initial data is locally inextendible as a regular Lorentzian manifold.
Right?
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
This isn't exactly my field, but I thought the no-hair theorem guaranteed this result. I guess the tricky part is in the transient phase.
Heh... I knew who Roger Penrose was long before I heard of Richard Dawkins, and I suspect that I'll forget who Richard Dawkins soon enough. But I'm biased for being a physicist.
And the boom from a black hole is usually in the form of X-rays or gamma rays radiation and, in energetic terms, it's very loud.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Quantum physics was baffling to me (still is, actually), but I eventually came to see it as a way that nature avoided some inherent paradoxes and contradictions that were present when you took classic physics down to the level of fundamental particles. I have no doubt that, on a larger scale, the same principle applies: Somehow, someway, the laws of physics will always resolve with no singularities, no contradictions, no divide-by-zero-error, no infinities. If our formulas seem to indicate that one will be found, I suspect our understanding is incomplete.
That's heavy, Doc.
In other words, yo momma's so fat, her Schwarzchild radius is visible to the naked eye?
Which is why the DVDs "Physicists Gone Wild" were never really successful. Although the LHC did turn up as the hottest collider in Europe, so far still no naked singularities.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Who is Dawkins?* I never heard of that guy. Or at least I can't remember.
But Penrose... of course everybody knows him, if only from the books of Hawking. ...What do you mean, nobody reads those books??? How can they even survive that way?? ;)
Oh... the bible.... right...
* Yeah, alright. I'll look it up on Wikipedia!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Confucius say "Physicist who say there is no naked singularity should examine their equations through a peep hole."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You had me at naked...
This means that not only are we living in a simulation, but we're being run on a digital computer.
Because if their simulation had created a naked singularity it would be interesting. That it doesn't isn't, since that's the expected result - but just because they "failed" as such doesn't mean they should pretend they didn't try anything.
And yes, it may have nothing to do with the actual universe. Seeing what the current theories produce is an important part of science.
Maybe you could look up "event horizon" and see that it has nothing to do with the physical size of stuff. It's just the distance from some item of mass where the escape velocity from its gravity is equal to the speed of light.
And of course the "collapse into itself and disappear" is the entire singularity problem (except it doesn't disappear - there's that silly law of thermodynamics and matter/energy equivalence to get in the way)...
I can't get over this sort of story. "We programmed our INCOMPLETE understanding of the cosmos into this simulation, which tells us X, therefore X is more likely."
Anything based on a computer simulation is based on our arbitrarily incomplete knowledge. To base even the least significant conclusions upon it seems laughably irresponsible and unscientific.
But hey, I was a music major, so what do I know.
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
You appear to have no idea what's going on here. Okay, first of all, the Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis in question (short version): All singularities other than the one from the Big Bang are hidden behind event horizons.
The equations of relativity, which were used to run the simulation, say nothing about cosmic censorship. The C.S.H. wasn't formulated until 50-odd years after general relativity because of a problem - relativity actually readily admits (physically-implausible) solutions that do have naked singularities, hence the censorship. Apparently, something always conspires to hide them.
This simulation confirmed the hypothesis' prediction: Even in the most violent circumstances physically realizable, the singularity ended up behind an event horizon.
Frankly, it's time we admitted it... the only way we're going to find a naked singularity is to go for a joyride in the direction of the Great Attractor in a sycamore-seed-shaped ship.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't understand the relevance of this article. The authors themselves say that counterexamples have no way of coming into existence. Is someone implying that LHC can do this? What nonsense... The whole point of the LHC is to provide the data where the standard model might seem a little shaky. It is then and only then that we should let the theorists out of their cages!
...the most violent collision imaginable: two black holes colliding head-on at nearly light-speed.
What about 3 black holes colliding head-on at nearly light-speed?
Don't worry, there is a a 'cosmic censor' (that's probably that guy that doesn't mod you up if you talk evolution theory).
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
All the mass of a black hole is compacted into an extremely small region at the centre - possibly infinitely small, but at the very least as small as physics allows matter to get. This is the singularity.
When we speak of the size of a black hole, we're actually referring to the region around that central object from which nothing can escape. As you approach the black hole, the gravitational field gets stronger and stronger, and there's a point of no return at which the escape velocity reaches c, the speed of light. Nothing nearer the hole than this can ever escape. This we call the event horizon - because no events beyond the horizon can ever be observed from outside. The more massive the hole, the further out the event horizon: look up 'Schwarzschild radius' for the equation.
The result of this is that any singularities in the universe are expected to be hidden behind event horizons, and cannot be seen. It's occasionally suggested that a naked singularity might form - for instance, a black hole might be spinning so fast as to counteract the effect of gravity and allow the singularity to be viewed from outside. This could have extremely bizarre results for the universe as a whole, so most physicists expect there to be some kind of 'cosmic censorship' principle that ensures that this does not happen. What we're looking at here is one way in which that might happen.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Crap trilogy, that. Read one and a half book before i gave up. :)
Iain M. Banks FTW!
Meep.
I get a sad feeling thinking about the poor photons on the event horizons, desperately trying to escape, but suspended in space for all eternity.
Because there aren't three black hole colliding - there are two black holes colliding and then a third one colliding into the result. Remember they are travelling at the almost speed of light so the collision won't take very long.
He's a bloke, who, unable to come up with a a coherent explanation for consciousness decided "it must be a quantum thing". He's also great if you want someone to tile your bathroom. Am I right?
Well, their time slows down because of the massive gravity. So eternity here could be only couple of seconds there :)
You don't know what you don't know.
But if time is moving infinitely slow, then how does matter ever get to the center? Shouldn't all the matter be concentrated at the event horizon?
That's him. Unfortunately, his quantum consciousness idea doesn't give an explanation of consciousness, it just gives a means for Descartes "ghost in the machine" to interact with the physical -- in other words it just moves the problem. On the other hand, I've not heard any other coherent explanation of consciousness either. And he's made more contributions to mathematics than any other philosophers of the mind that I can think of. So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Time appears slow to the outside observer, for the object crossing the horizon it's business as usual, super fast acceleration, stretched out and sucked into oblivion. Lovely :)
But black holes exist within the universe. If time inside a black hole is stopped relative to the rest of the universe, then shouldn't a black hole take infinitely long to form?
As a corollary, shouldn't you be able to look behind you and watch the end of the universe?
I liked it, right up until the ... really horrific plot resolution, which made me very sad.
I'll take the second point first. And believe me I'm no expert, I mearly take an interest in Astronomy and I've read quite a lot on the subject.
If you 'look' behind you as you enter a black hole you see the light that was entering immediately behind you so you see the static universe as you normally would. But as with a lot of complicated maths and physics, human language and common experience can't really serve as a metaphor for what is going on. It's an unfortunate answer to a great many questions.
Your first question I'm not too sure about, it is a very insightful question. After a black hole is formed then yeah, time slows down to a crawl *if* there was any way to look in (past the event horizon). But I don't really know how to explain the fact that as it creates a sigularity time should slow down. I think an important concept to understand is that there is no universal clock. Imagine everyone in different gravity wells running along different percieved time-scales and you be along the right tracks. Really I'm in over my head though!
Try here for an excellent podcast on black holes and the notes page has a ton of links. This is were I get most of my Astronomy info. The podcast really will stretch your immagination!
http://www.astronomycast.com/black-holes/episode-18-black-holes-big-and-small/
...and this might begin to answer your question but I still find it hard to understand!
http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html#q4
While you have a point, I believe you are overstating it.
Penrose is about as far from an idiot as you can get - his formulation of the CCH highlights the incompleteness of current theory in an accessible manner, and because he is a great populariser of science, the concept has to be phrased in a manner that is accessible to non-specialists.
So rather than saying 'current theories are incomplete, because they imply something we don't see', it comes out as 'nature abhors naked singularities', because that's more readily understood by non-technical people educated in the Western mode.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Fixing that Coolant leak, I think you guys are just trying to install a Black hole collider. Since you heard of this, no more tiny weenie protons. Black holes are hot now.
Slightly offtopic, but when we say light cannot escape the gravitational pull of a black hole (past the event horizon), do we mean all electromagnetic energy? And if so, how is hawking radiation able to escape? Is it emitted by the singularity (inside the horizon) or by some phenomenon outside the event horizon?
Since the most common model for the creation of a naked singularity involves a rapidly spinning black hole, I fail to understand why there should be any expectation that colliding two black holes head-on would have that effect. This sounds like pseudo-science... "look, something that wasn't expected to create a naked singularity doesn't seem to do that in a simulation, so they can't exist!"
We don't see event horizons directly, either... we just have indirect observations of X-ray sources (like Cygnus X-1) that are best explained, under the current theories, as black holes. Current theories imply that it might be possible to create a naked singularity, but that doesn't mean that they imply such things exist... and the only tests we can do on them are theoretical.
So it seems like Penrose is making a much stronger statement than is supported by evidence.
Current theories imply that it may be possible for intelligence to be created or arise spontaneously, but we're a long way from figuring out exactly how, and Penrose takes that to imply that AI is a pipe dream. Despite the existence proof behind his own eyes. Again, his articles on AI seem to make a far stronger statement than is supported by evidence.
This doesn't mean he's an idiot, but it does imply there may be a significant bias in his works.
A photon is not subjected to the flow of time at all since it travels at the speed of light, and thus has a time dilation factor of infinity compared with any other frame of reference.
So pity not the photon, for even an eternity is less than a moment to it.
As long as your bathroom is two-dimensional, yes.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Yes, we do mean all electromagnetic radiation, since it all moves at the speed of light. Hawking radiation comes from near the event horizon, it occurs when virtual electron-positron pairs are created and one of the two particles is sucked into the black hole while the other escapes before they can annihilate.
Perhaps someone could educate me here but how accurate is this because surely we've never done any study into the effects of gravity at the speed of light. Doesn't gravity act differently at this speed?
Dude, that's so lame. For jokes about black holes, look no farther than the uncyclopedia.
Black hole
Event Horizon
Albert Einstein
Stephen Hawking
And of course we can't forget YOUR MOM!
No go away or I shall taunt you again.
Free Martian Whores!
The whole reason naked singularities are an issue is that relativity breaks in their presence - and the current theories do not rule them out. A made up "cosmic censor" is nice and all but doesn't really cut it.
Finding a case where the current models produce a naked singularity in "realistic" conditions would blow the cosmic censor thing out of the water. Which is in fact a big deal.
Trying and failing is less of a big deal, but worth mentioning since others may see a flaw in the simulation or not bother doing the exact same thing, or see a tweak they can make, and so on.
If you were paying attention when you read any of Steven Hawkings' books, Penrose was mentioned several times.
Penrose and Hawking have done significant amounts of work together. In fact, Penrose corrected errors in Hawkings' PHd thesis.
.
The article overviews two scenarios: a head-on collision and a collision that was not head-on. If black holes are singularities how can any collision between two black holes be anything other than head-on?
Honestly, this shouldn't be modded flamebait. While Dawkins is most definitely an incredible evolutionary biologist, and an incredible lecturer - he wouldn't be nearly as recognizable if he hadn't gone on his rant against religion.
Sensationalist? Probably. Twat? Definitely not.
.
"Oh lookie! A book I've bever read, I think I'll make fun of it!"
You show your ignorance, child. Before you mock a book you should at least read a little of it.
Genesis 1:10- And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
Job 1:20 - Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 1:21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
1:22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
Ezekiel 16:7 - I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.
There is nothing sinful about nudity. You were born naked. When nudity is concerned, the only sinner is the prude.
Free Martian Whores!
Since when did Ashcroft get involved with astrophysics?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
What confuses me about this is that the spin rate of the black hole does not affect its mass, and the gravity is a function of the mass and your distance to that mass. So how does this work? I'm familiar with something called "frame dragging" where a spinning mass distorts spacetime in a way that a non-spinning mass doesn't. Is this involved here?
And along what axis is it naked? Let me reason this out: Along the plane of the spin, the frame dragging is (I'm guessing) counteracting the effects of gravity. Spin fast enough, and the singularity is visible along that plane. As you move around the black hole to observe it from along the axis of spin, the lack of frame dragging makes the black hole no longer observable. Is this on track?
IANAP, (I'm not a physicist), however, I think they are looking for a naked black hole at the wrong scale. They should be looking for naked black holes at the miniature scale, where the matter is so compact that it is classified as a black hole, however mass of such black hole is so small that it does not exert sufficient gravitational pull. Say the kind predicted within the LHC.
There are geometric solids that can be assembled in a matrix in the same vein as Penrose tiles on a surface.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
It's not really like many (if any) of us is doing anything to change that outcome :-/
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Just to add to this, This is how naked singularities were explained to me:
Going back to the old image of spacetime as a rubber sheet, and our neutron star as a bowling ball on it. You're trying to escape from this, but the walls you're trying to climb up are very steep - it'd be easier to escape if the walls were shallower.
You happen to be in luck, a large planet is heading towards your neutron star and is going to crash into it. As it gets sufficiently near to the neutron star the rubber sheet that is spacetime has the gradient changed so that at any point it is less steep. There is still the same amount of delta-v needed, but at any point the requirements are potentially significantly lower.
If you can picture that, that 2 objects would make the previously inescapable 1st object escapable then perhaps the same applies to light.
So reducing the level of abstraction, would a sufficiently mass colliding with a black hole distort spacetime in such a way as push the swartzchild radius back inside the singularity, and therefore allow light to escape from the singularity?
My understanding was that a mass near a black hole would reduce its swartzchild radius near that mass, so it was all a question of could you reduce it enough before the mass was consumed?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
This wasn't a good test for cosmic censorship, and wasn't intended as such, from my reading of TFA. A better test would have been two counter rotating holes striking slightly off center.
Anyway, it says nothing about unrelated simulations that have shown that naked singularities are likely.
Sorry about the new scientist link, but all the other references I found were unhelpful journal articles.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Whatever happened to the naked singularities from a football theory?
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
-1, Unfalsifiable
+1, Simple
For example, assuming digital physics would handily explain Heisenberg uncertainty as an effect of dither noise.
Beyond the event horizon the only possible path for all things is towards the center, not away from it. So you can never see what is in the center, but you could look back where you came from and wave goodbye to your friends and family (who would be unable to observe this since you passed the event horizon...).
I hear funny stuff happens with ring-shaped singularities, so I'm not sure what would happen in that case, but when the singularity is a single point in the center of the black hole, you can never observe it even from inside the event horizon.
But can you make a bathroom out of them?
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Will you cut the innuendo, please? Christian creationists have a hard time following already, using repelling sexual imagery is not going to help!
Do not trust this signature.
n/t
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The key is: vacuum is not empty.. because of the uncertainty principle, it is full of random short-lived energy fluctuations ('virtual particles'). Imagine that at the event horizon, a matter-antimatter pair is created in such an energy fluctuation, and one particle of this pair manages to quantum mechanically 'tunnel out' of the horizon, causing the BH to lose mass. That's a simplified view of the basic mechanism.
But black holes exist within the universe. If time inside a black hole is stopped relative to the rest of the universe, then shouldn't a black hole take infinitely long to form?
As a corollary, shouldn't you be able to look behind you and watch the end of the universe?
Yes. Suppose you are watching a star collapse into a black hole. First you will see the star get smaller and smaller. At the same time, the light coming from the star will become increasingly more red shifted. As the star reaches its Schwarzchild radius, it will slow down indefinitely and be infinitely red shifted. So it does take infinitely long to form from an outside observer. The Event horizon happens to be the infinitely red-shifted surface of the star. See here for a better explanation and some animated gifs: http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/collapse.html
I clickled your link and who did I see? OJ Simpson and and an NSFW popup. I looked up "black hole" and came up dry.I looked up Stephen Hawking and saw nothing funny at all, just lame insults.
That popup is extremely unfunny. Uncyclopedia has me laughing out loud at times (the article about kitten huffing is priceless), and NSFW articles are noted at the top of NSFW pages.
Your dramatica is LAME. Uber lame. Commercially lame. I can certainly see why you posted anonymously.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm just curiouse what the event horizon for a black hole must really look like. Most of the images I have seen portray it as a 2D object in space, makes sense seeing as we will preceive it as a 2D object but of course it must be a 3D object. So the event horizon shouldn't be exactly flat as most pictures have to show it. I was wondering if there is a 3D picture that has been simulated to show the event horizon as I think it would be interesting to see how everything is sucked in if they have poles that pull harder than other areas it seems like something interesting.
not to mention collision. the entire first part of the post was full of sexual enuendo.
Computer simulation of the most violent collision imaginable two black holes colliding head-on at nearly light-speed . Even in this extreme scenario, Roger Penrose's weak cosmic censorship hypothesis seems to hold â" the resulting black hole (after the gravitational waves have died down) retains its event horizon. (yeah you know what their getting at)
Time appears slow to the outside observer, for the object crossing the horizon it's business as usual, super fast acceleration, stretched out and sucked into oblivion. Lovely :)
Depending on the size of the event horizon, you may not even know you crossed it. Only smaller black holes will give you super fast acceleration, stretched out and suck you into oblivion.
The larger ones are more devious and draw you in slowly... you're already well past the point of no return before you realize you're even in trouble.
But black holes exist within the universe. If time inside a black hole is stopped relative to the rest of the universe, then shouldn't a black hole take infinitely long to form?
As a corollary, shouldn't you be able to look behind you and watch the end of the universe?
Essentially, yes... if you were able to "look out" onto the surrounding universe, the further you got into the gravity well, the faster the universe would appear to be aging.
If we are in a closed universe, you'd eventually see everything rushing towards you and compacting together (then you'd all be in the same temporal reference frame and things would return to normal temporally). If we are in an open universe, you'd see the heat death of the universe first, then your black hole would slowly start lose mass and cool, as time "speeds up" to match the rest of the now dead universe, since your gravity well is now evaporating.
In a closed universe, black holes will likely be the last sources of heat (and therefore energy) left in the universe.
What if you use a large mass of magnetic monopole instead of another blackhole?
That has to be one of the finest examples of gangsta-geek humor since the dawn of Mc Hawking.
Read "Gateway" by Frederik Pohl and weep...
No sig for the moment.
The object in the middle won't be travelling at (almost) the speed of light - at least not in any direction which is head on to any of the other two objects
As a corollary, shouldn't you be able to look behind you and watch the end of the universe?
"My Stars! Its full of God!"
No sig for the moment.
So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!
Be careful, Roger Penrose will probably sue you for it.
Yes, the man did the unthinkable: he patented and asserted copyright on a mathematical construct.
So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!
Be careful, Roger Penrose will probably sue you for it.
Yes, the man did the unthinkable: he patented and asserted copyright on a mathematical construct.
I know; I was hoping to buy licensed tiles, but I can't find a source. Drat. Has anybody got a patent on the square, then?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The newsletter of the Virginia Tech chapter of the Society of Physics Students is (or was) called "The Naked Singularity."
Im not sure but what moving the problem is a significant advance, maybe one Penrose didn't intend. One problem strict philosophical materialism has in practice is it tends to reject all 'supernatural' phenomina, but it does so dishonestly. That is, most believers in it claim to simply be naturalists as a method, because it's pragmatically difficult, perhaps impossible, to apply science to something that can manipulate the very laws of nature. But then, the same people claim to 'know' in advance, that science can eventually explain all reality, extending the argument from method to baseline assumption, so it's not just a matter of an observed problem with applying science to some things if they exist, it becomes an axiomatic, preexisting truth that they can't possibly exist, so science needn't even look for them.
Some versions of strict materialism have used this technique, not just with God, but with consciousness, self awareness, or even temporal causation.
Quantum Mechanical explanations aren't technically supernatural, but they tend to certain properties that supernatural explanations also have (Multiple interpretations may have equal validity, some odd things are explicitly allowed because they are happening 'outside' of our scale space-time, and the real root causes of phenomena can't possibly be determinate in a strict Newtonian sense.). While the quantum realm is often conceptualized as underlying ours, phrases such as 'collapse of the state vector' imply a realm superior to mundane existence, and just abut all QM assumes this realm is timeless/eternal/non-enthropic. (Sounds kind of like heaven, doesn't it?).
So, opening up the discourse to accept possible explanations with such properties proves that science can deal with some things it once thought it couldn't address at all (the contrary argument being that QM itself isn't scientific.)
Who is John Cabal?
The short answer to this is to read Hawking's work, beginning with A Short History of Time.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Flamebait is a mod that assumes there was a reasonable set of arguments going in the thread, and what somebody wrote made the thread, as a whole, less reasonable, or tending to veer off of polite and rational discussion into emotionalism, name calling, irrelevance, and perhaps more use of logical fallacies. Some discussions start out with more polarization and emotion than others, and sometimes the point where a thread veers of into the weeds is earlier than the point most people want to mod it flamebait. I really recommend avoiding flamebait mods for some discussions completely - Vi vs Emacs arguments don't veer into flame territory, they start there. Just think of any highly charged topic, i.e. politics, and ask, "Did somebody really steer a productive, civilized thread in an unwelcome direction, or was it innately full of the same stuff, twenty posts back, just not so concentrated as to be obvious?"
I personally have some real problems with Dawkins - for one, when he first proposed the idea of Memes in "The Blind Watchmaker", he himself pointed out some really big problems with the theory, but expressed the hope that they could be overcome. They never really got addressed by him, or any of the other sources on Memetic theory I've seen widely considered as standard, since, just ignored or glossed over in subsequent works. Accusing the other guy in debate of being motivated by controlling Memes instead of real, reasoned ideas has become a great way of making an Ad Hom attack while pretending one is still being rational, so to me, we're talking about a guy who helped make reason itself harder to practice, and gave the bastards who will use any rhetorical device to win, instead of caring first about truth, another bolt for their quivers. All to often, within a few posts of the first mention of Dawkins, somebody is stooping to calling the other guy a "meme-puppet".
'Twat', obviously, can't be literally true in this case, and is an abusive words to use in at least most cases where it is accurate. If I'd been metamodding a flamebait mod for that, I'd definitely let it stand in any thread where people weren't already letting off F-bombs right and left. Maybe the parent poster feels it is intended to be understood as obviously metaphorical by the average slashdotter.
Who is John Cabal?
A photon is not subjected to the flow of time at all since it travels at the speed of light, and thus has a time dilation factor of infinity compared with any other frame of reference.
So pity not the photon, for even an eternity is less than a moment to it.
The same thing applies to every massive particle too. Since the escape velocity at the Schwarzschild radius is c, it follows that any particle that falls in from rest has a speed of c at the Schwarzschild radius too.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
But if time is moving infinitely slow, then how does matter ever get to the center? Shouldn't all the matter be concentrated at the event horizon?
No. Seen from the frame of the falling matter, it never stops. This only appears to be the case because time is dilated to zero at the Schwarzschild radius (because matter reaches light speed there, as seen from an external inertial frame.)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Do you ever get the feeling that they choose stories and phrase summaries a certain way JUST so we'll have plenty of ways to make jokes about it?
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
So to summarize your post...
"zomg lesbian sex!!11one"
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
That's awesome!
Im not sure but what moving the problem is a significant advance, maybe one Penrose didn't intend. One problem strict philosophical materialism has in practice is it tends to reject all 'supernatural' phenomina, but it does so dishonestly. That is, most believers in it claim to simply be naturalists as a method, because it's pragmatically difficult, perhaps impossible, to apply science to something that can manipulate the very laws of nature.
As I understand it, the more common assumption is that there is nothing that can manipulate the laws of nature from outside, because if there were it would be subject to its own rules and so part of (an expanded understanding of) nature. That's a metaphysical assumption, of course, but one that allows them to retain their naturalism.
Quantum Mechanical explanations aren't technically supernatural, but they tend to certain properties that supernatural explanations also have (Multiple interpretations may have equal validity
Careful! That's why they're called "interpretations", not "theories". Multiple interpretations have equal validity (though not necessarily equal utility) wherever they occur. It just happens that quantum mechanics is a field particularly remote from experience so we have a particular need for interpretations -- metaphors, if you like -- to get an understanding of what's going on.
some odd things are explicitly allowed because they are happening 'outside' of our scale space-time, and the real root causes of phenomena can't possibly be determinate in a strict Newtonian sense.)
Unfortunately, I don't think that helps with consciousness. Newtonian mechanics meant that all my actions are completely predetermined by mechanics. Quantum mechanics means to some extent my actions are randomly determined. That still doesn't seem to leave any room for volition, for choice.
While the quantum realm is often conceptualized as underlying ours, phrases such as 'collapse of the state vector' imply a realm superior to mundane existence, and just abut all QM assumes this realm is timeless/eternal/non-enthropic. (Sounds kind of like heaven, doesn't it?)
Again, as far as I am aware, QM doesn't assume any such thing; it uses it as a metaphor.
So, opening up the discourse to accept possible explanations with such properties proves that science can deal with some things it once thought it couldn't address at all (the contrary argument being that QM itself isn't scientific.)
A third possibility being that Science is dealing with what it's always dealt with, QM is perfectly scientific, and you're confused between the scientific status of theories and interpretations.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Only in a Newtonian system. The subjective distance between you and the singularity would shrink from your frame of reference due to Lorentz contraction. If you counted out the seconds compared to the same distance from the black holes' frame of reference, you would believe that you were travelling at c.
But taking only data from any frame one of reference, you only approach c asymptotically.
The whole theory of relativity is based on the observed fact that light travels at c when observed from any frame of reference. This implies that only light(or other massless particles) can travel at the speed of light.
I'm sure someone can explain this in more understandable terms, but I can say that if we assume that objects can travel at c we open up a whole can of mathematical impossibilities which downright disproves the assumption.
The double slit experiment works fine with single electrons as well. As for an explanation, well there's still a debate about that. We understand how it works, we just aren't really clear about why.
Damn, that's a good one!
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
This coward just masterfully trolled and flamebaited (ahem) at least half a dozen issues, and most of his rant was completely false and was utterly misinformed.
He deserves some sort of award, seriously.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
But if that was the case, fat women would be attracting men at a much higher rate than single women ;-)
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
Isn't the definition of "black hole" something that is so heavy and small that even light cannot escape from it?
And isn't the definition of "event horizon" the boundary beyond which we cannot observe anything, because no light can escape from it?
Wouldn't it follow from those definitions that black holes must have an event horizon? I mean, if they didn't, that would mean there was no boundary beyond which we could not see. Ergo, light would escape from them. Therefore, they wouldn't be black holes.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It all depends on your reference frame. You can write the Schwarzschild metric (the mathematical description of a non-rotating, non-electrically charged black hole) in such a way that nothing at all unusual happens at the event horizon and matter falls all the way into the center. Looking at it from the outside, with our conventional way of measuring time, it does actually look like infalling matter stops at the event horizon (though the light coming from it gets infinitely redshifted, too). The world outside the event horizon behaves the same way no matter where the mass is located, in any case.
I would rather be killed by a terrorist than enslaved by my government.
Perhaps volition is an illusion?
Just as long as you don't think you're one of those 'heavenly bodies', you may be able to garner some support for that.
God is dead -- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead -- God
Zombie Nietzsche lives! -- Zombie Nietzsche
Perhaps volition is an illusion?
Entirely possible, but that would mean that reason is an illusion too, because reason depends on making decisions of what is correct and what is incorrect.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Talking about how to take funny out of a comment which contains deliberate errors trying to make it funny ;)
You don't know what you don't know.
Yo, he be coo' wid dat shit!
Free Martian Whores!
I am prepared to listen to rational argument, but I don't appreciate being told I have to believe the One True Way by religious fundamentalists *or* atheistic zealots.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
As I understand it, the more common assumption is that there is nothing that can manipulate the laws of nature from outside, because if there were it would be subject to its own rules and so part of (an expanded understanding of) nature. That's a metaphysical assumption, of course, but one that allows them to retain their naturalism.
That's essentially a matter of how you define 'natural', itself. There's a difference between saying "there are no black swans" because nobody in your acquaintance has been to Australia yet, and continuing to say it once someone has, because they've found black swans, but you prefer to redefine swans so those damned things have to be something else. Right now, I'm claiming that many scientists are taking the position that supernatural explanations are by fiat impossible, by the existing definitions that proceed from the initial concept of science itself, before any data is actually gathered to test it. Now you're saying, "If that somehow turns out not to be the case, it's OK to change those definitions."
Sounds like you are making my point for me.
The argument that a supernatural being can't be a scientific hypothesis because it creates an untestable condition is itself faulty under some circumstances. Followed strictly, the following also become non-scientific hypothesi:
Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have lifespans of hundreds or thousands of times our own.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have had a technological civilization for many, many times longer than ours.
Just as a supernatural creator could supposedly use miracles to trick a scientist into believing whatever 'He" wants, a 'sufficiently capable' alien could doubtless pull the wool over any researcher's eyes, even if all its powers were, strictly speaking 'natural'. All hypothesi about a sufficiently advanced alien become contingent upon unverifiables, ergo, science should never use the explanation that something is the result of advanced aliens, even if the damned saucer just landed on the White House lawn.
Followed strictly enough, you could get really, incredibly nit picky. Rigid application of the rule would be absurd. i.e. no one can study Albert Einstein. (Einstein is smarter than the researcher, ergo, he can figure out any double-blind experiment the researcher can create. If Einstein decides not to cooperate, he can mislead the researcher into an erroneous conclusion. The validity of any hypothesis about Einstein depends on whether he honestly cooperated. Since we can't be sure he is cooperating, we can't theorize about Einstein unless we find someone smarter than him to do it. (Then we can't theorize about that guy).).
Why am I bringing up such an extreme interpretation? Is it a straw man? I don't think so. Methodological naturalism doesn't require strict adherence to a rule. If there's a problem with the method, you do what works, or publish what you have and admit there may be some problems with your methodology. Scientists have published papers where they stipulated they couldn't eliminate all conflicting models before. But, epistemological materialism does require absolute adherence. If your rule-set says something can't possibly be the case, then you never consider it as a hypothesis at all. Fudging your definition is, effectively, going completely outside the scientific method.
Again, as far as I am aware, QM doesn't assume any such thing; it uses it as a metaphor.
Nope, the very basis of the real math, i.e. Feynman diagrams and the calculations that are derived from them, is that the operations are reversable with regard to time. In the models, a positron is just an electron going the other way in time. Enthropy is literally non-existent in the quantum realm, or the math doesn't work at all. It's not a metaphor or even an analogy, in the way that quantum 'spin' is a metaphorical or analogous term
Who is John Cabal?
Another way of putting that is: If your brain holds positions simply because the laws of physics have imposed them, how do you show that they correspond to reality? You could be unarguably convinced of anything the colliding billiard balls have lead to, and that is, by definition, utterly contingent. So how do you show that the colliding billiard balls themselves are real? Because they told you so?
Who is John Cabal?
Right now, I'm claiming that many scientists are taking the position that supernatural explanations are by fiat impossible, by the existing definitions that proceed from the initial concept of science itself, before any data is actually gathered to test it.
No, I'm saying that there can be no such data, because science defines the supernatureal as a subset of the metaphysical, and defines the metaphysical as that which cannot be falsified.
Now you're saying, "If that somehow turns out not to be the case, it's OK to change those definitions."
No, no change to the definitions at all. If a theory can be falsified, it's within the scientific view of "nature", under the definitions that have existed since the 1950s.
Followed strictly, the following also become non-scientific hypothesi:
That would be "hypotheses".
Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have lifespans of hundreds or thousands of times our own.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have had a technological civilization for many, many times longer than ours.
None of those are stated as hypotheses.
"Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans exist" is not a scientific hypothesis because it can't be falsified. "Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans do not exist" is a scientific hypothesis because it can be falsified.
Just as a supernatural creator could supposedly use miracles to trick a scientist into believing whatever 'He" wants, a 'sufficiently capable' alien could doubtless pull the wool over any researcher's eyes, even if all its powers were, strictly speaking 'natural'. All hypothesi about a sufficiently advanced alien become contingent upon unverifiables, ergo, science should never use the explanation that something is the result of advanced aliens, even if the damned saucer just landed on the White House lawn.
That's where Occam's Razor comes in. At present, we have no reliable observations for which aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans can credibly be argued to be the simplest explanation. If a flying saucer (observably) lands on the White House Lawn we have a new observation and aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans may become arguably the simplest explanation of the observations. Sure, the saucer might be an illusion created by entirely different aliens, but the ones flying the saucer are the simpler explanation so that's the one science will go with until new evidence comes in that falsifies it (eg, the invisible mind-control aliens reveal themselves in some way).
Followed strictly enough, you could get really, incredibly nit picky. Rigid application of the rule would be absurd. i.e. no one can study Albert Einstein. (Einstein is smarter than the researcher, ergo, he can figure out any double-blind experiment the researcher can create. If Einstein decides not to cooperate, he can mislead the researcher into an erroneous conclusion.
I think the general conclusion about Einstein is that he was very smart, not that he was omniscient.
Why am I bringing up such an extreme interpretation? Is it a straw man? I don't think so. Methodological naturalism doesn't require strict adherence to a rule. If there's a problem with the method, you do what works, or publish what you have and admit there may be some problems with your methodology. Scientists have published papers where they stipulated they couldn't eliminate all conflicting models before.
And that's fine, because it's not an end of the research, just a move forward.
But, epistemological materialism does require absolute adherence. If you
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
For a better theory of conciousness I recommend the book:
I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self
by Rodolfo Llinás.
It unexpectedly has something to do with my own signature.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.