There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of God. You have to believe that He exists and that there is a world beyond that which is visible and can be grasped by instruments of science. You also have to believe Carl Sagan statement: "the cosmos is all there is and ever will be". At one time scientists believed that the universe itself is eternal, that is it has always existed and will always exist. That has been shown to be false. The universe had a beginning and will someday come to an end. Unless the law of cause and effect is violated, a beginning requires a beginner. This is the problem of the "first cause". Somewhere, by faith we have to postulate that there is a first cause that requires no cause. The Judeo-Christian worldview is that God is the eternally self existent Creator that caused everything else to come into being. In the secular/evolutionary worldview the first cause is a mathematical entity called a singularity from which the universe exploded with a "Big Bang".
Life holds many mysteries that cannot be explained in terms of our senses. Where does the commonly held notion of what is right and what is wrong come from? Even a little child will exclaim, "why that's not fair!" Where does this sense of what is fair and what isn't come from in an evolutionary sense? I could bring other examples that cannot be answered by any belief system that excludes an external cause that is behind what we observe today.
Where did the chemicals used to synthesize the DNA come from? Did it come from something that was alive or previously alive or was it synthesized from chemicals that were never part of a living organism? I have never heard that something nonliving becomes alive.
Science is based on experiment and observation. There has never been one to experiment or observation that anything living can come from something non-living. Life always comes from life, that is what we observe today. Adding vast amounts of time does not solve the problem because no one was there to observe life come into existence.
When you start talking about what could have happened, why could there not be a God who made life?
No one says that it didn't happen with all certainty, but when you have two perfectly acceptable solutions to the problem, one of them requiring a pre-existing intelligent being gifted with powers outside the range of conceivable natural beings, and the other one not making any such requirement, the latter wins as per Occam's razor, at least until you can demonstrate that the existence of such being should be admitted because it would explain other natural phenomena for which an alternative explanation would be lacking or outright inconceivable. (I am aware of no such other phenomena.)
The problem is that both solutions are faith-based. Evolutionists tell us that the universe is billions of years old. In order to tell time you have to have a clock. You have to have faith that your clock that you are using has always ticked at exactly the same rate as we observe it today. This cannot be proved, that must be assumed. The word "assumed" is a scientific way of saying believed, i.e. faith.
What exactly do you mean with the term "synthetic genome"? What was it synthesized from? How was the bacteria different after it was injected with the so-called synthetic genome? Was it a new kind of bacteria never seen before or simply a bacteria with slightly different characteristics?
The article pretends to be a scientific article, but it really is a religious article full of "could" this or that. Yes I could have won the lottery if I had picked the right numbers and could be such a chemical reaction could have happened, but no one knows whether it really did. When you start talking about what could have happened, why could there not be a God who made life? I always thought that science was about how things work and what DOES happen, not about what could have happened millions or billions of years ago.
Getting a few chemicals to combine produce energy in a way similar to what is known about how life forms produce energy, still is a long way from producing a living, self reproducing single cell. Even the simplest single celled organism is unbelievably complex and contains a prodigious amount of information. The theory that life on Earth was seeded from space begs the question, how did that life begins wherever it did begin? Even with the best efforts of intelligent scientists and the expenditure of mountains of money, no one has yet created any life form whatsoever from nonliving matter.It appears that the intelligence of whoever or whatever designed life far exceeds that of any human scientist.
The government is allowed to do a number of things that you as a citizen are not. They can supply guns to Mexican drug dealers, they can print the money and make war in other countries as well as other things. Congress critters and top administration bureaucrats also exempt themselves from Obama care and other laws.
Cyprus is only the most recent example, but this sort of thing has happened many times in other countries. My parents lost all their money they put into savings in banks in Hitler's Germany. This happened also in the US after the Civil War where Confederate money became worthless, whether in a bank or in a mattress.There is absolutely nothing that says that this could not also happen to the US dollar.
The problem is that as soon as anything leaves your house, different rules apply. Whether this is a physical object or some information is irrelevant. If you want to transport a physical object from point A to point B, you would have to put it into an uncrackable safe and then ship that safe. Good strong encryption is the safe for information. Laws will only protect you and your property, as long as all parties are law-abiding. People and our governments are increasingly ignoring laws and doing whatever they want.
The United States with its Constitution will soon be no more. We have been and still are to an extent the only world power holding up the coming of a world dictator who will soon take power. The UN and the world bankers will soon crown this world ruler. Obama and his administration are working feverishly that this can happen sooner rather than later.
Both the prophet Daniel (700 BC) and Jesus Christ foretold of a coming time near the end, when there will be a totalitarian world dictatorship. There will be no place on the planet that will be beyond this dictators reach. In the New Testament he is labeled "the antichrist". He will preside over the final war of humanity, the war of Armageddon.There is a way out for individuals, but discussing that here is out of place.
If a judge gives permission, it is not illegal for law enforcement to steam open a sealed letter and read its contents. Society just does not see fit to extend this to email.
Apparently they have only common idiots at Apple, but over there they understand that a desktop or laptop computer is fundamentally different from a tablet or phone. That is why, using Mac OS X as a foundation, they built a specialized OS on top of their existing OS X. The extraordinary idiots at M$ apparently have not figured out that a finger sliding on a screen is fundamentally different way of interfacing with a computer than with a mouse and keyboard. Tablets and phones are computers that are far more "personal" than a desktop or even a laptop system. Most users of tablets and phones still have an old-fashioned computer sitting in a corner somewhere gathering dust.
Microsoft and the makers of these computers won't be going out of business anytime soon. The makers of washing machines, refrigerators and dishwashers and other appliances have not gone out of business either, but these appliances are only sold when the old one dies. Almost nobody upgrades the dishwasher, because KitchenAid or some other manufacturer has come out with some whizbang features that are must have, as long as their present dishwasher still works. Microsoft and their business partners have to resign themselves to understanding that their business now is not much different from any other appliance manufacturer.
Laptops and desktops are plenty good enough for what most users bought computers for. Even though the old computers still work, most people wanting or needing a new computer will now get themselves a tablet. Almost everybody also has a phone in their pocket. These modern phones are an ultraportable computer that allows many people to do the things they used to do on their laptops or desktop systems. Creative people will still always use computers with large screens, expansive memory and storage, but most people are consumers of other people's creativity. An interesting statistic would be to learn how many people there are, for whom their phone or tablet is the only computing device they own.
The ONLY reason why gravity governs our local area of space called the solar system, is that lucky for us the overall charge unbalance between the sun and between the planets is small. Another way of saying the same thing is to say that the atoms of the earth and the other planets are neutral and the overall charge differences of the planets is close to but not quite zero. Most matter in the universe however, in fact the overwhelming majority of it is NOT electrically neutral and therefore is influenced by electric forces which are overwhelmingly stronger than gravity. You can get an idea how much stronger electromagnetic forces are than gravity, by doing the experiment I suggested earlier in this thread.
Tell me about the law of physics that informs us that gravity generates magnetic fields! We KNOW that moving electric charges generate magnetic fields. Our whole modern technological civilization depends on this known law of physics. The sun rotates for the same reason that the disk in the electric meter attached to your house rotates when electric current flows through it. If you want to know more about that, look up "homo polar motor". Any time there is a charge difference between two bodies, an electric current will flow between them. The vacuum of space is a very good conductor of electricity. Man-made vacuum tubes demonstrate this quite well. The so-called "solar wind" is an immense river of electric current associated with the sun. These electric currents are guided by the Earth's magnetic field and cause the upper atmosphere to glow at the poles.
There are vast rivers of electricity flowing over immense distances of hundreds of thousands of light-years in our galaxy and others. When the current density is high enough to excite atoms along the way, these atoms emit light by the same mechanism as a neon sign. NASA has some beautiful pictures of these glowing electric discharges occurring in the vast regions of outer space.
It seems that you did not read my post very well or had trouble understanding it. The reason that scientists postulate black holes and other dark stuff, is that these fictions are necessary to explain the movement of galaxies and stars IF gravity is the only or primary controlling force that governs these motions. As soon as you add the electric force, the picture changes drastically. What you label as "factual inaccuracies" are only INTERPRETATIONS of what is actually observed based on the assumption that gravity is the only governing force responsible for the observed motions of stars and galaxies.
The trouble is that "what we know about black holes" is all theoretical and mathematical. No one has ever directly observed a black hole and thereby shown that these things even exist in the real world. Black holes were invented to explain present-day theories about the motion of stars and galaxies. The same is true of "dark matter" and "dark energy" and other dark fictions.
There doesnt seem to be a lot of good evidence yet for many of the dark fictions. But there is good evidence of a black hole at the center of our own galaxy. The stars orbit near the center of our galaxy in a strange way. To orbit in this manner, we expect to see a large mass in the center, but there is no visiable object there. Im not saying it is perfect evidence, but it really does fit the bill for now. So we do have some compelling real world evidence, where a black hole is the best possible explanation and we didnt invent the theory of a black hole to match that observation.
If gravity alone is considered as the main or even only force that controls these orbits of the stars, then yes, a massive object should be there to generate the necessary gravity. However, there is another force operative in the universe that is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. It is the electric force and it acts on matter that is not strictly electrically neutral, but that carries a charge. Most of the matter in the universe or even in the solar system is composed of electrically active plasma which responds strongly to electric and magnetic fields. Any time one area of the universe carries a different charge then another, an electric current is set up which is always accompanied by a magnetic field. Scientists recognize that there are vast magnetic fields in space and on the sun. These magnetic fields are generated by the movement of charge, which by definition is an electric current. Black holes, dark matter and other dark fictions are entirely unnecessary in a charged universe governed primarily by the electromagnetic interaction rather than the much weaker force of gravity generated by mass.
If an object of 100 billion atoms loses or gains only one electron, that tiny charge will generate a force many times greater than the gravity attributable to the mass of such an object. You can do an experiment to demonstrate this for yourself. Take a glass or plastic rod and charge it by rubbing it with a silk or nylon cloth. Now bring the charged rod near some small Styrofoam pieces and watch the electric charge on that rod overcomes the gravity of the whole earth. The charge equivalent of the rod is much smaller than one electron in a hundred billion atoms.
A much greater sign about how far Slashdot has "fallen" is when ACs like you resort to personal attacks, rather than coming up with decent reasons why you disagree with someone who is willing to not hide behind anonymity. Why don't you study the subject and then tell us all why you disagree with what I posted.
All so-called "discoveries" of black holes are attributed to their supposedly enormous gravitational effects on their surroundings, but they never themselves have been found. The same is true of dark matter. The link you gave is all about how the gravity supposedly affects the surroundings of a black hole.
ALL the observations in that article can be explained by the operation of a force 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. This force is electromagnetism as evidenced by cosmic plasmas that can be accurately modeled not only with computers, but with real physical experiments in the lab. Most of the universe is not nicely electrically neutral, like here on earth, but consists of highly charged electrically active plasma. Most atoms in the universe don't have all their electrons nice and neatly orbiting their nuclei.
Scientists are observing immensely powerful cosmic rays and other radiation from many sources in the universe. All this radiation involves the electric force and has nothing to do with gravity. Scientists have postulated that there should be gravity waves and have spent gobs of money to try and detect these, but so far that has been money wasted since they have not found such waves. In addition, there are measurements of immense magnetic fields in space and on the sun. It is a firmly established principle of science, that magnetic fields can be generated easily by the motion of electric charges.
The large-scale universe is controlled by electrical forces that are far greater than gravity. Gravity is only a controlling factor in electrically neutral environments such as we have here in our corner of the universe. Even if only one atom in 100 billion loses one of its electrons, the force generated by this tiny charge imbalance is far greater than the gravity generated by those 100 billion atoms. You can verify that by doing an experiment right in your own home. Just pick up a few bits of Styrofoam with a charged glass or plastic rod. Charge the rod by rubbing it with a silk cloth. The electric charge on the glass rod will easily overcome the gravity generated by the entire Earth.
All present-day theories, including black holes, dark matter, dark energy and other theoretical "stuff" depend on gravity as the controlling force in the large-scale development and operation of the universe. There are some scientists that have come up with a theory that the universe is controlled by a force that is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. It is a force that we are much more familiar with and are able to manipulate to our advantage.
These theories don't require any of the esoteric mathematical inventions, such as black holes and all the rest that the gravity only model needs to explain current observations. These theories depend on plasma physics which allows experiments to be done right here on earth that mimic many of the features we see in the solar system and in the furthest reaches of space.
For example, we to see intense radiation, x-rays specifically, from certain spots in outer space. The conventional INTERPRETATION is as you said attributes it to matter falling into a black hole. Here on earth we can generate similar radiation in x-ray machines and accelerators, by using the electric force acting on charged particles of matter.
Anybody can PROVE to you that they exist by doing a simple experiment. They can accelerate the fist at the end of their arm and smash it into your nose. This device is called a nose smasher. The pain that you experience is registered in your pain detector (brain) and will convince you that they very much exist.
If you want more information on these alternate theories, you can begin your research here:
Heck, considering what we know about the locations of black holes and the speed of manmade spacefcraft, old age will probably kill you before you get close enough to notice the gravity.
Everybody repeat after me: "Space is big. Don't mind Sarten-X, he is a jackass."
The trouble is that "what we know about black holes" is all theoretical and mathematical. No one has ever directly observed a black hole and thereby shown that these things even exist in the real world. Black holes were invented to explain present-day theories about the motion of stars and galaxies. The same is true of "dark matter" and "dark energy" and other dark fictions. Perhaps it is time to examine some of these widely held theories that require these mathematical fictions. At the center of these hypothetical, theoretical black holes is this mathematical entity that has been called a "singularity". This is another mathematical fiction that can't exist in the known universe.
Mathematics are very useful in describing measured experiments and observations in the physical universe. As soon as mathematics and computer simulations go beyond what is actually observed and measured, it no longer describes the real world were living in. Current cosmological theories are no better than those held by the majority of scientists in the days when everybody thought the Earth is flat and is at the center of the solar system and the universe. It is time for someone like Copernicus to bring these mathematical theorists back into the real world.
In 1929 an astronomer named Edwin Hubble discovered that "red shift" of distant galaxies. Then he made the assumption (belief, faith) about the cause of this observation. Astronomers still base their belief in the expanding universe on this assumption. Anyone who wishes to pursue this further can Google "Halton Arp" and "William Tift".
It is interesting that you should mention universal recording of people's lives in order to be held accountable for their actions. Jesus said almost 2000 years ago that this is already being done every day for every human on earth, collecting data for a court case before the Supreme Court of the universe.
"But I say to you that every idle word, whatever men may speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned". (Matthew 12:36-37)
One of the Ten Commandments is "thou shalt not take the name of thy God in vain" Therefore, every time any person does this, a recording thereof is kept which will be played back as evidence before the judge asks each person "how do you plead, guilty or innocent?" The same will be true of every lie ever uttered and every hateful word ever spoken.
There is evidence that your brain is a superb recording device that preserves every sight, sound, thought and action. Under the right conditions during brain surgery or even while under hypnosis, people have experienced the playback of such things. If people already can do these things, how much more for the One who designed the brain. Your brain is an electrical device that is connected to the Internet in the sky sending out data 24/7.
In addition to the stolen "password problem" there's this: Sometimes the actual biometric information differences are quite subtle, so that common digital encodings that are practical will generate the same code for two individuals. That means with millions of individuals, there is an increasing chance that a fingerprint encoder or other biometric device will generate the same code for two or more individuals., Common practical face recognition systems often have problems differentiating identical twins.
The problem with the camera this is that it needs light. If the light from the devices insufficient, then the user is not able to use it in low light situations or darkness. If the biometric information is ever lost or stolen, it cannot be changed like a password. The user is then really stuck up a creek without a paddle.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of God. You have to believe that He exists and that there is a world beyond that which is visible and can be grasped by instruments of science. You also have to believe Carl Sagan statement: "the cosmos is all there is and ever will be". At one time scientists believed that the universe itself is eternal, that is it has always existed and will always exist. That has been shown to be false. The universe had a beginning and will someday come to an end. Unless the law of cause and effect is violated, a beginning requires a beginner. This is the problem of the "first cause". Somewhere, by faith we have to postulate that there is a first cause that requires no cause. The Judeo-Christian worldview is that God is the eternally self existent Creator that caused everything else to come into being. In the secular/evolutionary worldview the first cause is a mathematical entity called a singularity from which the universe exploded with a "Big Bang".
Life holds many mysteries that cannot be explained in terms of our senses. Where does the commonly held notion of what is right and what is wrong come from? Even a little child will exclaim, "why that's not fair!" Where does this sense of what is fair and what isn't come from in an evolutionary sense? I could bring other examples that cannot be answered by any belief system that excludes an external cause that is behind what we observe today.
Where did the chemicals used to synthesize the DNA come from? Did it come from something that was alive or previously alive or was it synthesized from chemicals that were never part of a living organism? I have never heard that something nonliving becomes alive.
Science is based on experiment and observation. There has never been one to experiment or observation that anything living can come from something non-living. Life always comes from life, that is what we observe today. Adding vast amounts of time does not solve the problem because no one was there to observe life come into existence.
When you start talking about what could have happened, why could there not be a God who made life?
No one says that it didn't happen with all certainty, but when you have two perfectly acceptable solutions to the problem, one of them requiring a pre-existing intelligent being gifted with powers outside the range of conceivable natural beings, and the other one not making any such requirement, the latter wins as per Occam's razor, at least until you can demonstrate that the existence of such being should be admitted because it would explain other natural phenomena for which an alternative explanation would be lacking or outright inconceivable. (I am aware of no such other phenomena.)
The problem is that both solutions are faith-based. Evolutionists tell us that the universe is billions of years old. In order to tell time you have to have a clock. You have to have faith that your clock that you are using has always ticked at exactly the same rate as we observe it today. This cannot be proved, that must be assumed. The word "assumed" is a scientific way of saying believed, i.e. faith.
What exactly do you mean with the term "synthetic genome"? What was it synthesized from? How was the bacteria different after it was injected with the so-called synthetic genome? Was it a new kind of bacteria never seen before or simply a bacteria with slightly different characteristics?
The article pretends to be a scientific article, but it really is a religious article full of "could" this or that. Yes I could have won the lottery if I had picked the right numbers and could be such a chemical reaction could have happened, but no one knows whether it really did. When you start talking about what could have happened, why could there not be a God who made life? I always thought that science was about how things work and what DOES happen, not about what could have happened millions or billions of years ago.
Getting a few chemicals to combine produce energy in a way similar to what is known about how life forms produce energy, still is a long way from producing a living, self reproducing single cell. Even the simplest single celled organism is unbelievably complex and contains a prodigious amount of information. The theory that life on Earth was seeded from space begs the question, how did that life begins wherever it did begin? Even with the best efforts of intelligent scientists and the expenditure of mountains of money, no one has yet created any life form whatsoever from nonliving matter.It appears that the intelligence of whoever or whatever designed life far exceeds that of any human scientist.
The government is allowed to do a number of things that you as a citizen are not. They can supply guns to Mexican drug dealers, they can print the money and make war in other countries as well as other things. Congress critters and top administration bureaucrats also exempt themselves from Obama care and other laws.
Cyprus is only the most recent example, but this sort of thing has happened many times in other countries. My parents lost all their money they put into savings in banks in Hitler's Germany. This happened also in the US after the Civil War where Confederate money became worthless, whether in a bank or in a mattress.There is absolutely nothing that says that this could not also happen to the US dollar.
The problem is that as soon as anything leaves your house, different rules apply. Whether this is a physical object or some information is irrelevant. If you want to transport a physical object from point A to point B, you would have to put it into an uncrackable safe and then ship that safe. Good strong encryption is the safe for information. Laws will only protect you and your property, as long as all parties are law-abiding. People and our governments are increasingly ignoring laws and doing whatever they want.
The United States with its Constitution will soon be no more. We have been and still are to an extent the only world power holding up the coming of a world dictator who will soon take power. The UN and the world bankers will soon crown this world ruler. Obama and his administration are working feverishly that this can happen sooner rather than later.
Both the prophet Daniel (700 BC) and Jesus Christ foretold of a coming time near the end, when there will be a totalitarian world dictatorship. There will be no place on the planet that will be beyond this dictators reach. In the New Testament he is labeled "the antichrist". He will preside over the final war of humanity, the war of Armageddon.There is a way out for individuals, but discussing that here is out of place.
If a judge gives permission, it is not illegal for law enforcement to steam open a sealed letter and read its contents. Society just does not see fit to extend this to email.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. In the Bible, 2000 years ago, tax collectors and sinners were in the same category of scumbags.
Apparently they have only common idiots at Apple, but over there they understand that a desktop or laptop computer is fundamentally different from a tablet or phone. That is why, using Mac OS X as a foundation, they built a specialized OS on top of their existing OS X. The extraordinary idiots at M$ apparently have not figured out that a finger sliding on a screen is fundamentally different way of interfacing with a computer than with a mouse and keyboard. Tablets and phones are computers that are far more "personal" than a desktop or even a laptop system. Most users of tablets and phones still have an old-fashioned computer sitting in a corner somewhere gathering dust.
Microsoft and the makers of these computers won't be going out of business anytime soon. The makers of washing machines, refrigerators and dishwashers and other appliances have not gone out of business either, but these appliances are only sold when the old one dies. Almost nobody upgrades the dishwasher, because KitchenAid or some other manufacturer has come out with some whizbang features that are must have, as long as their present dishwasher still works. Microsoft and their business partners have to resign themselves to understanding that their business now is not much different from any other appliance manufacturer.
Laptops and desktops are plenty good enough for what most users bought computers for. Even though the old computers still work, most people wanting or needing a new computer will now get themselves a tablet. Almost everybody also has a phone in their pocket. These modern phones are an ultraportable computer that allows many people to do the things they used to do on their laptops or desktop systems. Creative people will still always use computers with large screens, expansive memory and storage, but most people are consumers of other people's creativity. An interesting statistic would be to learn how many people there are, for whom their phone or tablet is the only computing device they own.
The ONLY reason why gravity governs our local area of space called the solar system, is that lucky for us the overall charge unbalance between the sun and between the planets is small. Another way of saying the same thing is to say that the atoms of the earth and the other planets are neutral and the overall charge differences of the planets is close to but not quite zero. Most matter in the universe however, in fact the overwhelming majority of it is NOT electrically neutral and therefore is influenced by electric forces which are overwhelmingly stronger than gravity. You can get an idea how much stronger electromagnetic forces are than gravity, by doing the experiment I suggested earlier in this thread.
Tell me about the law of physics that informs us that gravity generates magnetic fields! We KNOW that moving electric charges generate magnetic fields. Our whole modern technological civilization depends on this known law of physics. The sun rotates for the same reason that the disk in the electric meter attached to your house rotates when electric current flows through it. If you want to know more about that, look up "homo polar motor". Any time there is a charge difference between two bodies, an electric current will flow between them. The vacuum of space is a very good conductor of electricity. Man-made vacuum tubes demonstrate this quite well. The so-called "solar wind" is an immense river of electric current associated with the sun. These electric currents are guided by the Earth's magnetic field and cause the upper atmosphere to glow at the poles.
There are vast rivers of electricity flowing over immense distances of hundreds of thousands of light-years in our galaxy and others. When the current density is high enough to excite atoms along the way, these atoms emit light by the same mechanism as a neon sign. NASA has some beautiful pictures of these glowing electric discharges occurring in the vast regions of outer space.
It seems that you did not read my post very well or had trouble understanding it. The reason that scientists postulate black holes and other dark stuff, is that these fictions are necessary to explain the movement of galaxies and stars IF gravity is the only or primary controlling force that governs these motions. As soon as you add the electric force, the picture changes drastically. What you label as "factual inaccuracies" are only INTERPRETATIONS of what is actually observed based on the assumption that gravity is the only governing force responsible for the observed motions of stars and galaxies.
Funny, ha ha, but really why then, where does that saying come from "the land of milk and honey"?
The trouble is that "what we know about black holes" is all theoretical and mathematical. No one has ever directly observed a black hole and thereby shown that these things even exist in the real world. Black holes were invented to explain present-day theories about the motion of stars and galaxies. The same is true of "dark matter" and "dark energy" and other dark fictions.
There doesnt seem to be a lot of good evidence yet for many of the dark fictions. But there is good evidence of a black hole at the center of our own galaxy. The stars orbit near the center of our galaxy in a strange way. To orbit in this manner, we expect to see a large mass in the center, but there is no visiable object there. Im not saying it is perfect evidence, but it really does fit the bill for now. So we do have some compelling real world evidence, where a black hole is the best possible explanation and we didnt invent the theory of a black hole to match that observation.
If gravity alone is considered as the main or even only force that controls these orbits of the stars, then yes, a massive object should be there to generate the necessary gravity. However, there is another force operative in the universe that is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. It is the electric force and it acts on matter that is not strictly electrically neutral, but that carries a charge. Most of the matter in the universe or even in the solar system is composed of electrically active plasma which responds strongly to electric and magnetic fields. Any time one area of the universe carries a different charge then another, an electric current is set up which is always accompanied by a magnetic field. Scientists recognize that there are vast magnetic fields in space and on the sun. These magnetic fields are generated by the movement of charge, which by definition is an electric current. Black holes, dark matter and other dark fictions are entirely unnecessary in a charged universe governed primarily by the electromagnetic interaction rather than the much weaker force of gravity generated by mass.
If an object of 100 billion atoms loses or gains only one electron, that tiny charge will generate a force many times greater than the gravity attributable to the mass of such an object. You can do an experiment to demonstrate this for yourself. Take a glass or plastic rod and charge it by rubbing it with a silk or nylon cloth. Now bring the charged rod near some small Styrofoam pieces and watch the electric charge on that rod overcomes the gravity of the whole earth. The charge equivalent of the rod is much smaller than one electron in a hundred billion atoms.
A much greater sign about how far Slashdot has "fallen" is when ACs like you resort to personal attacks, rather than coming up with decent reasons why you disagree with someone who is willing to not hide behind anonymity. Why don't you study the subject and then tell us all why you disagree with what I posted.
All so-called "discoveries" of black holes are attributed to their supposedly enormous gravitational effects on their surroundings, but they never themselves have been found. The same is true of dark matter. The link you gave is all about how the gravity supposedly affects the surroundings of a black hole.
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/bh_reallyexist.htm
ALL the observations in that article can be explained by the operation of a force 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. This force is electromagnetism as evidenced by cosmic plasmas that can be accurately modeled not only with computers, but with real physical experiments in the lab. Most of the universe is not nicely electrically neutral, like here on earth, but consists of highly charged electrically active plasma. Most atoms in the universe don't have all their electrons nice and neatly orbiting their nuclei.
Scientists are observing immensely powerful cosmic rays and other radiation from many sources in the universe. All this radiation involves the electric force and has nothing to do with gravity. Scientists have postulated that there should be gravity waves and have spent gobs of money to try and detect these, but so far that has been money wasted since they have not found such waves. In addition, there are measurements of immense magnetic fields in space and on the sun. It is a firmly established principle of science, that magnetic fields can be generated easily by the motion of electric charges.
The large-scale universe is controlled by electrical forces that are far greater than gravity. Gravity is only a controlling factor in electrically neutral environments such as we have here in our corner of the universe. Even if only one atom in 100 billion loses one of its electrons, the force generated by this tiny charge imbalance is far greater than the gravity generated by those 100 billion atoms. You can verify that by doing an experiment right in your own home. Just pick up a few bits of Styrofoam with a charged glass or plastic rod. Charge the rod by rubbing it with a silk cloth. The electric charge on the glass rod will easily overcome the gravity generated by the entire Earth.
All present-day theories, including black holes, dark matter, dark energy and other theoretical "stuff" depend on gravity as the controlling force in the large-scale development and operation of the universe. There are some scientists that have come up with a theory that the universe is controlled by a force that is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. It is a force that we are much more familiar with and are able to manipulate to our advantage.
These theories don't require any of the esoteric mathematical inventions, such as black holes and all the rest that the gravity only model needs to explain current observations. These theories depend on plasma physics which allows experiments to be done right here on earth that mimic many of the features we see in the solar system and in the furthest reaches of space.
For example, we to see intense radiation, x-rays specifically, from certain spots in outer space. The conventional INTERPRETATION is as you said attributes it to matter falling into a black hole. Here on earth we can generate similar radiation in x-ray machines and accelerators, by using the electric force acting on charged particles of matter.
Anybody can PROVE to you that they exist by doing a simple experiment. They can accelerate the fist at the end of their arm and smash it into your nose. This device is called a nose smasher. The pain that you experience is registered in your pain detector (brain) and will convince you that they very much exist.
If you want more information on these alternate theories, you can begin your research here:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/eg-contents/
Heck, considering what we know about the locations of black holes and the speed of manmade spacefcraft, old age will probably kill you before you get close enough to notice the gravity.
Everybody repeat after me: "Space is big. Don't mind Sarten-X, he is a jackass."
The trouble is that "what we know about black holes" is all theoretical and mathematical. No one has ever directly observed a black hole and thereby shown that these things even exist in the real world. Black holes were invented to explain present-day theories about the motion of stars and galaxies. The same is true of "dark matter" and "dark energy" and other dark fictions. Perhaps it is time to examine some of these widely held theories that require these mathematical fictions. At the center of these hypothetical, theoretical black holes is this mathematical entity that has been called a "singularity". This is another mathematical fiction that can't exist in the known universe.
Mathematics are very useful in describing measured experiments and observations in the physical universe. As soon as mathematics and computer simulations go beyond what is actually observed and measured, it no longer describes the real world were living in. Current cosmological theories are no better than those held by the majority of scientists in the days when everybody thought the Earth is flat and is at the center of the solar system and the universe. It is time for someone like Copernicus to bring these mathematical theorists back into the real world.
In 1929 an astronomer named Edwin Hubble discovered that "red shift" of distant galaxies. Then he made the assumption (belief, faith) about the cause of this observation. Astronomers still base their belief in the expanding universe on this assumption. Anyone who wishes to pursue this further can Google "Halton Arp" and "William Tift".
It is interesting that you should mention universal recording of people's lives in order to be held accountable for their actions. Jesus said almost 2000 years ago that this is already being done every day for every human on earth, collecting data for a court case before the Supreme Court of the universe.
"But I say to you that every idle word, whatever men may speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned". (Matthew 12:36-37)
One of the Ten Commandments is "thou shalt not take the name of thy God in vain" Therefore, every time any person does this, a recording thereof is kept which will be played back as evidence before the judge asks each person "how do you plead, guilty or innocent?" The same will be true of every lie ever uttered and every hateful word ever spoken.
There is evidence that your brain is a superb recording device that preserves every sight, sound, thought and action. Under the right conditions during brain surgery or even while under hypnosis, people have experienced the playback of such things. If people already can do these things, how much more for the One who designed the brain. Your brain is an electrical device that is connected to the Internet in the sky sending out data 24/7.
In addition to the stolen "password problem" there's this: Sometimes the actual biometric information differences are quite subtle, so that common digital encodings that are practical will generate the same code for two individuals. That means with millions of individuals, there is an increasing chance that a fingerprint encoder or other biometric device will generate the same code for two or more individuals., Common practical face recognition systems often have problems differentiating identical twins.
The problem with the camera this is that it needs light. If the light from the devices insufficient, then the user is not able to use it in low light situations or darkness. If the biometric information is ever lost or stolen, it cannot be changed like a password. The user is then really stuck up a creek without a paddle.