This isn't a bad idea at all: drugging your way out of the problem. I was thinking more in the line of chemical castration or some other mood altering drung that can be taken on pill form.
I think there is a UN resolution that you are not allowed to block a country from using the internet, as it is an international source of knowledge. Can't find a reference, though.
I guess the **AA could petition the UN to force an internet blockade against Sealand. Or Sealand could petition the UN to allow them access to the internet if others refuse to give it to them. But I think that requires that Sealand is recognized as a nation by the UN. So that should be the first order of business.
...is that because of the New Horizons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons mission NASA and US astronomers has been pushing for a definition where Pluto is a planet because it is more prestigious to send a probe to a planet than to a dwarf planet.
We are supposed to be scientists, and make definitons that make sense from a scientific point of view, but this is politics.
Actually, TV has become more and more complicated. A TV show used to have one plotline and a linear progression. You could pretty much sit down and follow any episode of a show without prior knowledge. Today, a typical TV show has many plotlines and many interpersonal relationsships that you have to keep track of. It is very common that a show has fansites where fans gather and discuss the plot of last nights show, trying to figure out what is going on and the implications for the story/future plotlines. TV has not gotten simpler and simpler.
Your are missing the fact that spacetime is allowed to expand as fast as it wants... Only things that move through spacetime are bound by the speed of light.
This is a common question. Spacetime is allowed to expand faster than light. It is all that moves through spacetime that is bound by the speed of light.
No, not at all. As I have stated elsewhere, I don't think the authors of the original article on MECO's think that black holes and MECO's are mutually exclusive. I think the authors of the New Scientist article might have added that for effect.
Just skimmed it. This theory definitely does not exclude the existence of black holes. This is just another solution to the Einstein equations, involving matter.
If the contraints they impose on the stress-energy tensor (i.e. the the assumptions they make about the behavior of matter) are always enforced in the universe, I think they'd have a problem with creating neutron stars.
I agree with the fact that you should always keep your mind open. It is just that General Relativity has been tested and tested (we we keep on doing it) and the results always back it up. Will the next result also fit with the? It's likely but not 100% sure.
If you told me you had a horse in your back yard, I'd look at it and if it looked like a horse I'd believe what you said. If you told me you had a unicorn in your back yard, I'd take a good hard look at it, make sure the horn is attached, take DNA samples and analyze them... perform all kinds of tests before I believe you. General Relativity is like a unicorn that has stood up to all the tests we could possibly throw at it and then some. This article is basically saying it has a Pegasus and expects us to treat it like they were saying they have a horse. Okay, I'll stop the analogies:-)
Another issue entirely is the fact that this whole MECO theory is based on the assumption that plasma might behave oddly/unexpectedly under extreme conditions. I have no problem with that idea. But to leap from that to saying that if plasma behaves in an unexpected way in extreme conditions it means that no black holes can exist... that's a stretch.
Jets from AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei) are thought to be generated by a rotating black hole winding the magnetic field from the accretion disc up in a tight beam. The beam contains accelerating particles at incredibly high speeds.
Preface: I have a Ph.D. in Astrophysics and my ressearch has to do with computer models of black holes.
This is yet another one of these things where an observational astronomer who just doesn't like black holes comes up with some incredibly complex theory to explain their oberservations so they don't need a black hole to explain them. There is an incredible resistance towards black holes in some parts of the astronomical community. Saying that "A black hole can't do this" when our models of accretion discs arount black holes are still at the state they are in i.e. fixed background metric, many models are only HD not MHD (no magnetic fields in the disc) is just not backed up by the facts.
This reminds me of the whole "we don't need black holes to explain jets" discussion a couple of years back.
Besides I do not se how the existence of Mecos would prevent the existence of black holes in general. We are still using the same Einstein Equations, right?
I think the operand word in the article is "controversial". Occam's Razor is a good rule of thumb.
I'm right in the insulted camp. There are tons of men out there who treat women that can fix their computers and discuss the theory of relativity with respect. But I guess they don't hang out here.
The question has sort of already been answered: they form a larger black hole and in the process gravitational waves are emitted. However, the details of this process are still not very well known. The field of Numerical Relativity is dedicated to making 3D computer models of colliding black holes in order to clarify what the gravitational signature of such an event would be like. Since gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO are up and running and getting more and more sensitive, such a signal might be detected. However, the detector guys need to know what the signal should look like in order to detect it (their signal to noise ratio is ridiculously low).
Simulating a black hole collision is extremely challenging, because of the equations involved. They are complicated and unstable and in general no fun to work with. Things look better when the holes are far apart, a simplified version of the equations can be used and we have a faily accurate picture of what the signal of two orbiting black holes look like. When they are formed a single, wobbling black hole, we also have a pretty clear picture, because other aprroximate equations can be used. However, all the interessting stuff happens when the hole are close and the fields are strong and only the full equations can give an accurate picture. If the signal can be predicted in the strong field and we can compare it to an observed signal, it would be a great way to test General Relativity in strong gravitational fields. However, we are far from there yet.
Gravitational waves do not come from inside the black hole. They arise because of disturbances a black holes makes in spacetime _near_ a black hole. But you need either a disturbed black hole or a binary black hole system (or something more exotic) to emit gravitational waves. I recommend http://www2.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/GravWaves .html for info on gravitational waves, it's old but classic.
Slashdot Mirror
Lifehacker recently had an article on a piece of software called the PC Decrapifier. I haven't tried it, but it seems relevant to this thread.
This isn't a bad idea at all: drugging your way out of the problem. I was thinking more in the line of chemical castration or some other mood altering drung that can be taken on pill form.
I think there is a UN resolution that you are not allowed to block a country from using the internet, as it is an international source of knowledge. Can't find a reference, though. I guess the **AA could petition the UN to force an internet blockade against Sealand. Or Sealand could petition the UN to allow them access to the internet if others refuse to give it to them. But I think that requires that Sealand is recognized as a nation by the UN. So that should be the first order of business.
...is that because of the New Horizons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons mission NASA and US astronomers has been pushing for a definition where Pluto is a planet because it is more prestigious to send a probe to a planet than to a dwarf planet. We are supposed to be scientists, and make definitons that make sense from a scientific point of view, but this is politics.
Actually, TV has become more and more complicated. A TV show used to have one plotline and a linear progression. You could pretty much sit down and follow any episode of a show without prior knowledge. Today, a typical TV show has many plotlines and many interpersonal relationsships that you have to keep track of. It is very common that a show has fansites where fans gather and discuss the plot of last nights show, trying to figure out what is going on and the implications for the story/future plotlines. TV has not gotten simpler and simpler.
Most people will see the RIAA story and simply shrug. ...and continue downloading illegally.
Your are missing the fact that spacetime is allowed to expand as fast as it wants... Only things that move through spacetime are bound by the speed of light.
This is a common question. Spacetime is allowed to expand faster than light. It is all that moves through spacetime that is bound by the speed of light.
No, not at all. As I have stated elsewhere, I don't think the authors of the original article on MECO's think that black holes and MECO's are mutually exclusive. I think the authors of the New Scientist article might have added that for effect.
Just skimmed it. This theory definitely does not exclude the existence of black holes. This is just another solution to the Einstein equations, involving matter.
If the contraints they impose on the stress-energy tensor (i.e. the the assumptions they make about the behavior of matter) are always enforced in the universe, I think they'd have a problem with creating neutron stars.
I agree with the fact that you should always keep your mind open. It is just that General Relativity has been tested and tested (we we keep on doing it) and the results always back it up. Will the next result also fit with the? It's likely but not 100% sure.
... perform all kinds of tests before I believe you. General Relativity is like a unicorn that has stood up to all the tests we could possibly throw at it and then some. This article is basically saying it has a Pegasus and expects us to treat it like they were saying they have a horse. Okay, I'll stop the analogies :-)
If you told me you had a horse in your back yard, I'd look at it and if it looked like a horse I'd believe what you said. If you told me you had a unicorn in your back yard, I'd take a good hard look at it, make sure the horn is attached, take DNA samples and analyze them
Another issue entirely is the fact that this whole MECO theory is based on the assumption that plasma might behave oddly/unexpectedly under extreme conditions. I have no problem with that idea. But to leap from that to saying that if plasma behaves in an unexpected way in extreme conditions it means that no black holes can exist... that's a stretch.
Jets from AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei) are thought to be generated by a rotating black hole winding the magnetic field from the accretion disc up in a tight beam. The beam contains accelerating particles at incredibly high speeds.
Preface: I have a Ph.D. in Astrophysics and my ressearch has to do with computer models of black holes.
This is yet another one of these things where an observational astronomer who just doesn't like black holes comes up with some incredibly complex theory to explain their oberservations so they don't need a black hole to explain them. There is an incredible resistance towards black holes in some parts of the astronomical community. Saying that "A black hole can't do this" when our models of accretion discs arount black holes are still at the state they are in i.e. fixed background metric, many models are only HD not MHD (no magnetic fields in the disc) is just not backed up by the facts.
This reminds me of the whole "we don't need black holes to explain jets" discussion a couple of years back.
Besides I do not se how the existence of Mecos would prevent the existence of black holes in general. We are still using the same Einstein Equations, right?
I think the operand word in the article is "controversial". Occam's Razor is a good rule of thumb.
I'm right in the insulted camp. There are tons of men out there who treat women that can fix their computers and discuss the theory of relativity with respect. But I guess they don't hang out here.
The question has sort of already been answered: they form a larger black hole and in the process gravitational waves are emitted. However, the details of this process are still not very well known. The field of Numerical Relativity is dedicated to making 3D computer models of colliding black holes in order to clarify what the gravitational signature of such an event would be like. Since gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO are up and running and getting more and more sensitive, such a signal might be detected. However, the detector guys need to know what the signal should look like in order to detect it (their signal to noise ratio is ridiculously low). Simulating a black hole collision is extremely challenging, because of the equations involved. They are complicated and unstable and in general no fun to work with. Things look better when the holes are far apart, a simplified version of the equations can be used and we have a faily accurate picture of what the signal of two orbiting black holes look like. When they are formed a single, wobbling black hole, we also have a pretty clear picture, because other aprroximate equations can be used. However, all the interessting stuff happens when the hole are close and the fields are strong and only the full equations can give an accurate picture. If the signal can be predicted in the strong field and we can compare it to an observed signal, it would be a great way to test General Relativity in strong gravitational fields. However, we are far from there yet.
Gravitational waves do not come from inside the black hole. They arise because of disturbances a black holes makes in spacetime _near_ a black hole. But you need either a disturbed black hole or a binary black hole system (or something more exotic) to emit gravitational waves. I recommend http://www2.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/GravWaves .html for info on gravitational waves, it's old but classic.