On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 1:55 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > We have overwhelming astronomical evidence that entities exist which > are gravitationally massive and compact > Yes. > but I am unaware that any have actually been detected. What we do detect > is that there are entities with massive gravitational forces at the centers > of most spiral galaxies, > And in 1965 Rodger Penrose used Topology (a branch of mathematics never used in physics before) to prove that if enough mass is concentrated in a small enough volume, as we see in most galaxies including our own, and if general relativity is correct then a singularity MUST exist somewhere inside that volume. This new paper also assumes that General Relativity is correct but it claims that Einstein's theory predicts that much mass can never be concentrated to that density making Penrose's discovery moot. However we know from observations that matter CAN be concentrated to that density, therefore if this new paper contains no errors (which I very much doubt) then we wouldn't conclude that black holes don't exist but we'd have to conclude that General Relativity needs to be modified to remain consistent with observation. Good observations always outrank theory, even a theory by Einstein. > > My point is that I am not as certain as you seem to be that we actually > understand these massive gravitational entities > We certainly don't understand what happens at the singularity, a point of infinite (and not just very large) space time curvature; all known physical theories break down at that point and start producing nonsense. > > As, I think Brent pointed out the time dilation at the location of > formation of a black hole would slow time down in a relativistic manner to > an almost pure standstill > If you were looking at the Black Hole from a large distance you'd see me aproach the event horizon slower and slower and you'd have to wait forever to see me cross it; but to me it would only take a few seconds. > > this hypothesis is speculative, but the author is also an associate > professor of physics at a major American university and is a pretty well > known cosmologist. Not that easy to dismiss her as a fringe loon > I'm not saying that, even if the paper does contain an error that doesn't make him a loon, it just makes him wrong. This is complicated stuff and it's easy to make a mistake. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
