Remember folks: "Knowledge talks, but ignorance does too. Wisdom listens and questions." Don't waste your breath trying to show people how much you know; they'll either believe your hype or think you're faking. Ignorance speaks on what it does not know, knowledge thinks everyone cares what it has to say, wisdom waits until words are needed or asks questions. The truth is, most people don't care what we think we know. We're better off listening and asking questions than trying to give answers.
I believe you don't truly understand the scientific method. Your basic assumption is that physical laws behave differently at different times and at distant locations. Every measurement, every observation in the last thousand years has increasingly shown that physical laws apply equally wherever conditions are comparable. This is also why I mentioned that supporting evidence for Hawking's theories appears on both the cosmological scale and the particle physics scale. I am a scientist. I was a research chemist for several years after I left MIT, and although I am not an astrophysicist, I do follow the field. I'm sorry to say we are speaking different languages, and don't have enough common experience to bridge the gap. I don't mean this in an insulting way, but there really isn't enough common ground for a meaningful discussion.
He also can't prove that aliens aren't having tea parties in the center of black holes either. So, besides alien tea parties, quantum theory is the best we got, and it is paradoxical to general relativity. According to Wikipedia: Do I understand most of that? Nope. Probably never will but the gist is, 'what happens in black holes, stays in black holes.' Kind of like Vegas.
So you went to MIT, were a research chemist, follow astrophysics, and now work in software development. And you write... You sir have earned my respect. What else have you dabbled in?
Wait has the scientific method changed recently? You can throw as many things as you want at me regarding where you have been, what you have done, and what you ate for dinner last night, but that will not change how the scientific method is done and how you prove things. I'd go over the entire scientific method and how it works but I would be wasting my breath. What you are failing to realize, is that there are conditions that are going on that Hawking has no way of postulating from observance in order to create a true theory in the sense of 'proving' anything. You seemed to glance over that. Do different elements react differently in certain circumstances? Do things react differently under different temperatures? Under different amounts of gravity? Under the presence of different other gaseous elements? I can go on and on...Hawking does not know any of these variables. Therefor he can only theorize based on assumptions from calculations he can do from observance and applying laws that he does know, and how they work. I had a full ride to The Ohio State University, do you know how hard that is to get? I could have went to all kinds of different universities but I wanted to go there. I grew up in Ohio. I wanted to be a sports writer so I went into journalism. Big deal? I could have gone to be a doctor, a scientist, a lawyer...whatever I wanted. My cousin who wasn't even an honor roll student in high school is now a stem cell researcher. Titles don't mean anything to me, as I've met some of the smartest people I have ever known that were high school teachers, managers at fast food restaurants, and even in homeless shelters. There are a lot more variables that come into play when you try to match intelligence with titles and positions obtained in life.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. I would never listen to a journalist over a professional physicist when discussing physics. But I'd come to you first for sports updates.
Yes, but you seemed to postulate that the laws of physics are different relative to your position in the Universe, which is false. Gravity, inertia, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, they are all constant no matter where your current location is in the whole of the cosmos.
The best way to understand that is by viewing it like sound. Take a person's voice for example, it's like a finger print as in it is unique when you measure it in waves. Each system has this same type of finger print that can be witnessed by the way a particle moves. Each is unique. He's not physicist either. He said he went to MIT, he never said he graduated. He said he was a research chemist. @JJ_Maxx Are you sure about that? What's the gravity on Jupitor? Is it the same as it is on Earth? You are also misunderstanding what I am saying, in order to know how things react, you must know the conditions they are being forced to act in. Hawking doesn't know those variables. The only thing we know about the gravitational pull of a black hole is that it is so strong that even light can't escape it, we don't have a set number. All the other variables are also unknown. Do you know the temperature inside a black hole? We don't even know all the elements on earth let alone the universe.
Easy now buddy. Did you miss the the part where he said: He's not trying to match intelligence, he is stating his credentials as support/evidence of his knowledge of how science works. There is the "standard" version of the scientific method, and there You are right, but the way science is actually advanced, it pretty much follows the process above. Cogito is not the first scientist I know to have said basically that. I'm not saying that we know, definitively, what the conditions and variables are, but based on what we know there is evidence that supports certain behaviors. So while I hold to the idea that there is much we do not know and cannot know with only mainstream science, I will say the scientific method is not in question. I'm not arguing or debating this with you, but your writing is a bit sharper than it needs to be. Tone it down a notch, yo. Be cool, bro. B)
No, that isn't what he is doing, it's a defense mechanism he is using in order to try to win the discussion. What's the point of waiting until page 5 of a discussion to say he went to MIT, and yadda yadda yadda. Personally people don't impress me in discussions with titles they impress me by and earn my respect with intelligent retort and proving their intelligence. It's like another sports message board I go to where if people don't like what you say, even if you can prove it with facts, they say, "If you're so smart why aren't you working in the NFL? Enough said." It's a cop out.
I think some of what you are saying is true, but we know a lot more than we don't know. Your example is fitting because we know a lot about Jupiter, even though we've never actually been there. We know its radius (43,441 mi.), its mass (1.898E27 kg), its surface area (23.71 billion sq miles), and yes, its gravity. (24.79 m/s²) We took information we did know, and it helped us fill in information that we didn't know. Now, if someone were to ask what would happen if you dropped an egg on Jupiter, scientists would be able to give you accurate, factual information on exactly what would happen. So I'm afraid while your 'unknown variable' argument holds some water, it's not very convincing. With the knowledge we have today, we can accurately model some truly incredible things using the known laws of the universe.
From what I understand, saying that the laws of physics are the same everywhere is simply an assumption by science. It seems to be a good assumption based on what we know so far. Black holes seem to be a whole different beast, however. We can model them based on what we know, but I wouldn't be surprised if our models are ultimately incorrect.
From what I know of Cogito, in my time here, He's not like that. He doesn't waste time trying to impress people. I'm sure the discussion isn't that important for him to need to "win," regardless. He even stated that he's not trying to belittle you. But take it how you will. All I was trying to do is bring the tension down a notch. This is why threads like these crash and burn. Too many people get full of their egos and insist on proving each other wrong instead of asking questions about ideas. Then people get offended or misinterpret things and the point of the discussion is buried in argument. I hate to see that on a potentially good thread in a "good" community.
I agree with you here. B) Though, I'd amend this to say I wouldn't be surprised if our models are incomplete. In my opinion, it's like Newton and kinematics or Darwin and evolution. They aren't wrong, they're models work and are the foundations for modern science in their respective fields. However, they've been proven to have inaccuracies. So I'd say they are just incomplete perspectives on the phenomena they were studying.
What you just said sounds like what people do in the south of the U.S. First they will say they think dearly of someone and would never have a bad word to say about them, followed by a list of what the person does wrong and how annoying they are. Do you know what President is the only one to have earned an M.B.A., where he did so at Harvard University, one of the most prestigious Universities in the world? George W. Bush.
Oh no, I'm not getting sucked into this spite circle because of a difference of perspectives. I switched from a direct address to a general statement and I've said all I had to say and I have nothing left for ya, buddy. See ya 'round the forums.
I think you meant "spirit circle." I am in fact very spiritual, even though we can't exactly prove spirits exist, YET!
Theories are assumptions. But they are based on what we know. Right now, there's no reason to believe that gravity acts differently on the other end of the Universe. It comes from a basic knowledge that every material thing in our universe is made from the same building blocks and operate under the same rules. If aliens lived on the other side of the Universe, they would have to deal with the same laws of physics we do. As far as black holes are concerned, it is a theoretical area, indeed. But that's not to say we don't know a lot about them simply based on what we know about matter and gravity. We are lucky to be living in a time where science is making strong headway on a theory that will bridge quantum theory and general relativity. Again, it's just a matter of knowing the ingredients, and then you can predict the outcome without actually observing it. If I give you the length and width of a rectangle, you can tell me what the area is without actually measuring the area.
Yeah, I agree that ego can destroy discussions like this. Also, when people refuse to let go after they are repeatedly asked to agree to disagree. Please, whoever finds themselves in such a situation, just back down so we all can have fun discussing a fascinating topic. I don't want to see my thread closed because of pointless bickering. Thanks everyone
So how about those ultramassive black holes (you know, those bad boys that are some meager 10000000000 times the mass of our own sun)? Don’t they defy the theories we have of the relationship between galaxies and black holes? How can they grow so big? Could actual planets exist within it, sailing around happily in the confines of a colossal cosmo hoover?
Well, actually it is possible. Supermassive black holes have much weaker tidal forces near the event horizon because the singularity is very distant from it. It could be that whatever happens to fall into it, planets and suns included, wouldn't feel tidal forces until they fall very deep into it? I don't think they know how a black hole can grow that big but there are several theories, such as that they pull in so much matter they grow massive, or they merge with other black holes or even that they are primordials which were formed at the moment of big bang. I like the last one, it's so poetic
Current thinking is that most galaxies, including the Milky Way, have a suppermassive black hole in the center. Ginger is right, in that the gravitational gradient, and therefore the tidal forces that rip all all solid matter into its constituent subatomic particles, is much less as you approach a black hole. On the other hand, the radius of a black hole is undefined, even though there is a finite circumference at a given gravitational strength, so it's kind of a moot point. It takes infinite time for a particle to reach the event horizon. From the particle's perspective, it's an infinite distanc to the EH. From an outside perspective, the particle slows as it approaches the EH. and never quite reaches it (ignoring quantum uncertainty, which is where Hawking's theories start to rear up). Supermassive or not, there is a point on ny of a black hole's descent paths before the EH where the tidal stresses shred matter completely.
