OT: No black holes? One scientist thinks so...

[Saber Cherry]

Starhawk said:
we've never EVER made a black hole or anything remotely like what we "think" one would be,

(Bold added by me.)

Are you sure?

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...mg18524915.400

we can't even make a large enough ammount of gravity or speed to test the theory properly.

"The" theory? You mean time changing in accordance with relativity theory? It's been tested to the satisfaction of most scientists.

Considering the fact that they were using clocks some people may just argue that the clock's mechanisms suffered from the gravity/speed not actual time it's self.

That's exactly the point - the clock's mechanism is affected, no matter what mechanism you use. Thus, time changed. To quote Einstein, "Time is that which you measure with a clock." Do you have some better definition of time that renders it independant of the rate at which things occur? If so, you're not talking about time anymore.

something that ages or spoils rapidly

What if it was a clock based on the rate something ages, like... say... some Cesium atoms? Ooops, that's already what they use in such tests.

Unless you stick something that ages or spoils rapidly and place it in a high grav/ high speed environment and see if it spoils at a slower rate you'll always have arguments that you can't "prove" time slows down at all.

No, you'll still have those arguments. As increasingly conclusive evidence is gathered for something, the group of people who argue against it become increasingly stupid and / or psychotic, but they never give up. Talk to people who don't believe in plate tectonics, moon landings, or the "viral theory of AIDS." They love to argue, but they're often stupid, psychotic, illogical, or simply attention-seekers.

My point is, theories are just that theories as in "totally unproven" if it was proven in any way or shape it would no longer be a theory but instead be a scientific fact.

I guess you don't understand science. Science is a set of theories and models based on observations. The facts are the observations; the other 99% of science cannot magically leap from "Theory" to "Scientific Fact" no matter how accurate it seems. Science is a method of predicting and explaining. Facts do not predict or explain, but theories and models do.

And yes temperature wise absolute zero can be reached in deep space from what I've heard but again I don't think we know for sure so aw well heh....

No, it is fundamental to thermodynamics that absolute zero cannot be reached anywhere through any method. Remember that thermodynamics is spoken of as a set of "Laws," but it is really just a model that fits observations. Nobody has violated it so far.

No I don't think it's "crap" unless it's totally proven I just think we shouldn't take it as "a fact" until it is "a fact" considering how rapidly scientific theories are proven wrong, then right, then wrong again a few months afterward.

Can you name a so-called "fact" that has been proven so totally that it cannot be disproven? Like, say, "Paper is made of trees." Do you really know this, or do you just think it's true because you learned it in school and everyone says so? How about, "You are looking at a monitor." Is "I've seen it with my own eyes" undeniable proof? Remember, people claim to have seen aliens and flying saucers, and psychologists have (to the best of their ability) determined that at least some of them believe they are telling the truth.

The only source of "Truth" is in moldy tomes (I love that phrase) like the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, "Battlefield Earth" series, and so forth. But none of those have any useful ability to predict or explain, so I tend to go with science.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Personally I've found the Bible and the Book of Mormon very good at explaining societal behavor.

Society is in golden age,
Society starts crumbling as people forget about the principles that brought about the golden age,
Society falls apart into bloody violence,
People start building a new society on proven principles that, at the very least, include dedication,
Society is in golden age,

Rinse, repeat. That's the whole of history, from Rome to Assyria, from the aztec's to Canada, a society is built upon principles. Maybe not good principles, but the people beleive in them and work to make them work. Some of them, like the aztec's, would have crashed anyway, because their principle's were unsuportable (At the least, they would have run out people). Other's, like the romans, had good principles and bad principles - and their empire lasted, in one form or another, for a long time.

[Aiken]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Personally I've found the Bible and the Book of Mormon very good at explaining societal behavor.

. No better than standard history textbook. Cycle birth-death-rebirth of societies was noticed long before Christianity (or monotheism, in general).

[narf poit chez BOOM]

aiken said:

. No better than standard history textbook. Cycle birth-death-rebirth of societies was noticed long before Christianity (or monotheism, in general).

...That's ok. Both books begin well before the birth of Christ...And lot's of people still don't listen. You can't rebuild a society while ignoring it's governing principles, and whatever you tell yourself, you have an influence on society.

[Starhawk]

Well Rome was never a true "golden age" in the sense of what we would like, because most of us would probobly have hated living in a Roman Empire, because unfortunately for Empires like Rome and Assyria and even in the end Persia they became to conquest bloated that when there was nothing left to conquer they all began to decline, yes in different ways:

Rome Lost their "true" legions with the fully romanized citizens with higher tech then the barbarian hordes they were fighting, and eventually became just a bunch of "barbarians" in service to Rome. The Roman Empire pretty much ate themselves out of existence because the ran out of peoples that they could conquer that were rich enough to fund the next war of conquest.
They stopped developing new weapons and technology and in the Late Western/Eastern roman empires they actually took a drastic backslide in both technology and discipline.

Persia, once they conquered most of their territories, their army's actual fighting skill declined sharply, and they stopped developing good armor and weapons so that they were easily defeated by the more disciplined and skilled soldiers of Greece and Macedon who still had enemies to fight and keep their skills in arms manufacturing and war fighting sharp.



But anywhoo Cherry, you do have a problem with understanding the difference between someone stating "possible" arguments and the irony of modern science which some day will be seen as laughably stupid by our descendents "assuming we don't nuke one another into non-existence beforehand."
What I am saying is that there is no "proof" of science in life, it like Religion is a matter of faith, as is everything we do in modern life, yes there is "proof" in science to an extent but eventually that "proof" is either proven to a "no doubt what so ever" fact like "Why is the sky blue" we know why the sky is blue without a doubt, we know what the speed of light is without a doubt, we know that if you stick a rocket on something you are putting the force of motion against that of inertia, and that an object in motion will stay in motion until it is stopped.

So yes I can point out undeniable "proof" that science has, but until we see a blackhole there is no proof, and thus that theory is no more or less "proven" then many other theories, and we KNOW dark matter exists for a fact.



As far as the rest of that little rant of yours goes with the "Am I really looking at a monitor" and stuff that's not science buddy that's philosophy right up there with "Are any of us really here or is it an illusion in our own mind?" which brings about the question of "How can we have an illusion of being somewhere if we are not in fact somewhere?"
Science and philosophy are two totally different things....

As far as "time" goes by the way you explain if it I just set every clock in my house to run slower then every clock in your house then time is moving slower in my house then in yours when in fact time is moving along steadily at the same pace for both of us, the mechanism of the clock is not what makes time "time".

I am speaking of TIME as in the foward motion of us, clocks can be adversly effected now if you shove a grape in there and see if the grape in the high grav/high speed environment aged slower then that outside THEN you will have "PROVEN" time has aged slower for that grape then the one in normal gravity and environment.

I am not saying this to insult you personally but you are being arrogant to call anyone who disagrees with your way of thinking "stupid" or "psychotic" because for all you know you are just as "stupid" or "psychotic" to someone who is just as sure your way of thinking is wrong as you are that those other people's way of thinking is.

Try and understand what i am saying, SCIENCE can NEVER be fully PROVEN quickly and thus many THEORIES can be adhered to and thought on, just because someone else has a THEORY that is different then yours does not mean you are superior or even correct for that matter.
As I stated before for all you know you me and all the rest of us will be proven totally and unbeleivably WRONG some day in the future.

Understand now?

[Jack Simth]

Starhawk said:we KNOW dark matter exists for a fact.

Only after a fashion - stars at the outer rim of the galaxy seem to be moving at the wrong rate for what gravity can account for with the mass we can verify with our telescopes once you get past about halfway from the galactic core. Dark matter - that is, matter we can't account for via our telescopes (of various sorts) - is the most widely accepted option for explaning the phenomina; but it's only one. There might also be a gravity-esq force that we are unaware of having a similar effect; we could just have a random convergence of stars with no force involved to keep them in the galaxy, and the stars we see past that point are really on their way towards escaping the galaxy. We don't know dark matter exists for a fact.

[AngleWyrm]

Another explanation is that the method used for measuring speed of astronomical objects is affected by the distance.

[douglas]

Starhawk said:
As far as "time" goes by the way you explain if it I just set every clock in my house to run slower then every clock in your house then time is moving slower in my house then in yours when in fact time is moving along steadily at the same pace for both of us, the mechanism of the clock is not what makes time "time".

Clocks are no more or less than devices that measure the passage of time. If you set your clocks to run slow, the difference is a result of you messing with the measuring mechanism, not time slowing down. In all experiments relating to relativity involving clocks, the scientists have very carefully calibrated the clocks to make sure their mechanisms are in good working order and not tampered with, so that isn't an issue.

Starhawk said:
I am speaking of TIME as in the foward motion of us, clocks can be adversly effected now if you shove a grape in there and see if the grape in the high grav/high speed environment aged slower then that outside THEN you will have "PROVEN" time has aged slower for that grape then the one in normal gravity and environment.

How is observing the grape's aging process any different than a clock? It's a very unusual kind of clock, and not likely to be very precise and accurate, but it is a clock. So what makes this particular kind of clock any preferable to the most accurate and precise clocks scientists are capable of building today? Would it help if I described things without using the word "clock" at all? Scientists have taken cesium atoms to places with various strengths of gravity and sent them moving around at very different speeds and very carefully observed the rate at which they aged. These rates have consistently differed from the rates predicted by relativity by an amount so small it can reasonably be attributed to inaccuracy in measurement, even though the expected inaccuracy is far less than the expected and observed differences in aging rates. Happy now?

Starhawk said:
Try and understand what i am saying, SCIENCE can NEVER be fully PROVEN quickly and thus many THEORIES can be adhered to and thought on, just because someone else has a THEORY that is different then yours does not mean you are superior or even correct for that matter.
As I stated before for all you know you me and all the rest of us will be proven totally and unbeleivably WRONG some day in the future.

Understand now?

Relativity has been tested very thoroughly and to the satisfaction of the vast majority of the scientific community. It has yet to make a testable prediction that has been proven wrong, and it's made a lot of predictions. Did you know that GPS systems would be off by a few meters if they didn't take relativity into account? With a complete lack of evidence against relativity and a very long and very good track record of its predictions being found true, it seems entirely reasonable to assume that any other predictions it makes are also true until proven otherwise. It is, of course, reasonable to consider other models as well, but until and unless the other model can make better predictions than the current one, there is no reason to prefer it over the current model. Find an experiment where relativity was tested and found wrong, or an alternative theory that accurately predicts the results of all experimental tests of relativity to date but does not predict black holes, and then I'll start considering the idea that black holes don't exist.

[Saber Cherry]

Starhawk said:
we know that if you stick a rocket on something you are putting the force of motion against that of inertia, and that an object in motion will stay in motion until it is stopped.

So yes I can point out undeniable "proof" that science has,

This totally deserves an award... three awesome statements that turn modern science on its head, in two half sentences! I kinda want to post it on the wall in the Graduate Physics department. Anyway, it made me laugh. No offense! Thanks a lot... I like laughing

I am not saying this to insult you personally but you are being arrogant to call anyone who disagrees with your way of thinking "stupid" or "psychotic"

Well, to clarify... all people who differ with me in opinion are stupid AND psychotic. Hah, hah! Just kidding. What I mean is, go talk to people who don't believe in things that have overwhelming supporting evidence: "Aids is caused by the moral decay of society, not by viruses!" ...or things that have overwhelming evidence against them: "Wearing a crystal on a necklace will cure my cancer, so I don't need to go to a doctor." Better yet, "Don't let the UN bring vaccines to our impoverished, disease-ridden country! It's a plot by the West to sterilize African Moslems!" These people tend to be stupid, illogical, or psychotic... and often die young of treatable diseases. Coincidentally, these people also have opinions contrary to my own. I know some very intelligent people whose opinions also differ from mine, but I never call them stupid or psychotic, unless I could phrase it in a funny way to make other people laugh at them, and then later prove how right I was, and hopefully win a bet or two in the process. But that's pretty irrelevant to black holes.

[AngleWyrm]

If nothing can escape the event horizon of a black hole, then does it exert any gravitational influence on the universe outside itself?