Comments | ned_the_crow: Woot...

ned_the_crow

Woot...

Jul 18, 2004 22:32

So Stephen Hawking may have proven himself wrong. According to the news, Hawking will be speaking at some big convention in Dublin. Apparently he sent a note at the last minute that only said, "I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it." This is terribly exciting to me at least, and I would urge the rest of you to ( Read more... )

Comments 19

tersus July 18 2004, 19:44:54 UTC

Why would knowing what is inside of black holes be as important as the discovery of gravity? It would further uphold quantam physics, so it would be preventing a radical change in currently accepted scientific theory, but I can't understand how it would be nearly as important as Newton's theory of gravity.

ned_the_crow July 18 2004, 20:42:29 UTC

Because a good deal of cosmology in the last century has been based on black holes not letting go of information converning what goes on "inside"of them. That might not sound big to you either, but then think about what people thought about Newton coming up with the idea of gravity at the time. It was big in scientific circles because of the discoveries and theories that started coming from it, but there was no way to know how influential the discovery was until decades and centuries later. The end.

judsonson July 18 2004, 22:01:57 UTC

Exactly...black holes are a beautiful enigma of space and time. They defy almost everything we take as reality. Imagine the number of new theories and concepts that can be further explored in anything from how light works to fourth dimensional properties of objects we see in every day life. It could help spout dozens (billions and billions) of new theories in the field of quantum mechanics which will probably impact humanity the way fire, smithing, electricity, and computers have.

All said and done, black holes are one of the universal conundrums that could lead us to all sorts of fun new things. The apple fell on Newton which lead us to space flight. Hawking sat on Schrodinger's cat and we can power the world with a battery the size of an eraser.

You ever see Event Horizon? Off subject for the most part, but that just popped into my head...

no batteries?? pink_albert July 19 2004, 07:29:40 UTC

What about all the other companies that sell erasers...I mean batteries. (It's ok no one heard that.) People will loose jobs! The entire industry will collapse! We're going to go into some sort of ecconomic decline just because some crazy man sat on a cat! AHH! Into the abyss.

Thread 7

philios July 19 2004, 10:00:46 UTC

So is he going to talk about what happens to matter, light, ect..once they've entered a black hole, or is he going to propound that there is no eternal compression (cause mom says that's what it's all about: no stop in the flow of substance, the whole 'nothing remains tied up in Nature')? Well, that and the hokey-pokey.

And, about dimensions (our last big discussion besides predestination), how did you describe the differences in the dimensions mathematically? You painted a mental image of a sphere in a 2D world. (But you said we are really in 2D?) Gah, what was it you said?

Stuff explained... ned_the_crow July 19 2004, 21:47:13 UTC

I don't know how exactly his talk will go, I'll try to find a review after the convention is over. And to answer some stuff, light, like all matter, merely condenses when it goes into a black hole and is crunched up with all the rest of everything else inside. Imagine that a light particle were millions of times larger than normal so that you could hold one in your hand. No imagine it's the same consistency as a sponge. Now imagine squeezing the sponge into a much smaller version of itself. It's still completely there, you haven't taken away any of it, and it still functions the same way a normal sponge could, it's just in a smaller amount of space. That's what happens inside a black hole except that this time it's about our galaxy's amount of matter being squeezed (eventually) into a space smaller than the point of a needle ( ... )

Stuff explained II....the sequel... ned_the_crow July 19 2004, 21:48:16 UTC

So I'll use two comments. Mwah ha hah. Ahem. On to part three ( ... )

Re: Stuff explained II....the sequel... philios July 20 2004, 00:09:48 UTC

Why all the "the ends"?

Thread 10

Look at me! I'm thinking. Help! pink_albert July 24 2004, 08:59:25 UTC

Ok, ok, ok! Drew! I is excited! I just had a thought and I want you to either completely squash it politely or explain how that is correct or otherwise explain to me what I’m probably REALLY thinking about ( ... )

Re: Look at me! I'm thinking. Help! jenography July 26 2004, 10:32:59 UTC

I don't know how correct that theory is, but it sounds absolutely beautiful and exciting to me.