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

[Slick]

So, one person says black holes don't exist and suddenly that cancels out the huge body of evidence and the vast majority of the scientific community who do think they exist? That just doesn't do it for me.

This just goes to show that you can't force someone to believe in something against their will. If their belief is strong enough, some people will find ways to reason away anything. I find it amusing that this guy's "dark energy" theory is even more controversial than black holes but he has no problem believing in that.

[AngleWyrm]

Dark matter is one explanation for a mathematical equation about how much matter is supposed to be in the universe--which doesn't add up. Adding dark matter makes it add up. It is supported by the absurd rationale that 'dark matter is too small to see/measure', so it could exist (we'll never know).

And as for that "huge body of evidence" for black holes...that's exactly the entirety of the evidence that I have found. "everyone knows" isn't science, it's social acceptance.

Scientists get to saying some really whacky stuff -- like Schroediger's Cat. I think Schroediger was kidding, that he was making a cynical joke for people to see the obvious fallacy. But everyone took him literally because he's famous. It backfired, and people ran around going "the cat in the box is 50% live and 50% dead until we open the bag" If I put a camcorder in the box with the cat, does the cat suddenly stop being 50% live and 50% dead? What if instead of a camcorder, it was just a rock? I could take the temperature of the rock, and determine when body heat stopped affecting it...

[mottlee]

I Here by Volinteer to go look for one!!!!


(Edit) Spell check did not work

[AngleWyrm]

Uhura for instance...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

* Waits for Fyron to post...

[Renegade 13]

I will believe this guy when the overwhelming majority of the scientific community agrees with him, and then I'll take a look at the evidence. Until that time, I will believe in black holes.

As for dark matter, some evidence for it does exist. Namely, neutrinos. Neutrinos have a very tiny mass, almost non-existant. Also, their miniscule size and mass makes them very very difficult to detect, as they usually do not interact with "normal" (baryonic) matter. As a matter of fact, an absolutely huge amount of neutrinos zip right through your body over the course of your lifetime, and yet the average person only captures one neutrino over the course of their life, which tells you how often they interact with baryonic matter. Neutrinos are so numerous that they make up a substantial portion of "dark" matter. Not a huge percentage, but a measureable amount. Also, just because scientists haven't discovered fully what dark matter is, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Take neutrinos again. There was no evidence for them for years and years, and yet they were predicted to exist. Relatively recently the predictions were proven absolutely true, every star produces tons of them through nuclear fusion (at least, the sun does).

Just because no proof exists, doesn't mean the prediction is incorrect, and just because some supposed proof does exist, doesn't mean the theory is correct.

[Raging Deadstar]

I work on a very simple Principle of Common Sense and Survival. Black Hole or Dark Energy Stars, I still don't want to be near one

"Captain, it's a Black Hole! We're getting too close!"
"It's ok, It's a 'Dark Energy Star.' Black Holes were disproved years ago..."
"Oh? Well I feel better then, Full Speed Ahead! Nothing to worry about!"

[Jestak]

Greetings,

A hole does not exists by itself. It is what is around the hole that exists...

Thank you

[Starhawk]

Well the dumb thing I think we modern folks have is that when scientists go "We're right" we go "Uhhh Okay" even though every few years a new group of scientists go "No we're right." and we go "uhhhh okay"
And then again and again and again science today is like a passing FAD it's always right till someone proves it wrong and then that's proven wrong and the first theory is proven right again until the next time someone proves it wrong and then so on add nauseum.

I mean seriously blackholes have never had any proof what so ever we just went "duhhh okay" and now we've got a new theory which may well be proven correct in the next couple of years but he has no more or no less proof then black hole guys as it stands.

[Aiken]

Tipical humaniform approach to science. It proved to be wrong. The fact you cannot see or touch an object doesn't mean that there's no object. Else all our cosmology would be nothing but idle fancy. BH are "observable" in X-rays and gamma rays emmited by falling gas (in binary systems or BH inside the nebulas).

Some nonsensical quotes:
"Instead, gravity makes clocks run at different rates in different places. But quantum mechanics, which describes physical phenomena at infinitesimally small scales, is meaningful only if time is universal; if not, its equations make no sense."
QM neglect gravity in equations due to vanishingly small influence it has in typical QM scale. It only makes sense beyond the Plank scale. For a particle falling into blackhole there's no time deceleration. Only for outer observer.

""General relativity predicts that nothing happens at the event horizon," says Chapline."
An object will be quickly destroyed by tidal forces, actually.

"Dark matter blah-blah-blah".
Funniest part. Dark matter is no more directly observable than BH and less described in terms of sane theory. So why dark matter? Because it's a fashionable theme and author wanted to have one more publication.

Cheap stuff.