Taalit wrote:Black holes aren't "infinitely dense", they just have a significant gravitational effect on light. They don't even have to be particularly massive, and it's quite possible that some astronomical object could orbit a black hole like we orbit the sun.
The way I understand it so far, is that black holes are the result of gravitational forces overcoming all the forces keeping particles in separate areas of space, compressing them to a single point. General relativity doesn't play well with this idea, so the current holy grail- so to speak- is a theory that is as solid as general relativity but can also explain weird quantum shit like this. Yeah, though, black holes, according to the current theory (as I understand it) have zero volume, and therefore infinite density, without having infinite mass.
This comes from reading wikipedia, so feel free to dig deeper than me though. I may be an astronomy major, but I'm still in the Intro to Astronomy class, so hold on to your wieners kids, I'll figure this out in a couple years.
Oh yeah meditations.
Taalit wrote:In some way, preconceptions are necessary to operate in your day to day life. I always assume that my friends are telling me the truth unless they say something spectacularly insane, but technically it is *possible* that they are lying to me. If you do not assume that hearsay about non-super important things is true, you really can't ever have a conversation, nor can you get any work done in any field.
This is also a truth. Life is all about balance. Some yin-yang shit or whatever I dunno.
As far as good ways of thinking though, the counterpart to being open minded is skepticism. You should consider every idea you can, but you shouldn't accept them on the grounds of plausibility, and you should also be ready to strike them down if you detect the smell of baloney.
Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World" has a lot of good stuff about it. Worth a good read if you want to adopt a proper understanding of science and skepticism. I'm still reading it myself.