Meditations

[Vortex]

Yeah, i think that too. Especially now that the world in all its aspects has become so specialized, we can't rely only in common sense anymore to distinguish the legitimate from the frauds, skepticism is necessary to a certain extent if we want not to be easily deceived by freeloaders. I think it is important because in fields like medicine one could even put one's (or others') life in risk, with the advent of those miraculous solutions that claim to cure cancer and such. I've seen many people embrcing that kind of practices... without even doubting a little bit about their legitimacy.

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Alas! The Truth has been altered. I have failed.

[Oleander]

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.

It appears that I have misunderstood the wording-Wikipedia expressed the 'size' of a black hole as the radius of its event horizon which is a pretty strange use of that word. Further investigation (I admit I did not do much before that last post) tends to say that 'nobody really knows' on the subject of the size of black holes.

[The Kakama]

Alas! The Truth has been altered. I have failed

No, we get your point about borders.

[Raxas]

Alas! The Truth has been altered. I have failed.

Excuse me if this comes across as crass but I do hope that you are not implying that you believe you have discovered and are the sole keeper of an absolute truth.

No, we get your point about borders.

I think he's trying to imply that our thoughts on how skepticism can guide one's thoughts have "misled" us from his truth. Which I hope is incorrect, because I find such a notion to be somewhat patronizing.

[The Kakama]

Ever since he brought up his "boarderless world" he has been patronizing us.
He does think he's superior to us in some way.

[Vortex]

It appears that I have misunderstood the wording-Wikipedia expressed the 'size' of a black hole as the radius of its event horizon which is a pretty strange use of that word. Further investigation (I admit I did not do much before that last post) tends to say that 'nobody really knows' on the subject of the size of black holes.

Actually, the volume of a black hole is much greater than 4pi/ times its radius cubed. I don't know of any easier analogy to show that than the rubber sheet one (which I hate ), the horizon event radius may be relatively small but the amount of rubber sheet inside that radius is much greater that if it were a normal circle, because it's curved in such a way that it encloses a huge volume inside of a small sphere (talking in 3D now). So in those terms we can say that the density of a black hole is small. But that's a kinda deceiving way to describe the density, we must notice that it is not uniform, because all that mass is concentrated at the singularity, and the density there is (in theory) infinite.

I think he's trying to imply that our thoughts on how skepticism can guide one's thoughts have "misled" us from his truth.

Ever since he brought up his "boarderless world" he has been patronizing us.
He does think he's superior to us in some way.

I too hope that's not right...

[The Kakama]

We can only hope, altough if he does, he's dropping a lot of hints.

[Anteroinen]

Alas! The Truth has been altered. I have failed.

"The Truth" has stayed the same, you just appear to have been wrong. Not to imply mankind's collective knowledge is the measure of truth, although it isn't a terrible starting point.

[The Kakama]

A bit like science over the ages.