No Naked Black Holes 317
Science News reports on a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters in which an international team of researchers describes their computer simulation of the most violent collision imaginable: two black holes colliding head-on at nearly light-speed. Even in this extreme scenario, Roger Penrose's weak cosmic censorship hypothesis seems to hold — the resulting black hole (after the gravitational waves have died down) retains its event horizon. "Mathematically, 'naked' singularities, or those without event horizons, can exist, but physicists wouldn't know what to make of them. All known mechanisms for the formation of singularities also create an event horizon, and Penrose conjectured that there must be some physical principle — a 'cosmic censor' — that forbids singularity nakedness ..."
Does anyone else get sad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone else get sad at the thought that there are so many weird things in the universe you may not learn the answers to in your lifetime? What if everyone posting here never finds out the reason for the cosmic censor? Sort of depressing.
There is no singularity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Penrose is smart (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cosmic Censor (Score:1, Insightful)
For some reason your reference reminds me of Hotel California. [lyrics007.com]
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said we are all just prisoners here, of our own device
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
relax, said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!
The bolded portion bears the strongest relationship to black holes, but possible Christianity references abound. Maybe scientists should name some of them: Hotel California, purgatory, hell and call the one that gets us "the beast".
Re:Does anyone else get sad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else get sad at the thought that there are so many weird things in the universe you may not learn the answers to in your lifetime?
I would submit that this is the lament of every intelligent being since the dawn of time (assuming there is a dawn of time).
Computer simulation, eh. (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't get over this sort of story. "We programmed our INCOMPLETE understanding of the cosmos into this simulation, which tells us X, therefore X is more likely."
Anything based on a computer simulation is based on our arbitrarily incomplete knowledge. To base even the least significant conclusions upon it seems laughably irresponsible and unscientific.
But hey, I was a music major, so what do I know.
Re:Discrete; you know what this means? (Score:4, Insightful)
-1, Unfalsifiable
Dare I elaborate, if you wanted to make up a generic unfalsifiable claim on purpose that's probably what you would come up with.
Re:There is no singularity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Computer simulation, eh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything based on a computer simulation is based on our arbitrarily incomplete knowledge. To base even the least significant conclusions upon it seems laughably irresponsible and unscientific.
We eagerly await your analytical solution to the n-body-problem. I mean, it's really simple stuff, right?
Until you're finished, we'll have to calculate all those spacecraft trajectories with computer simulations.
Re:Move Violent?... (Score:3, Insightful)
You probably need to get yourself an extra few dimensions to make 3 particles collide exactly head-on.
Re:Does anyone else get sad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does anyone else get sad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Does anyone else get sad? (Score:4, Insightful)
For in much wisdom [is] much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.