4 ms·

I'm sorry, but comments like this seriously irritate me. Your words here reflect some basic misunderstandings of the science involved, but rather than concludin

by Steuard 13y ago

I'm sorry, but comments like this seriously irritate me. Your words here reflect some basic misunderstandings of the science involved, but rather than concluding "I don't understand this", you've instead suggested what amounts to a conspiracy theory. Quite apart from the deep insult this implies toward generations of physicists, you're baselessly contributing to the erosion of public confidence in science. The quickest way to counter your claims of suppression, I think, is to do a Google Scholar search for a term like "black hole information paradox". No, we don't entirely understand what's going on there, but figuring it out has been one of the most active and fruitful areas of research in relativity and high energy physics for decades. As for your "breaks the warranty on the space-time continuum" claim, I'd love to know why you're choosing the "spherical coordinates" coordinate system as the fundamental one (so that we should judge coordinate stretches as "too big" relative to its measure). Not that I like the idea of specifying one reference frame as "preferred" at all, but if I had to, the only natural choice would be the reference frame of a freely falling observer. And that's precisely the coordinate system we typically change to in order to show that there's no essential singularity at the event horizon. So please don't lob insults at the active physics community based on your own misunderstanding of the theories that they spend their lives striving to understand. [Credentials: I'm a professional physicist: a professor specializing in string theory with a background in general relativity.]

scotty79 13y ago
>> A simpler paradox which has never been taken seriously is that an outside observer sees that it takes forever for something falling into a black hole to hit the event horizon > [Credentials: I'm a professional physicist: a professor specializing in string theory with a background in general relativity.] That's my one of my biggest problems with physics (other is Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). As I understand it in our frame of reference, nothing ever (before present moment) crossed any event horizon because of gravitational time dilatation. When I tried to solicit people on the internet to help me understand it they said that in general relativity theory you can draw line of simultaneity arbitrarily and that causes "before" and "after" to not make sense for two distant points. I can imagine that's true (although I'm doubtful), after all in classical theory simultaneity is straight line orthogonal to time, in special relativity it's straight line but slanted dependent on speed of reference frame. I was imagining simultaneity line in general relativity theory as a well defined curve dependent on speed of reference frame and mass distribution but I can also imagine that it's not defined in unambiguous way at all. I am yet to read some actual scientific material about defining simultaneity in GRT and how it relates to gravitational time dilatation that seem pretty well defined to me. If you could recommend some reading material about simultaneity in GRT (or some more general concept that gets reduced to simultaneity in universe without mass) I'd be most grateful. It doesn't have to be too simple. I was International Physics Olympiad national level laureate and I'm pretty motivated to understand that as it costed me some sleepless nights over the last ten years or so.
- bcbrown 13y ago
  This book doesn't directly address your concerns, but it's related, and I found it very thought-provoking: http://www.amazon.com/Times-Arrow-Archimedes-Point-Directions/dp/0195117980/ http://www.amazon.com/Times-Arrow-Archimedes-Point-Direction...
  - scotty79 13y ago
    Most likely an excellent read but I'm interested in this exact problem that I have. Also I'd like to limit myself to the hypotheses that are somewhat proven and most scientists consider them to be true.
- Steuard 13y ago
  First, an aside: the OP's comment "which has never been taken seriously" about this topic is also entirely mistaken. Heck, I've heard that issue come up in serious conversation within the past year. I've got to concur with the other people you've heard from: simultaneity in classical (Galilean) physics is the same for every observer, simultaneity in Special Relativity is different for observers moving with different velocities, and simultaneity in General Relativity often isn't even globally well-defined for one observer at a time. That's not too surprising given other features of GR. You've no doubt heard about "gravitational lensing", where a large mass curves space so that "straight" light rays from the same distant object appear to come from two different directions. Now imagine the same thing happening to a "line of simultaneity", and you'll start to understand the issue. I suspect that one concept that might satisfy a part of what you're looking for as a "generalization of simultaneity" is a Cauchy surface or Cauchy hypersurface: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_surface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_surface This idea, essentially, is an arbitrary (possibly curved but everywhere spacelike) plane that divides time into "future" and "past", and that can serve as an "initial value surface". Have a look at that article for more information, and see if it's something like what you're looking for. [Also: I don't like the Copenhagen interpretation, either. I've become more of a "many worlds"/Everett person ever since a fantastic and highly mathematical quantum course in grad school, despite the somewhat uncomfortable philosophical issues with it.]

by Steuard 13y ago

scotty79 13y ago

>> A simpler paradox which has never been taken seriously is that an outside observer sees that it takes forever for something falling into a black hole to hit the event horizon > [Credentials: I'm a professional physicist: a professor specializing in string theory with a background in general relativity.] That's my one of my biggest problems with physics (other is Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). As I understand it in our frame of reference, nothing ever (before present moment) crossed any event horizon because of gravitational time dilatation. When I tried to solicit people on the internet to help me understand it they said that in general relativity theory you can draw line of simultaneity arbitrarily and that causes "before" and "after" to not make sense for two distant points. I can imagine that's true (although I'm doubtful), after all in classical theory simultaneity is straight line orthogonal to time, in special relativity it's straight line but slanted dependent on speed of reference frame. I was imagining simultaneity line in general relativity theory as a well defined curve dependent on speed of reference frame and mass distribution but I can also imagine that it's not defined in unambiguous way at all. I am yet to read some actual scientific material about defining simultaneity in GRT and how it relates to gravitational time dilatation that seem pretty well defined to me. If you could recommend some reading material about simultaneity in GRT (or some more general concept that gets reduced to simultaneity in universe without mass) I'd be most grateful. It doesn't have to be too simple. I was International Physics Olympiad national level laureate and I'm pretty motivated to understand that as it costed me some sleepless nights over the last ten years or so.

bcbrown 13y ago
This book doesn't directly address your concerns, but it's related, and I found it very thought-provoking: http://www.amazon.com/Times-Arrow-Archimedes-Point-Directions/dp/0195117980/ http://www.amazon.com/Times-Arrow-Archimedes-Point-Direction...
- scotty79 13y ago
  Most likely an excellent read but I'm interested in this exact problem that I have. Also I'd like to limit myself to the hypotheses that are somewhat proven and most scientists consider them to be true.
Steuard 13y ago
First, an aside: the OP's comment "which has never been taken seriously" about this topic is also entirely mistaken. Heck, I've heard that issue come up in serious conversation within the past year. I've got to concur with the other people you've heard from: simultaneity in classical (Galilean) physics is the same for every observer, simultaneity in Special Relativity is different for observers moving with different velocities, and simultaneity in General Relativity often isn't even globally well-defined for one observer at a time. That's not too surprising given other features of GR. You've no doubt heard about "gravitational lensing", where a large mass curves space so that "straight" light rays from the same distant object appear to come from two different directions. Now imagine the same thing happening to a "line of simultaneity", and you'll start to understand the issue. I suspect that one concept that might satisfy a part of what you're looking for as a "generalization of simultaneity" is a Cauchy surface or Cauchy hypersurface: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_surface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_surface This idea, essentially, is an arbitrary (possibly curved but everywhere spacelike) plane that divides time into "future" and "past", and that can serve as an "initial value surface". Have a look at that article for more information, and see if it's something like what you're looking for. [Also: I don't like the Copenhagen interpretation, either. I've become more of a "many worlds"/Everett person ever since a fantastic and highly mathematical quantum course in grad school, despite the somewhat uncomfortable philosophical issues with it.]