They should patent that because they've just...
Created a better mouse trap.
Best to avoid that event, apparently, hehehehe...
Prof Stephen Hawking: 'There are NO black holes' – they're GREY!
Brit uber-boffin Prof Stephen Hawking has quietly published a new paper proposing a radical rethink of the nature of black holes, which have been a major part of his life's work. Hawking's paper [PDF], Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes has been submitted for peer review and attempts to apply both …
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Saturday 25th January 2014 07:34 GMT Jemma
"I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
even after cashing the huge cheque I got for writing a book about them..."
comes to mind..
Also
"So you called my theory a fat sack of barf & then you stole it?! !"
"Welcome to Academia..."
I've honestly never been sure if Hawking is one of the best scientific minds or the best "stand up philosopher"* the universe ever produced...
* bullshit artist.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 09:09 GMT Jemma
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
You didn't watch futurama I take it...
The clang you just heard was you missing my point..
Its entirely possible he & his colleagues are dead right - its also entirely possible that they've all been coming up with utter twaddle in order to sell impenetrable books to the facebookwits.. without being in the same business at the same level no one can tell...
black hole astrophysics & associated fields are wonderful academic areas of study for a simple reason - not only do you not need to prove anything conclusively - you can't.
Its kinda like the US Government & honesty - they tell you they're being honest but won't let you verify they're being honest because they're honest..
And has anyone else wondered about this peer review idea? A better description might be "agreeing that its possible & calculable because he's the leader in the field & I'm indirectly reliant on his ideas for my salary & position"? but of course that doesn't affect anyone's decision not to call another academic out..
To quote 'free will hunting'
"Philosophy is for them that don't have to work for a living..."
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Saturday 25th January 2014 10:53 GMT itzman
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
No science can be proved conclusively: that's not what science does.
Science proceeds by coming up with models that fit the data as data is currently understood.
If they provide predictions as to what the data should be in areas other theories do not, and that data fits the theory, then they gain weight.
They are never conclusive: they are always just 'better pictures of reality' and even there, first of all you have to have a metaphysical concept of what 'reality' is.
But they are - or can be - very USEFUL.
The photoelectric effect was one of the few unexplained things that dented the 19th century classical world: that and radioactivity led to the idea of subatomic structure, which 'explained' the abitrary nature of elements, and led eventually to quantum theory, whose main obvious every day effect was the transistor and the laser, without which computers would have been hard to make.
So black hole theory is not random bollocks: it is an attempt to see what happens at extremes of mass within the universe, and predict what we should be seeing where it exists.
If it calls into question our very understanding of what space, time, energy and mass are, so much the better. Perhaps these are all manifestations - or could be represented as manifestations - of some more abstract thing.
That wouldn't prove the abstract thing existed, merely that it was a good way to look at things we take for granted DO exist.
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Monday 27th January 2014 11:52 GMT Kevin Fairhurst
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
The Cat: So, what is it?
Kryten: I've never seen one before - no one has - but I'm guessing it's a white hole.
Rimmer: A *white* hole?
Kryten: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole sucks time and matter out of the Universe; a white hole returns it.
Lister: So, that thing's spewing time...
Lister: [donning his fur-lined hat] ... back into the Universe?
Kryten: Precisely. That's why we're experiencing these curious time phenomena on board.
The Cat: So, what is it?
Kryten: I've never seen one before - no one has - but I'm guessing it's a white hole.
Rimmer: A *white* hole?
Kryten: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole sucks time and matter out of the Universe; a white hole returns it.
Lister: [minus the hat] So, that thing's spewing time...
Lister: [donning his fur-lined hat, again] ... back into the Universe?
Kryten: Precisely. That's why we're experiencing these curious time phenomena on board.
Lister: What time phenomena?
Kryten: Like just then, when time repeated itself.
The Cat: So, what is it?
[Kryten, Rimmer, and Lister stare at Cat]
The Cat: Only joking.
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Sunday 26th January 2014 03:26 GMT dssf
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
Rather than a stupefyingly powerful gravity well, suppose "black holes" are more akin to "galactic sewer pipes". Instead of all the violent, inward crushing that has been postulated, imagine if it is less violent, but a sucking (and, sucky) experience wherein it is akin to a combination of tsunami, rogue waves, and beam seas. You might not BE killed by the gravitational and other forces at work, but all through it you might wish you WERE killed as an act of cosmic mercy.
What I mean is, similar to worm holes or space folds, could it be possible that there is some "cosmic ductwork" (obscured pipes, ducts, culverts, or canals, metaphorically) into which thing "fall" or get sucked into, but we just don't have the tech, tracking, or speed to observe things randomly popping up (out of a pipe end or over the wall's edge/bank, metaphorically) elsewhere with their original or recognizable signatures intact?
I'm just winging it, know virtually nothing about cosmology, and have not concocted this from reading any sources. (Of course, I've seen plenty of Trek and all the "oh my gods we are trapped and cannot get out episodes of the week... But I'm talking about stuff less dramatic than a movie or tv show using dramatic plot devices to keep rapt audiences from changing the channel...)
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Saturday 25th January 2014 19:04 GMT Hollerith 1
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
@Jemma, do you know anything about the scientific process, what 'proof' means, what peer review actually involves, and why it is a fundamental part of the scientific approach to testing knowledge? I am no defender of the hothouse that is academia, but my experience has been that the first-rate scientists learn how to operate the system in order to be effective in their scientific work. They are generous and passionate and enthusiastic and honourable. Another Commentard's comments on Ellis sum up the best of the breed.
Again in my experience, the second-raters are the ones ass-kissing and trying to game the system, but that type are with us in every institution. Why pay any attention to them when you can spend time getting your brain around the insights that Penrose, Hawking, etc have given us? We should count ourselves fortunate to be living at the same time as these giants.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 19:27 GMT hammarbtyp
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
Well @Jemma I look forward to seeing your alternative work and proofs showing how Mr Hawking is wrong.
While we wait for that, lets look at the areas that Hawking is working in and see why they are important even if if we cannot experimentally verify them.
He is studying the very fundamentals of nature itself. There is no man made experiment at present or in the foreseeable future that would allow such regions to be studied, however nature itself provides a great experimental area in the universe itself. Stephen Hawking has put forward a hypothesis that mathematically is correct. That is his job. Now it is for others to study the ramifications and ways that it can be tested by developing experiments. Those experiments could involve looking at areas where black holes are known to exist and matching the observations with the expected results from the new theory. If they tally, we have a potentially deeper understanding of the universe. If not we move on. That is the scientific method and it works.
But if the theory can be proved then what it does is move us closer to the holy grail of a unified theory encapsulating relativity and quantum physics. If so it would be one of the pinnacles of human achievement
And yet while I write this I am struck by the absurdity of defending a man who despite the type infirmity that would defeat the best of us has managed to maintain his position at the forefront of theoretical physics while being virtually locked into his wheelchair and communicating through muscle gestures (with a good deal of humour too). It may always be beyond science to definitively prove his theories but that does not in any way lesson is life or achievements.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 09:19 GMT Jemma
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
And you know exactly why Penrose & Ellis didn't get the same recognition - they've not got MND & don't spend their down time playing chase the nurse..
The name Penrose does actually ring a bell somewhere but I'm not sure where and in what context I heard it.
I guess I'm not all that happy with the idea of cut & paste science - its like the Robot Chicken Pi sketch...
Nameless Peon: "I wonder if future generations will believe I discovered Pi"
Pythagoras: "No, they won't. But they'll believe *I* discovered it..."
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Saturday 25th January 2014 10:38 GMT Denarius
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
Dr Penrose wrote two books on the fallacy of equating Von Nueman computers and human thinking. Probably not popular in some parts of MIT as a result :-) The Emperors New Mind and Shadows of the Mind. Using the work of Godel, Turing and set theory, Penrose does an excellent job of explaining that human thought at high levels is not a Von Nueman architecture at work. I believe his world view model is neoPlatonist from his description of getting insight while solving the Tiling problem with 5 sided tiles. Open to correction on that. Heard him lecture once. An excellent concise speaker.
As for Hawking, his longevity after the ALS diagnosis has puzzled me. The 24 hour care must account for much of it. But we digress. Regardless of black hole "colour" what difference does the event horizon colour make ? If black and radiating or grey and radiating, what is the difference ? Being pulled into spaghetti or baked while being ripped apart makes little difference. Is it that the quantum foam forming the event horizon of a singularity radiate the source of Hawking radiation rather than a vague quantum uncertainty ? Much as Hawking is an amateur like everyone else in theology, just less coherent, when he sticks to cosmology it is great to see him at work still.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 15:05 GMT a pressbutton
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
I read the emperors new mind back in the 90s
Basically a few hundred pages that said that
'human minds cannot be replicated by computers'
because
'human minds have some features where quantum phenomena may be able to occur'
on the same level as searles chinese room example - good for provoking argument in class, but does not hold up once you think a bit.
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Sunday 26th January 2014 18:24 GMT Spiracle
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
'human minds cannot be replicated by computers'
because
'human minds have some features where quantum phenomena may be able to occur'
on the same level as searles chinese room example - good for provoking argument in class, but does not hold up once you think a bit.
Penrose hasn't spent the years since 'New Mind' sitting on his hands. He and Stuart Hameroff have a well worked out theory of quantum conciousness (Orch-OR) that's just recently been getting some interesting scientific attention.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 15:45 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
on the same level as searles chinese room example
Actually, Searle's Chinese Room argument is very different from Penrose's argument, not least because they arrive at opposing conclusions.
Searle believed mind is the result of a deterministic mechanical process, and thus can, in principle, be achieved by machines; and saw no reason why Von Neumann computers couldn't be those machines. The Chinese Room argument is simply meant to show why one approach, which Searle called "symbolic manipulation", could not achieve computation equivalent to thought.
Penrose doesn't believe mind is a deterministic mechanical process. I find his argument woefully uncompelling, personally, but to blithely dismiss it with "does not hold up once you think a bit" rather calls into question your thinking, and not Penrose's argument.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 16:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
@denarius "As for Hawking, his longevity after the ALS diagnosis has puzzled me". It has puzzled doctors too (Hawking is not the only "longevity" one) and it's quite possible that his ALS will be called something else eventually. ALS is rare and there is no great amount of funding to solve it. If you have a look at the Wikipedia they distinguish between 21 types. Also from the Wikipedia " D90A, is more slowly progressive than typical ALS and patients with this form of the disease survive for an average of 11 years".
Cheers to Hawking. As for black or grey hole I think the name is dumb from the start.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 17:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
That's von Neumann.
I'm amazed Penrose would need to write two books on the fallacy, because anybody who knows basic physiology knows that the brain is nothing like a von Neumann architecture. The computing elements in the brain are something like gates which have one pulse coded output and a varying number of inputs which can be differently weighted. That's why people do research into neural nets and how they can be used to solve problems in computing.
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Monday 27th January 2014 22:40 GMT Denarius
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
@ AC number ???
If one read much of what passes for science in popular media, the issue of programmed determanism would be obvious. Shadows of the Mind was a more detailed argument following on from the Emperors New Mind. As for brain doing somethings that von Neumann architectures cannot, I think this is analagous to Newtonian and General Relativity. in understanding of motion. You assume the electrical activity is all that is going on.. Penrose makes no claim that he knows either. He speculates quantum activity may be involved.
BTW, this laptop is dying so my spelilng is not all my own fault for once. Keyboard is as bad as every autocorrect on any mobile device used.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 15:47 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
anybody who knows basic physiology knows that the brain is nothing like a von Neumann architecture ... That's why people do research into neural nets and how they can be used to solve problems in computing.
And what sort of architecture do you suppose those researchers implement their neural nets on?
This has to be one of the dumbest claims in a forum filled with howlers.
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Monday 27th January 2014 03:38 GMT Thicko
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
I read The Emperors New Mind a few years ago. It was a fascinating experience. I been bored by many a book but this one I simply drowned in. I recommend it to anyone who is half interested in the subject but don't be surprised if you get lost a few places along the way. (Its more a reflection on me, not the writer or the quality of the writing). I plodded on as best I could anyway and felt rewarded by the experience and surprised I had not really heard of him before.
Its sad that he is not as well known as Hawking, he certainly deserves it.
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Monday 27th January 2014 11:39 GMT Shaha Alam
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes..."
"Being pulled into spaghetti or baked while being ripped apart makes little difference."
well, yeah, from your perspective there's little difference as you're not getting close to one and never will be.
but for some future-era descendant of yours, it makes all the difference when deciding whether to buy the heat-shield or the anti-spaghettification adaptor for their space mobile.
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Monday 27th January 2014 07:39 GMT deadlockvictim
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
Jemma» The name Penrose does actually ring a bell somewhere but I'm not sure where and in what context I heard it.
Hint: He's the greatest | he's fantastic | wherever there is danger he'll be theeeere | dangermouse | de dum de dum | daaaangermouuuuse | de dum de dum de dum | daaaaaaangermouuuuuuusssse....
Oh bugger, I've just it wrong, haven't I? Oh well, my memory for early 1980's cartoons is not what it was.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 11:20 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
"...but I can assure you that [Hawking] is still one of the best scientific minds Britain produced in the 20th century."
If by "scientific" you mean physics and by "produced" you mean "born", then Dirac wins hands down. If we open it up to people who did their most important work in the 20th Century, or to non-physicists, then it gets very interesting; I imagine most people round here would rate Turing ahead of Hawking.
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Monday 27th January 2014 10:57 GMT Roj Blake
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
"...but I can assure you that [Hawking] is still one of the best scientific minds Britain produced in the 20th century."
Whilst he's smarter than the average bear, Sanger, Turing, Kroto, Pople, Penrose, Cornforth, Wilkinson, Hinshelwood, Higgs, Cockroft, Thomson, Chadwick, Dirac, Bragg senior, Bragg junior and many more all contributed more to the advancement of science in the 20th century than Hawking.
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Monday 27th January 2014 13:27 GMT Nuke
@HolyFreakinGhost - Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
Wrote :- "I can assure you that he is still one of the best scientific minds Britain produced in the 20th century"
I will give you and Hawking the benefit ot the doubt over that one, it being completely beyond me to verify Hawkings cosmology.
However, seeing a brilliant mind (I must suppose) having stooped to appearing in "Go Compare" adverts disgusts me, and my opinion of him *as a man* has gone a long, long way in the direction of the above icon.
Sorry.
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Monday 27th January 2014 13:02 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
@AC Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
Yes and No. But most likely no, since you will be shredded before the electric impulse hits your brain.
Of course because you're in the event horizon and space/time is all mucked up, it could be that you feel it and what would appear to be instantaneous could be an infinitely long time of pain and suffering.
Naw, just kidding.
You'll end up dead somewhere along the trip to the black hole that you're investigating.
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Monday 27th January 2014 01:10 GMT Lars
Re: "I know absolutely nothing about the black holes...
I know nothing either, but I think I know they will never be called brown holes, although, perhaps, that would suit the hole hole better. Something able to "seething mass of high-energy particles and lethal gases". But even as I know I am better at choosing the colo(u)r of the hole with more understanding of the hole than Hawking, I hope, and think, he knows more about the hole hole. Anyway, there are no reasons to under estimate him.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 09:10 GMT Blitterbug
When you consider...
...that by most medical standards the guy should have been Hawkin's Ghost decades ago, yet is still managing to contribute strongly in the field, one can only be in awe of the man. Einstein rattled around in Princeton for years trying in a similar vein to unify seemingly unreconcilable theories, without success. Our best and most agile thinking tends to get done in our third decade, sadly, but experience and wisdom still counts for a hell of a lot in later life.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 09:30 GMT Jemma
Re: When you consider...
That's true - and its always puzzled me how he's lasted so long when most people with his condition at best manage a few years. It might be interesting to sequence his genome & see if there's a reason there - although I don't know if there can be the same sort of genetic 'immunity/protection' in MND as there is with the AA32 gene in HIV/Y.Pestis immunity.
What he's managed to achieve is amazing but sometimes I wonder if slapping a new idea into a major cosmological theory like you are welding up a hole in a Lancia's subframe could be referred to as "good science". But then again I don't have 40+ years in astrophysics...
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Saturday 25th January 2014 10:12 GMT Vociferous
Re: When you consider...
> I wonder if slapping a new idea into a major cosmological theory like you are welding up a hole in a Lancia's subframe could be referred to as "good science"
That's exactly what "good science" is. That's what progress looks like.
I suspect people get confused about what is good science and what (and how) science is covered in mainstream media -- there is an overlap, but it's not big.
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Saturday 25th January 2014 10:24 GMT Will Godfrey
Re: When you consider...
Or looking at in anopther way, science is a jigsaw puzzle. Odd pieces are found that don't make a lot of sense, then others are found and small clumps develop. Someone finds a piece that links two clumps and it all looks a lot clearer. Then someone else finds a piece already fitted doesn't quite fit as well as a new piece they found and suddenly the entire picture changes.
Also, unlike a lot of people, Stephen Hawking has sufficient humility to not only publicly admit to being wrong, but also sometimes being the one to first make the anouncement.
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