[chimera]

Funny how both the church and academia are united in their frowning on numerology, parapsychology, and some other hermestrismegistus-like phenomena mentioned.

Seems they do share quite a bit, but it seems not any of the things you mention... []

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[daveshorts]

Yeah they go against both religious dogma and evidence which is quite good going

[chimera]

To make up for that (don't want to be condescending in any way): anyone here know who the first true-blue alchemist in the real sense was? Not with turning lead into gold, of course...




[A: http://www.tfainc.com/library.asp]

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[simeonie]

Erm don't mean to sound stupid.... but what does dogma mean? I think Science is just trying to find out how God did it. Some people though don't believe he did though. This is a really cool topic and I like seeing what people think. There are Christian Scientists ya know and it is good to understand the evolution theories and the Big Bang stuff but they are all not true.

----------------------
-__- my website!!!!
http://www.simeonie.co.uk
has forums too!
Think about it! lolz

[chimera]

Dogma is the truth-in-a-booklet type of thing. Basically just a list of what you're supposed to think.

With science that would translate to pop-sci stuff that from the lower end of the quality spectrum, where everything is simplified in a similar manner (see, scientists must accept what's true, not what they wish to believe, even if it's not pleasant -no discipline is without minor allowances).

Churches are pretty high on dogma. The difference with 'scientific rigour' is that the latter is more adaptable to change. Not fast, always, but judging from history this cannot be denied.

It'd be wrong in my view to think that because science isn't perfect, and neither is our understanding of evolution or cosmogeny or math, the alternatives given by the church are compatible. They are the condensation of memories that have become so condensed over time, that there has been a bit of degradation in clarity and function: it has become oversimplified, and is also not amenable to change. That's never good.

So, if I'm honest, evolution theory is 100% better than a story that confuses even kids, with ingredients that belie everything you know from real life. Almost fairy-tale like representations of very old, oral history. There's truth hiding in there, but it's covered by so much muck over time, you'd have to be a very dedicated person indeed to separate wheat from chaff...

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[Titanscape]

What happened to my post?

Titanscape

[chimera]

Errm. Still missing, I take it. Maybe related to the 'login problems' people reported? Dunno.

Anyway: nice experiment to show how even scientists can fall for dogma: any scientist willing to conduct it with me by answering the following question:

A black hole has been reported sitting at the center of a galaxy close to 450 million lighyears away, and it has a size calculated to be around 3,5 to 5 lightyears in diameter.

Yet, there is something totally impossibly wrong with it. Something that defies our astronomic common sense.

Now, what question would a respectable scientist - being impervious to dogma - ask first, before investigating the matter any further?

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[Tronix (OP)]

These questions in this order.

How was it found?
Where was it found?
What was used to find it?
Who found it?
When was it found?
Why was it looked for?
What is the theory on its irregualar size?



--------------------------------------------
"If i cannot have company whose minds are clearly free, I would prefer to go alone."                  -Dr. Gideon Lincecum

The BPRD rejected my application becuase their brain-controled by Cthulhu Rip-offs. And im sure "Sparky" is sleeping with them too, kinky little firecracker she is...

[chimera]

Ah, an answer. Last one is actually the correct one. What makes it that big? Incredibly big, even - any black hole that size would have had several HUNDREDS of galaxies for breakfast, and we do not know of any that size, of course. It does not exist.

In previous discussions I've people DID think this was possible, only doing the math finally convinced them. But on faith, they accepted them gladly - nothing wrong with a lightyear in diameter more or less...

that's dogma for you. Read to much pulp science, and you are maybe aware of activity at the frontiers of science, but have no clue as to its exact borders, and accept anomalies several orders of magnitude outside the scope of reality.

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[rosy]

quote: Now, what question would a respectable scientist - being impervious to dogma - ask first, before investigating the matter any further?

I think actually a respectable (say) chemist would say "Oh really? Is that unusual? Would you like to explain why?"
I take the approach that the "last man to know everything there was to know", whether that was Goethe, da Vinci, J S Mill or Milton, died some time ago, that there's no way I can understand everything, and that unless it goes sharply against my prejudices about how the world works (or I know that there's a debate going on as to the validity of the results) I'll assume that the experts have more idea than I have in most fields.
That's not to say I'd be particularly surprised to find anything I'd assumed was accurate from such sources had been re-evaluated.

[chimera]

I think the best scenario is when people are able to question the validity of ANY thing, which is not the same as trying to be a walking encyclopedia. There is such a thing as common sense, or there should be... funny thing is children seem to have more of it than grownups, even  []

And respectable has nothing to do with it, really. Nor are the best physics teachers by default the best physicists, quite the contrary even.

Also remember the fate of Lord Kelvin, who was such an overwhelming personality and general Mr. Know-it-all he singlehandedly put scientific progress in the second half of his life to a virtual standstill. So, equally try to see someone who has made a career of explaining stuff over half a century old as not exactly the best  source or judge even for bleeding-edge technology. You cannot have it all...


The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[rosy]

Um, my apologies. I may have been being slightly flippant. I would, of course, agree with you that questionning the validity of an assertion is a generally useful thing to do (I might go so far as to be offended that you seem to have assumed otherwise, but possibly that degree of hamming risks being taken seriously if put down in text).

All I was suggesting was that, as you point out, people are often orders of magnitude out in how big they think things are. But on the other hand, if someone tells me (a chemist, of sorts) "oh, that black hole is n lightyears across" I don't really see that it's of much immediate interest to me unless I know, or have just had it explained, that the largest known black hole to date is (n-5) or n/10 lightyears across.
That was why I made the point about *unless I know it's a subject of debate, or I find it very surprising*... I wouldn't personally know how even to approach the maths!

I wasn't suggesting that anyone *should* know everything. That was my point... that the assertion you cite about the enormous black hole is *of course* perfectly believeable until you do the maths unless you're tuned into that area of thought anyway.

Oh, and I used the term "respectable scientists" because you did. In my book they are the ones who haven't ossified into thinking their theories are right and stopped looking at the evidence... which is to say scientists worthy of respect. Did you mean something different? My comment about respectable chemists was intended to mean that a chemist who might be doing terrific cutting edge science in, say, molecular orbital interactions, might need to be prompted to query the size of a black hole. If you work on the nanometer scale, anything over about a micron can be classed as "big" and left at that... unless you happen to be discussing black holes with a flatmate.

[chimera]

quote:Originally posted by rosy

.. I wouldn't personally know how even to approach the maths!

Oh, that's relatively simple, you can even use google for it these days...

OK, let's put r= 1 lightyear.

(2 * G * ((3 203 * (10^9)) * (1.9891 * ((10^30) kg)))) / (c^2) = 1.00001814 lightyears

To create a black hole with a lightyear radius you need (just over) a whopping *3200* billion solar masses. That's over thirty of your average run-off-the-mill galaxies. So that's out.

Similarly, you can do calculations on how long it would take to create the incredibly large collections of galaxies known as superclusters. That's about 80 billion years, give or take a few. Considering the universe is supposed to be only 15 billion years old or thereabouts, quite a feat.

No astronomer has any answer to that, btw.



The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[daveshorts]

Did you actually find a report of this somewhere?

My guess is that the scientist wasn't talking about schwartzchild radius when they mentioned the size, - maybe it is the size of the acretian disk. A reporter then heard size, black hole and 3.5-5 lightyears and missed out the important bit...

[chimera]

Yes, probably. But then still, the black hole would roughly be about 0,4 lightyears in diameter (1/12,5th following 4pi*d^2) , and that's still 1282 billion solar masses. Still way too many galaxies for comfort.

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[daveshorts]

Are the radio sources that shoot out of the top or bottom of an accretian disk related to black holes as they can be a few light years long can't they?

[chimera]

Longer even, but I don't think they meant those... anyway, even 'supermassive' black holes turn out to be rather puny, if you take a closer evaluation, unless they've been eating outdoors in secret, of course... []

Say a big whopper, that you sometimes read about, like 3 billion solar masses, would be a measly 0.000936638904 lightyears.

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[rosy]

0.000936638904 lightyears

Wow, what precision.

[chimera]

Don't forget those are approximate formulas, they'll never be precise to the exact cm or even kilometer, mind you, and these numbers are much, much longer in reality.

But lets put them a bit back into 'normal' perspective. The black hole supposedly at the centre of this galaxy is estimated to be 1 billion solar masses. That would mean it would have a radius of 2.95369965 × 10^9 = nearly 3 billion kilometers, so a diameter of twice that.

Now 6 billion kilometers at a distance of 8 kiloparsecs (2.4685442 × 10^17 kilometers) means trying to see an object of  0.0790660366 nanometers at 1 lightyear (9.4605284 × 10^12 kilometers) distance. An average atom has a diameter of 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers.

So basically you're trying to see something less than a tenth of an atom across at a distance way, way beyond Pluto.

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[rosy]

Um, OK, what I meant was"I can't quite believe you can justify quoting anything like that degree of precision" possibly I should rephrase that as a question...

So... what.... that 9 significant figure number you've quoted is approximate? Or do you mean that the black hole you're talking about with mass three billion solar masses is somewhere round about 1E-3 lightyears across, give or take some.