Science!: Alternate Realities and Bullet Proof Cotton T-Shirts
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Reading that I'm getting an old fuzzy nostalgic feeling towards Farscape. Damn, I love that show.
So the idea is that the reason black holes are so dense and hot is because there's an entire universe in them? Now that's my kind of physics.
I remember reading one theory that said that black holes exist for some kind of cosmic survival of the fittest; like living beings, universe exist to create the most offspring (the universes in the black holes) and so most physical constants are the way they are simply because they're the ones that make it more likely for black holes to appear in a universe. And the reason we exist is a mere side effect of this, because we are carbon-based lifeforms and a high carbon concentration is one of the things that makes it more likely for a universe to have space babies.
As for the t-shirt:
Read what? i: a scroll labeled AXAXUAXUAXUAXUA MLO
Your t-shirt glows green for a moment.
i: a scroll of enchant armor.
d: a +8, +8 t-shirt.
I remember reading one theory that said that black holes exist for some kind of cosmic survival of the fittest; like living beings, universe exist to create the most offspring (the universes in the black holes) and so most physical constants are the way they are simply because they're the ones that make it more likely for black holes to appear in a universe. And the reason we exist is a mere side effect of this, because we are carbon-based lifeforms and a high carbon concentration is one of the things that makes it more likely for a universe to have space babies.
As for the t-shirt:
Read what? i: a scroll labeled AXAXUAXUAXUAXUA MLO
Your t-shirt glows green for a moment.
i: a scroll of enchant armor.
d: a +8, +8 t-shirt.
No problem. Just holler if you need more mud in the water.oppp7 said:Ah, thank you for clearing that up.
Conceivably, it could!oppp7 said:
That's only because you haven't seen the intelligent carnivorous plant universe yet.Daemascus said:
Drawing on my studies of quantum mechanics, I managed as far as "isotropic coordinates" before I wobble hurgle mrnfk plerc foubrat ghkt skwerpynuibey.Formica Archonis said:
Mgnngngh.
material impenetrable to bullets= possible.
thin material able to cancel out all the energy invested in a speeding bullet= currently impossible
"good thing that material stopped the bullet, now will you help me dig it out of my shattered ribcage?"
thin material able to cancel out all the energy invested in a speeding bullet= currently impossible
"good thing that material stopped the bullet, now will you help me dig it out of my shattered ribcage?"
If you are fascinated by the concept or imagery of black holes, even in the dramatic or fantastical sense that sci-fi media presents them but don't quite grasp 'what' they are or the scientific problems surrounding them are then please read on.
First, allow me to convey a more workable image of a black hole for you. Take a large, heavy bowling ball and put it at the center of your bed. Notice how the sheets and mattress sink in around the ball and warp the fabric around it. Farther away the warp is more subtle but closer in it becomes dramatically more visible. Now take a small marble or gumball and roll it across the bed in a path that doesn't intersect with the bowling ball. If you rolled it very lightly, the path the smaller ball takes spirals inward toward the larger ball until it meets. If you roll the smaller ball harder it might bend a little toward the bowling ball but ultimately continue across the bed.
What you just did was simulate pretty much gravity and space for objects in it. If that bowling ball was a sun and the marble a comet, pretty much the same thing would happen. Now imagine a bowling ball so heavy it sinks through the mattress and sheets leaving nothing but a void, a hole. You roll the small marble just like before and notice that if you don't roll it hard enough it just sinks into the void, and no matter how hard you roll it, if it crosses a definable boundary, the cliff of the hole in the mattress, the marble can't roll out.
That is what is happening around a black hole. So much mass in such a small area as warped space into a void that even the fastest things(traveling at the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit) can't get out once they have crossed the threshold, the event horizon.
Okay now that you can grasp whats going around a black hole, what exactly is happening inside of it. What state of matter and energy and space is reality past the event horizon? Is it all being crushed indefinitely into an ever smaller point with no limit? Is it 'bubbling out' into/through another expanding dimension filled with the matter-energy sucked inside? Something totally different?
Well to answer that question we need to apply a model of understanding. For the super massive scale of large objects like stars, galaxies, the context of gravity we use General Relativity. For the super small scale of small objects like photons, quarks, and the forces that play with them, like electromagnetism, strong/weak nuclear forces, etc, we use Quantum Mechanics.
Black Holes are both super massive, gravitationally immense but also indefinitely small inside the event horizon. So we can't have a workable, complete understanding of them unless we use both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem is, attempting to apply both models results in nonsense. Mathematically anomalies, contradictions, and noise fill the interplay when this is attempted meaning that the models, while individually well refined and very verified in their respective context, when combined are simply an incomplete picture.
The problems are most notable when you examine space at the ultra small scale when gravity is incorporated. As you know from above, objects in space warp and bend space itself around them, this includes tiny particles themselves like quarks. However, the Quantum Mechanical model also makes these particles very fuzzy and violent. They exhibit odd characteristics like wave properties and their location and velocity can be indeterminable.
Well, what happens to space in the presence of this reality of particles? It becomes a roiling, chaotic foam, a horribly violent soup of space-time that pretty much makes any kind of modeling or useful information moot, you simply can't get anything useful or reasonable from space at this level and thus the core of the anomalies when you try to apply both Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity together and the reason why Black Holes are such a curious thing for science.
They are basically a huge red light to physicists that say "Hey, you think you can get away with dividing the universe into the small and large and think you could have a complete understanding of everything? Pffft."
First, allow me to convey a more workable image of a black hole for you. Take a large, heavy bowling ball and put it at the center of your bed. Notice how the sheets and mattress sink in around the ball and warp the fabric around it. Farther away the warp is more subtle but closer in it becomes dramatically more visible. Now take a small marble or gumball and roll it across the bed in a path that doesn't intersect with the bowling ball. If you rolled it very lightly, the path the smaller ball takes spirals inward toward the larger ball until it meets. If you roll the smaller ball harder it might bend a little toward the bowling ball but ultimately continue across the bed.
What you just did was simulate pretty much gravity and space for objects in it. If that bowling ball was a sun and the marble a comet, pretty much the same thing would happen. Now imagine a bowling ball so heavy it sinks through the mattress and sheets leaving nothing but a void, a hole. You roll the small marble just like before and notice that if you don't roll it hard enough it just sinks into the void, and no matter how hard you roll it, if it crosses a definable boundary, the cliff of the hole in the mattress, the marble can't roll out.
That is what is happening around a black hole. So much mass in such a small area as warped space into a void that even the fastest things(traveling at the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit) can't get out once they have crossed the threshold, the event horizon.
Okay now that you can grasp whats going around a black hole, what exactly is happening inside of it. What state of matter and energy and space is reality past the event horizon? Is it all being crushed indefinitely into an ever smaller point with no limit? Is it 'bubbling out' into/through another expanding dimension filled with the matter-energy sucked inside? Something totally different?
Well to answer that question we need to apply a model of understanding. For the super massive scale of large objects like stars, galaxies, the context of gravity we use General Relativity. For the super small scale of small objects like photons, quarks, and the forces that play with them, like electromagnetism, strong/weak nuclear forces, etc, we use Quantum Mechanics.
Black Holes are both super massive, gravitationally immense but also indefinitely small inside the event horizon. So we can't have a workable, complete understanding of them unless we use both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem is, attempting to apply both models results in nonsense. Mathematically anomalies, contradictions, and noise fill the interplay when this is attempted meaning that the models, while individually well refined and very verified in their respective context, when combined are simply an incomplete picture.
The problems are most notable when you examine space at the ultra small scale when gravity is incorporated. As you know from above, objects in space warp and bend space itself around them, this includes tiny particles themselves like quarks. However, the Quantum Mechanical model also makes these particles very fuzzy and violent. They exhibit odd characteristics like wave properties and their location and velocity can be indeterminable.
Well, what happens to space in the presence of this reality of particles? It becomes a roiling, chaotic foam, a horribly violent soup of space-time that pretty much makes any kind of modeling or useful information moot, you simply can't get anything useful or reasonable from space at this level and thus the core of the anomalies when you try to apply both Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity together and the reason why Black Holes are such a curious thing for science.
They are basically a huge red light to physicists that say "Hey, you think you can get away with dividing the universe into the small and large and think you could have a complete understanding of everything? Pffft."
You know I never understood the need to preserve some species. Like Panda's for example, they're cute and all but even when we put them in a natural environment, pump some Barry White and feed them in such a way where their sex drive could blow a hole in the planet - they refuse to FUCK. If they're we're going to be like that they were most likely going to die out in due time.
The trouble is, nobody really knows. Once you exceed a certain density threshold, the strength of gravity is sufficient to overpower all other forces in the vicinity. This is notable because gravity is the weakest of all the forces - note how simply magnetism (a fairly strong force, and commonly accepted to be the result of much, much smaller nuclear forces) is able to overpower the gravity that results from several trillion tons of matter that is the planet. Beyond this threshold, even the incredibly strong nuclear forces are unable to resist and matter is inexoriably crushed.oppp7 said:
The part that's difficult to fathom is what happens once these unimaginable thresholds are breached. A "black hole" (that is an object of sufficient mass that light itself cannot escape) does not require infinite density in the most literal sense - indeed a very finite (but difficult to fathom) density is all that's necessary. Few physicists will propose that black holes are an object of non-infinite density however, because once all of the known forces in the universe have been overcome, the best conclusion one can draw is collapse to singularity.
Stranger still perhaps is Hawking's theory that black holes evaporate. Apparently, matter has a strange habit of popping in and out of existance. According to theoritical physics, our normal matter has an evil twin (called anti-matter) and in any instance where matter pops into being (for reasons that aren't entirely clear, nor has it ever been observed but the math has held up for several decades now) it comes with it's evil twin. Where the normal matter is often able to escape into the universe, the antimatter is not and is drawn into the black hole where it annihlates an equal amount of mass of said black hole. It is worth noting that while the density of this object may be infinte, it's mass is not (though it is very, very high). Over time the result of decreased mass is a reduction of the event horizon (the surface in space marking the point at which gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape).
The real problem is there has never been a direct observation of a black hole (space is quite large) and we have only detected their presence by induction. Worse still, every rule in physics falls apart once you cross the event horizon because, quite simply, math doesn't work at infinity (thus why dividing by zero never returns a real value).
Well said in general but I wanted to comment on this point. As you have already pointed out, there are two main branches of modern physics that more or less replaced the older forms (Dynamics, Kinematics, Mechanics and Thermodynamics). While classical physics works just fine in most circumstances, once you start reaching extremes of size or speed or mass, they fall apart pretty quickly. While our modern understanding has demonstrated that quantum mechanics reconciles with virtually every observation we have of the universe, it just never seems to work out when applied to gravity. It's the longest ranged force in the universe yet it is generally the weakest. When sufficient mass is present it becomes the strongest. Gravity appears to be a property inherent to mass yet it affects things that seemingly have no mass. Basically what you hit on is the big unanswered question in physics - a unified theory of gravitation. People have tried for decades now to sort it out and time and again they have been foiled as you pointed out. While there are a great many unaswered questions in physics, the unified theory problem is almost certainly the biggest, and whomever eventually resolves it may well be remembered for having made the greatest contribution to science since Newton (and even he might take a back seat for that one).AnteGravity said:
I was thinking that too, "wonder if there's practical applications for that with us.." kinda thing ;pSlaanax said:
I love anythign spacey liek that. It gives me something to talk about at the pub tonight
Great article!
Great article!
