Re:The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
by graycat on Saturday June 14, 2014 @11:54PM
(#7894324)
Newton's law of gravity? Worked great for, what, 300+ years? Still, for a wide range of situations, it's darned accurate. Is it 'correct'? Nope: Einstein's law of gravity is more accurate, especially in what in our solar system neighborhood would have to be regarded as extreme situations.
Are we sure that Einstein's law of gravity is the really 'correct' one or the 'last' one we will discover? Nope. Indeed, that doubt is part of why the article got so excited about using one black hole orbiting another one to "test" Einstein's law of gravity. We keep testing that law because we will learn something, either (1) something doesn't fit and we have to ditch the law or (2) the law fits and we gain more 'confidence' in the law.
You can look at it this way: The stuff we 'accept' now is what we have dreamed up and that has passed some apparently 'significant' (don't mean statistics here) tests and so far never really failed a test. Net, stuff 'accepted' at present is what appears to work so far.
But, in physics and cosmology, we have some issues that, at least intuitively, appear to be potential biggies: (1) What happened before the big bang? Can we get some clues from the data we have on what might have happened before the big bang -- some physicists have tried to look. (2) What's with this stuff about dark energy and dark matter? (3) Why does it appear that there is much more matter than anti-matter? (4) What's with neutrinos and how they 'change'? (5) What can we dig out of 'spooky action at a distance', that is, Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox?
So, maybe more progress understanding one of these biggies will cause us to ditch some of our currently 'accepted' results, look for, and maybe find some new results.
Could everything we have seen so far be just some light show put on just for our amusement? We can't say. So far, it appears that somehow mathematics works shockingly well; why? We don't know.
That there is a law of gravity that works as well as even Newton's might be seen as surprising. That is, why doesn't
the 'law of gravity' change each 10 minutes? Well, some things do change 'randomly', and for them the only laws we have are probabilistic. Newton's law is not probabilistic because so far it appears to work the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that is, doesn't change. Or our science is what we have found that in some important sense doesn't change, e.g., we can 'reproduce' results. Why are such results possible? Not at all clear.
Even if what we are seeing is just some light show for our amusement, still we get some utility, e.g., via applications to engineering, etc. So, the Internet works because Maxwell's equations of electro-magnetism continue to work as they have for 100+ years now.
> And I can't shake it off.
Relax and enjoy the light show or whatever the heck it is. There's a lot to be amazed about, curious about, etc. And we really do make progress, astounding progress. E.g., we've made a lot of progress since I studied physics i college. The math I studied has been more stable!
Are we sure that Einstein's law of gravity is the really 'correct' one or the 'last' one we will discover? Nope. Indeed, that doubt is part of why the article got so excited about using one black hole orbiting another one to "test" Einstein's law of gravity. We keep testing that law because we will learn something, either (1) something doesn't fit and we have to ditch the law or (2) the law fits and we gain more 'confidence' in the law.
You can look at it this way: The stuff we 'accept' now is what we have dreamed up and that has passed some apparently 'significant' (don't mean statistics here) tests and so far never really failed a test. Net, stuff 'accepted' at present is what appears to work so far.
But, in physics and cosmology, we have some issues that, at least intuitively, appear to be potential biggies: (1) What happened before the big bang? Can we get some clues from the data we have on what might have happened before the big bang -- some physicists have tried to look. (2) What's with this stuff about dark energy and dark matter? (3) Why does it appear that there is much more matter than anti-matter? (4) What's with neutrinos and how they 'change'? (5) What can we dig out of 'spooky action at a distance', that is, Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox?
So, maybe more progress understanding one of these biggies will cause us to ditch some of our currently 'accepted' results, look for, and maybe find some new results.
Could everything we have seen so far be just some light show put on just for our amusement? We can't say. So far, it appears that somehow mathematics works shockingly well; why? We don't know.
That there is a law of gravity that works as well as even Newton's might be seen as surprising. That is, why doesn't the 'law of gravity' change each 10 minutes? Well, some things do change 'randomly', and for them the only laws we have are probabilistic. Newton's law is not probabilistic because so far it appears to work the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that is, doesn't change. Or our science is what we have found that in some important sense doesn't change, e.g., we can 'reproduce' results. Why are such results possible? Not at all clear.
Even if what we are seeing is just some light show for our amusement, still we get some utility, e.g., via applications to engineering, etc. So, the Internet works because Maxwell's equations of electro-magnetism continue to work as they have for 100+ years now.
> And I can't shake it off.
Relax and enjoy the light show or whatever the heck it is. There's a lot to be amazed about, curious about, etc. And we really do make progress, astounding progress. E.g., we've made a lot of progress since I studied physics i college. The math I studied has been more stable!