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"Stephen Hawking" - "There are no blackholes"! and other startling assertions made

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tks

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"Stephen Hawking" - "There are no blackholes"! and other startling assertions made

For those who are fascinated by the state of science and physics I want to share some news items that came out very recently.

1. Stephen Hawking says there are no blackholes

2. Recent experiments of measuring the radius of Proton very precisely show that the measured numbers are off by five fold. The implication is that physicists may be embarking on a whole new realm of Physics. The best understood theory in all of Physics arguably is called the QED - Quantum Electro-Dynamics (Feynman et al proposed in 1950s) The theory from first principles predicts experimental results to the accuracy with uncertainty of 0.00000000001 percent. This theory (even in my student days this was one of the toughest courses to master) now has to be reconciled with recent experiments.
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For those that want to read a bit more let me provide some more details that is still readable by non-science people

1. Visit this Link

Stephen Hawking has produced a "mind-bending" new theory that argues black holes do not actually exist - at least not in the way we currently perceive them.

Instead, in his paper, Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes, Hawking proposes that black holes can exist without 'event horizons', the invisible cover believed to surround every black hole.
During a previous lecture, 'Into the Black Hole', Hawkins described an event horizon as the boundary of a black hole, "where gravity is just strong enough to drag light back, and prevent it escaping".
“Falling through the event horizon, is a bit like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe", he said. "If you are above the falls, you can get away if you paddle fast enough, but once you are over the edge, you are lost. There's no way back.
"As you get nearer the falls, the current gets faster. This means it pulls harder on the front of the canoe, than the back. There's a danger that the canoe will be pulled apart. It is the same with black holes.”
But now, Hawking is proposing 'apparent horizons' could exist instead, which would only hold light and information temporarily before releasing them back into space in 'garbled form', Nature has reported.
The internationally-renowned theoretical physicist suggests that quantum mechanics and general relativity remain intact, but black holes do not have an event horizon to catch fire.
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Stephen Hawking, internationally-renowned theoretical physicist, proposes the absence of event horizonsHis work attempts to address the 'black-hole firewall paradox' first discovered by theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski and his colleagues almost two years ago, when Polchinski and his team began investigating what would happen to an astronaut who fell into a black hole.
They hypothesised that instead of being gradually ripped apart by gravitational forces, the event horizon would be transformed into a 'highly energetic region', and anyone who fell in would hit a wall of fire and burn to death in an instant - violating Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
In his paper, Hawking writes: "The absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes - in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity."
He told Nature journal: “There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory, but quantum theory, however, “enables energy and information to escape from a black hole.”
Don Page, a physicist and expert on black holes at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada told Nature that "the picture Hawking gives sounds pretty reasonable".
“You could say that it is radical to propose there’s no event horizon", he said. "But these are highly quantum conditions, and there’s ambiguity about what space-time even is, let alone whether there is a definite region that can be marked as an event horizon.”

[h=1]The Proton Radius Puzzle[/h]Two experiments have come up with two wildly different values for the proton's radius. What's going on?
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?ur...-radius-puzzle/&text=The Proton Radius Puzzlehttp://www.facebook.com/sharer/shar...merican.com/article/the-proton-radius-puzzle/https://plus.google.com/share?url=h...merican.com/article/the-proton-radius-puzzle/http://www.reddit.com/submit

FBB1A191-C26F-46B8-A0B69B10527053EF_paywallpreview.jpg


You would be forgiven for Assuming that we understand the proton. It is, after all, the main constituent of matter in the observable universe, the fuel of stellar furnaces. Studies of the proton—its positive charge suitably bound up with a negatively charged electron to make a hydrogen atom—initiated the quantum-mechanical revolution a century ago. Today researchers trigger torrents of ultrahigh-energy proton collisions to conjure particle exotica such as the Higgs boson.
Yet recent studies of the proton have surprised us. The two of us (Bernauer and Pohl), along with our colleagues, have made the most precise measurements of the radius of the proton to date, using two complementary experiments. When we began the exercise, we suspected that our results would help add levels of precision to the known size of the proton. We were wrong. Our measurements of the proton's radius differ by a huge gulf. The difference is more than five times the uncertainty in either measurement, implying that the probability that this is all due to chance is less than one in a million.

 
For those who are fascinated by the state of science and physics I want to share some news items that came out very recently.
1. Stephen Hawking says there are no blackholes
2. Recent experiments of measuring the radius of Proton very precisely show that the measured numbers are off by five fold. The implication is that physicists may be embarking on a whole new realm of Physics. The best understood theory in all of Physics arguably is called the QED - Quantum Electro-Dynamics (Feynman et al proposed in 1950s) The theory from first principles predicts experimental results to the accuracy with uncertainty of 0.00000000001 percent. This theory (even in my student days this was one of the toughest courses to master) now has to be reconciled with recent experiments.........................

I read the gist of this in The Times of India. Very fascinating indeed. I have been thinking about this all through the day.
 
I read another article recently which claims that physics too is moving away from what is called a definite science; in the micro and macro world, there are many 'accidents' (like in evolution life sciences). I will try to locate the article for sharing.
 
I read another article recently which claims that physics too is moving away from what is called a definite science; in the micro and macro world, there are many 'accidents' (like in evolution life sciences). I will try to locate the article for sharing.

Stephen Hawking has produced many science videos - many say that in a perfectly symmetric events following the so called big bang the current universe could not have come about. It is unexplained accident of extremely small proportion that gave rise to the physical laws.

Where people like Stephen Hawking make a mistake in my view is to *assume* that mere physical laws can give rise to life forms. In others words arranging some molecules in a certain manner will produce life (though not stated explicitly like that ).

There are theorists of this kind from Sri Sankara's time that life originates from non-living entities. In many of the Indian style debates (Purva Paksha) Sri Sankara provides reasons why those kind of thinking is illogical
 
Stephen Hawking has produced many science videos - many say that in a perfectly symmetric events following the so called big bang the current universe could not have come about. It is unexplained accident of extremely small proportion that gave rise to the physical laws.

Where people like Stephen Hawking make a mistake in my view is to *assume* that mere physical laws can give rise to life forms. In others words arranging some molecules in a certain manner will produce life (though not stated explicitly like that ).

There are theorists of this kind from Sri Sankara's time that life originates from non-living entities. In many of the Indian style debates (Purva Paksha) Sri Sankara provides reasons why those kind of thinking is illogical

That assumption is the position taken by many scientists who work in the particle physics area and they are neither sure about the non-existence of God nor are they sure about the existence of that entity. It is a kind of a thrishanku swargam. I remember having come across a work (publication) done by some Russian Scientists (before Soviet union became just Russia) which pertained to producing a creature-a life form-from nothing but plasama by applying an extremely high voltage in a specific small space under a certain conditions. This was in the seventies when I had the opportunity to work in a High Temperature Lab. The nature of my work was actually relating to creating and containing high temperature plasma and manipulating/using it. I lost touch with that because I changed my career and interest. If you are working in that area you may be able to throw some light on further developments on that. Do you remember you asked "தீக்குள் விரலை வைத்தால் நந்தலாலாவைத் தீண்டும் இன்பம் தோன்றுமா?" some time back? This is that. I think the soviet scientists made God touch something and that some thing became some thing else and walked/crept away laughing!! LOL.
 
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That assumption is the position taken by many scientists who work in the particle physics area and they are neither sure about the non-existence of God nor are they sure about the existence of that entity. It is a kind of a thrishanku swargam. I remember having come across a work (publication) done by some Russian Scientists (before Soviet union became just Russia) which pertained to producing a creature-a life form-from nothing but plasama by applying an extremely high voltage in a specific small space under a certain conditions. This was in the seventies when I had the opportunity to work in a High Temperature Lab. The nature of my work was actually relating to creating and containing high temperature plasma and manipulating/using it. I lost touch with that because I changed my career and interest. If you are working in that area you may be able to throw some light on further developments on that. Do you remember you asked "தீக்குள் விரலை வைத்தால் நந்தலாலாவைத் தீண்டும் இன்பம் தோன்றுமா?" some time back? This is that. I think the soviet scientists made God touch something and that some thing became some thing else and walked/crept away laughing!! LOL.

I have not worked as a physicist shortly after completing PhD degree - it was easier to earn a better living doing engineering. Later I got dumbed down by being in executive management (according to my kids :)). I do keep up like any other laymen reading science periodicals.

Before the so called Big Bang nothing existed including space and time. Hence some scientist assume that big bang created life without explaining why it banged in the first place. The question itself will be meaningless since for answering why one needs the concept of causality requiring space-time.

Now the thinking in Science is that if there is one big bang why not infinite number of them creating infinite parallel universes. The one we have seems just right to give rise to life form in their view because it is just one of the many possibilities which afforded arrangement of atoms to create life forms.

Brian Greene who has written many books and a leading astro-physicist gives this example. He went to buy a shoe for his son and later the son exclaimed - what a great thing it is that the shoe store had exactly my size since every shoe the assistant brought from the store we tried fit me ...It seems we think the earth is just right like that kid.

Hence the thinking is that somehow this big bang was just right to produce the right condition for life to happen by arrangement of some atoms.

Stephen Hawking in one of his popular videos (I posted a link but unable to find my post in 2013) said with great analysis that everything we do is governed by laws of physics and the illusion of free will is just that -an illusion. The micro level actions appear as free-will based decisions for complex systems like human beings .. he makes the case for total determinism and ruling out existence of free will.

Actually in all such discussions I am just reminded of powerful manner by which Sri Sankara provided his analysis against many such conclusions by other debaters of his time (Sankhya, Vaiseshikas, etc)

By the way while our teaching does describe something like 'free will' actions in this verse of BG

कर्मणयेवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि। 2.47

The focus for this reference is just that our actions ("free will " based) is only limited to doing those actions. Free will cannot determine the results which are determined by our actions interacting with laws of universe.

But our scriptures do not talk about true free will like what the western philosophies advocate - rather the model of free will is more like what Stephen Hawking has described in this video.

If I locate my post or link to the video itself I will post
 
Sri Vaagmi

I finally found my notes of the post that had a link to a 45 min video.

Rather than just hunt for this post and give reference to the post - let me just repost it here from my notes:

Most thinking top scientists are confused about the nature of reality.
There was a nice documentary that aired a year or so ago (perhaps summer of 2012) - one of Stephen Hawking's special.

It was called "The meaning of life"

You can watch it here (45 minutes or so)

There are good conclusion about experience of free will. But there are inherent assumptions made at the start that leads to a very wrong model in my view.

That assumption is taking Descarte's "I think therefore I am" as a total basis for life.

Science deals with specifics -

1. Body which is inert and is clearly seen to obey the laws of science
2. Mind which in the conclusion of Stephen Hawking and Descarte's philosophy is different from the body.

The part Science cannot deal with objectively is the 'power of life' - power of vision, power of movement by our limbs etc - why they remain for sometime and disappear. In other words in discussing the meaning of life they do not discuss the grand meaning of death which itself speaks to certain assumptions.

Stephen Hawking concludes that reality is dependent on every being and it is relative. One does not know if there is an ultimate reality but he says it is a model driven reality meaning we work with current best model at the moment.

While some of the conclusions and line of thinking are on the mark (and have already been discussed by Sri Sankara in his Bhashyas) basic inability to reach a satisfactory conclusion on such topics lie in their inability to explore the assumptions built in.

By the way those that care to explore, Sankhyas who were atheirsts (no concept of personal God for them and this is in alignment with Vedas) believed in Pradhanam an inanimate Jadam as root of all the reality of the universe. It is very much like big bang (a possible Jadam as a phenomena) being the cause of the consciousness.

One of the reasons why it is useful (in my view for those that care) to study Sankara Bhashya is because he refutes the most respected thought leaders of his time, which include Sankhya people in a logical and respectful manner (using the protocol of Purva Paksha).

I think Stephen Hawking is an open minded person (this has nothing to do with his brilliance) and if he was exposed to what was taught by Sri Sankara then he could present a much better picture of the universe. All he has to work with are Descartes and Greek thoughts to guide his understanding on items that are really beyond the scope of Science.
 
Sri Vaagmi

I think Stephen Hawking is an open minded person (this has nothing to do with his brilliance) and if he was exposed to what was taught by Sri Sankara then he could present a much better picture of the universe. All he has to work with are Descartes and Greek thoughts to guide his understanding on items that are really beyond the scope of Science.

Dear Shri TKS,

I agree with you. There are some really brilliant people among the scientists. The ancient Indian sages and seers got the right view of reality but their thoughts weer not really able to reach the common man since for a common man to understand that it needs to be at his level of thinking. One way of doing that demystification is the way science does by explaining the reality in logical steps. This is where we have the need to connect our philosophy with science. As you say if scientists can get rid of some assumptions and embrace some new ones and modify the philosophy of science accordingly, the there is room for revolutionary progress in science.
 
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