A Black Hole “teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as ‘sacred,’ as immutable, are anything but.”
–John A. Wheeler, one of the giants of the world of physics, compatriot of Albert, Einstein, Niels Bohr, and key scientist on the Manhattan Project–the man who coined the term “Black Hole”–dead at the age of 96.
Now if only Dr Schori would have the same humility about canon law as Dr Wheeler had about the laws of physics.
On That Day, the heavens will be rolled away as one rolls up a scroll, and there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Steven Wright : “Black holes are where God divided by zero.”
My mom was his secretary for 15 years — he just retired three years ago (at 93).
Wheeler was expressing what to him (and to me) is the core of science: what we today regard as laws are simply those conclusions which we have reached about the world around us which have not yet been shown to be untrue. Any scientific law is true until it is falsified.
Black holes were predicted by Zwicky and others almost a century ago. But they were not accepted until a number of different types of observations rendered the black hole hypothesis to be the best explanation of the observation.
What he said is in fact not true. A black hole obeys the laws of physics as all else in the universe obeys. That is, it obeys immutable laws which, when man studies them, are called physics. That the rules governing matter are altered by a black hole says nothing about the mutability of universal physical principles. Just the reverse. L
Yes, Larry, and one Day the best possible explanation for certain observed data will be that the Heavens were rolled up like a scroll, and a new Heavens and a new Earth descended.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
It may well be Brer Rabit, and I am dying to see it, but for the present, what is important is that the Law is never altered or suborned by events or circumstances. Black holes obey the Law, and when we see what appear to be aberrations, history tells us that the problem is the state of our knowledge, not the state of the Law. There is nothing in the physical universe we may not know, but we may not change even the tiniest fundamental particle in a way that is outside the physical laws. We have tried and all we have done is increase our knowledge of the laws the govern the universe. Larry