[sramsay]

I'm not a physicist. I imagine that if I were, this would be exciting news (that is, an exciting possibility).

I am a literary critic, though, and I have to say that it's bittersweet news at best. Black holes are so much a part of the space-age imagination. The article mentions Hollywood, but black holes are woven deeply into our everyday metaphors and have been for decades. They have stood among the most wondrous things in the universe -- an awe-inspiring thing.

It reminds me a bit of when the press reported that the Catholic Church had "gotten rid of Limbo" (the actual case was a bit more complex, and involved some fairly weighty theology).

Then again, we all still talk of things "being in Limbo." Perhaps that next project will still be a black hole, even if it turns out that there's no such thing.

[dhimes]

I imagine that the metaphor "black hole" will be here for a while. After all, we still use the term "big bang" for the 'first moment' of the creation of the universe, even though the "Big Bang Theory" isn't generally believed any longer.

[lutusp]

> even though the "Big Bang Theory" isn't generally believed any longer.

Really? Given that science doesn't turn on belief but evidence, still, the Big Bang remains the best explanation for existing evidence. It's the prevailing cosmological theory of the universe' beginnings. Like all scientific theories, it's subject to replacement as new evidence appears and as new theories are crafted, but it's a good match at the moment.

[acjohnson55]

I think it's a bit naive to say that science doesn't turn on belief. Scientist aren't robots, mechanically and dispassionately ingesting evidence and spitting out theory. They're humans with imaginations, beliefs, agendas, and egos, guided (hopefully) by a methodology that leads to discovery. I think belief is what drives science, and it's not all that bad of a thing.

[cruisername]

Well, if your are willing to make a distinction between faith and believe, you might be right, IMHO, but that is opening a can of wormy questions that I'd better not go on writing about :)

[lutusp]

> I think it's a bit naive to say that science doesn't turn on belief.

That depends entirely on what we mean when we say "science". If by "science" we mean as defined and as practiced when it's done right, then no, belief plays no part -- it can't. If it did, it wouldn't be science.

> Scientist aren't robots, mechanically and dispassionately ingesting evidence and spitting out theory.

Scientists aren't robots, but they are also not hothouse orchids.

> They're humans with imaginations, beliefs, agendas, and egos, guided (hopefully) by a methodology that leads to discovery.

You have left the topic of science. The reason science exists is precisely because people are the way you describe them. Science is meant to be a counterpoint to natural human instincts, beliefs, passions, and other logical failings.

> I think belief is what drives science, and it's not all that bad of a thing.

You're now confusing science with religion. In religion, you let sincere feelings guide you to a conclusion. In science, you let logic guide you to a conclusion.

In religion, something is true until evidence proves it false. In science, something is false until evidence proves it true -- exactly the opposite.

Much of scientific discipline is meant to guard against what we believe is true or want to be true. Experimental and control groups, the classic double-blinding precautions in human studies -- all are meant to minimize the corrosive, undermining influence of our beliefs.

The perfect religious follower is guided by belief, hoping only that his work reflects his passion. The perfect scientist doesn't care what conclusion his work comes to, hoping only that it reflects reality to the best of his ability.

Belief and science are in absolute opposition.

[cruisername]

> [that it's naive to say that science doesn't turn on belief] depends entirely on what we mean when we say "science".

Or it depends on what we mean when we say believe. The weight lying on "science" does form a conceptual framework that completely ignores the notion of something beyond our reach, although it inarguably is the driving force behind science.

> In religion, something is true until evidence proves it false. In science, something is false until evidence proves it true -- exactly the opposite.

alright, but the word of god himself isn't evidence enough? j/k :)

> In religion, something is true until evidence proves it false. In science, something is false until evidence proves it true -- exactly the opposite.

Why do those have to opposite, can't they be reconciled into one, using some form of ternary logic? Edit: I mean, some things in life are unknown until proven true or false and then theres all kinds of methods to counter the fact.

[lutusp]

> The weight lying on "science" does form a conceptual framework that completely ignores the notion of something beyond our reach, although it inarguably is the driving force behind science.

Yes, but an idea doesn't become a matter of interest to science until it comes within our reach, in the sense of being observable in a way that forces different, similarly equipped observers to the same conclusion (the scientific meaning of "objective").

> Why do those have to opposite, can't they be reconciled into one, using some form of ternary logic?

Yes, an interesting question, but not really about science. Science concerns itself only with things that can be reduced to empirical observation, not belief.

> I mean, some things in life are unknown until proven true or false ...

That's true, but the basic scientific precept is the null hypothesis, the idea that things without evidence are assumed to be false. This is a great time-saver compared to granting credence to ideas without evidence, or assuming that something might be true until proven false (the unscientific outlook).

[TeMPOraL]

> Why do those have to opposite, can't they be reconciled into one, using some form of ternary logic? Edit: I mean, some things in life are unknown until proven true or false and then theres all kinds of methods to counter the fact.

You reconcile them using Bayesian probability. There is no "proven to be true", there is no "proven to be false", there is only probability that flows between different models based on the evidence we discover.

"In science, something is false until evidence proves it true" actually means that any random hypothesis you come up with has an equivalent probability to be right to any other random hypothesis - which is infinitesimal, because possible hypothesis space is huge. Then, as evidence comes knocking, you update those probabilities, and some hypotheses become more probable (i.e. more likely a good models of reality), while other become too improbable to care about.

[acjohnson55]

I'm not confusing science with religion. You might be describing something close to science in some ideal but certainly not what it looks like in reality. In reality, we don't have perfect experiments or evidence, and scientists have to draw conclusions based on interpretations of data. Like it or not, a lot of human factors come into play there. Even more so when the subjects themselves are human. If you want to rule out everything where there's a strong human, non-mechanical element from the world of science, then there's very little science going on to talk about.

Before we have advancement of theory, we have to have inspired hypothesis, and for that, we need imagination. If it weren't so, we wouldn't need great minds to propel us forward. While I agree that science promotes confrontation of bias, I don't think it serves any useful purpose to pretend that science actually happens in a clean room.

[lutusp]

> You might be describing something close to science in some ideal but certainly not what it looks like in reality.

Wait, are we discussing science or the problems science is designed to solve? You could make your remarks just as well about law, arguing that, because laws are broken, therefore they shouldn't exist, or they don't really mean what they say. You could also say this about mathematics, which only rarely exactly agrees with experience, but is still extremely useful in making predictions about an imperfect world.

Science is meant to be an ideal, that's its purpose.

> If you want to rule out everything where there's a strong human, non-mechanical element from the world of science, then there's very little science going on to talk about.

How are you missing the point that science is supposed to represent an alternative to everyday human affairs? And how are you missing the fact that, no matter how emotionally attached to a particular outcome, no matter how driven, a person still has to toe the science line in order to accomplish anything useful?

> ... I don't think it serves any useful purpose to pretend that science actually happens in a clean room.

True -- only good science, memorable science, happens in a clean room.

I can't believe you haven't figured out that science exists precisely because people are the way they are. If this were not the case, if people could divorce themselves from passion and perceptual distortions when circumstances required it, there would be no science -- what we call science would be one variety of normal human behavior and no one would think about it.

[dhimes]

Big Bang remains the best explanation for existing evidence

No. The universe is too smooth for the Big Bang theory. It has been supplanted by the Inflationary theory.

[lutusp]

Big Bang and Inflation are't alternatives, they're part of the same theory. Inflation followed the Big Bang. In fact, recent studies of the CMB provide evidence for both the Big Bang and inflation.

[dhimes]

That's incorrect- and your use of it is exactly my point. The Big Bang Theory did not have an inflationary component. The Inflationary Theory (a new set of physical behaviors) came about to explain the smoothness that the Big Bang Theory could not explain.

As is typical when this happens, parts of the original theory remained. For example, the "big bang" event- the idea that everything started from an initial 'explosion' of space-time- remained. And the term is still used.

My understand is that this is also true with Darwin's Theory of Evolution- I am not a biologist however so I may be off-base here. The concept of evolution- specifically survival of the fittest and speciation- remain in the current theories. And people still speak of 'evolution.' But the accepted/currently debated theories differ in some fundamental aspects, notably the gradualness of the process.

So my point was that we will be speaking of 'black holes' for a long time even if the current 'Black Holes' as we think of them today are shown to not actually exist.

[Ono-Sendai]

Erm, the big bang theory is still the best theory for the history of the universe.

[dhimes]

No- it was replace by the inflationary theory long ago. They are different. You've kind of proved my point.

[lutusp]

No- it [the Big Bang theory] was replace by the inflationary theory long ago.

This is false -- inflationary theory complements Big Bang theory, it does not replace it, as you claim. Big Bang and inflation are both parts of our current understanding of the early universe.

[Ono-Sendai]

As I understand it, inflation usually applies shortly after the big bang.

[dhimes]

My point is that the Big Bang Theory preceded the Inflationary Theory by decades. Inflation came along to explain things that the original theory did not. We now still, however, refer to the big bang- as I am suggesting will happen with Black Holes even if the original Black Hole theories are replaced by something else.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372341

[lutusp]

> Inflation came along to explain things that the original theory did not.

Again, inflation does not replace the Big Bang theory, it complements it. Big Bang and inflation are both parts of our current understanding of the early universe.