

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Spooky action, weeping angels, and quantum physics


  • homeopathy
  • psychic abilities
  • astrology
  • the soul
  • "chakras" and "qi"
  • auras



To quote the press release:









1 comment:

  1. Spooky action at a distance... Halloween!

    Growing up with science programming, I watched endless documentaries on space and matter in all it's forms. Fantastical, almost spooky topics were discussed in whimsical fashion. An entire hour devoted to discussing black holes or worm holes... By the end of the program you could envision engaging your warp drives and blasting through a worm hole to another dimension or asking "Where does a black hole... go to?" Even the recent Interstellar movie showcased both wormholes and black holes and humans interacting with both to fantastic results. (Fiction, yes, but the "science" was ....exonerated).

    Unfortunately, reality is much more sobering. I understand scientist's desire to inspire and tv station's desire to entertain... but in the midst of a half a lifetime of absorbing scientific material, I'm a little befuddled... I almost feel a bit deceived.

    Let me explain:

    A neutron star is a dense star remnant. As a star explodes outward, there is a reverberation inward from matter backing up on itself as the star explodes. This creates ultra-dense matter. If a person were to come into the gravitational influence of a neutron star, by the time they were drawn into it, they would be partially spaghettified and their body would explode with the force of a 20megaton nuclear bomb, breaking their body down to it's most basic of constituents. A neutron star's gravity is so strong it has the equivalent pull of half the speed of light.
    Knowing what we do about neutron stars, what is a black "hole"?
    Just like a neutron star, a black "hole" is a region of matter compressed to such a density that it's gravity crosses a threshold wherein it can pull in light. A black "SPOT" (what it should be called) is basically a neutron star of sufficient density that it can draw in light. It isn't a hole, it isn't a conduit, it doesn't punch through space, it isn't a well to some other place... it's just a ball of extremely dense matter.

    Or what about a wormhole? An hour's documentary would have you contemplating all manner of interesting idea... but sadly, reality is much more sobering. The hour long program could be condensed to this one sentence: A wormhole won't open big enough, for long enough, or allow your matter to pass through it and exit in the same manner it entered. The extreme forces that make it will also extremely break your ass down into purified particles. All this talk of worm holes my whole life... It's just as fantastically unrealistic as a talking snake or a holy ghost.

    Science has a duty to inspire but it also has a duty to be realistic. Even the most prominent astrophysicist would wax poetical about either of these two matter-rending phenomenon... and they wouldn't be nearly as succinct or morose as the math/observation dictates.