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From WIRED, again. Sometimes they have good stuff.
In the early 1970s, people studying general relativity, our modern theory of gravity, noticed rough similarities between the properties of black holes and the laws of thermodynamics. Stephen Hawking proved that the area of a black hole's event horizon—the surface that marks its boundary—cannot decrease. That sounded suspiciously like the second law of thermodynamics, which says entropy—a measure of disorder—cannot decrease.
Yet at the time, Hawking and others emphasized that the laws of black holes only looked like thermodynamics on paper; they did not actually relate to thermodynamic concepts like temperature or entropy.
Then in quick succession, a pair of brilliant results—one by Hawking himself—suggested that the equations governing black holes were in fact actual expressions of the thermodynamic laws applied to black holes. In 1972, Jacob Bekenstein argued that a black hole's surface area was proportional to its entropy, and thus the second law similarity was a true identity. And in 1974, Hawking found that black holes appear to emit radiation—what we now call Hawking radiation—and this radiation would have exactly the same "temperature" in the thermodynamic analogy.
[...] But what if the connection between the two really is little more than a rough analogy, with little physical reality? What would that mean for the past decades of work in string theory, loop quantum gravity, and beyond? Craig Callender, a philosopher of science at the University of California, San Diego, argues that the notorious laws of black hole thermodynamics may be nothing more than a useful analogy stretched too far.
After what Hawking said about philosophy, I think that astrophysicists need a bit more perspective.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @05:56PM (3 children)
What is this about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:15PM
They have discovered that black holes are quite puny compared to the human ego.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:56PM
Black holes have a lot of properties that are analogous to the laws of thermodynamics. It's a lot easier to study thermodynamics than black holes, so we use thermodynamics to draw conclusions about how black holes work. But there isn't really proof that black holes actually work this way.
This physicist thinks black holes might work differently, and we shouldn't depend on thermodynamics so much to understand them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday September 13 2019, @06:34AM
So that is a lack of your understanding - not a failure of the story. Less than 24 hours after being posted it is the second most commented story of the day. There are lots of intelligent and insightful comments that try to explain things. Try reading them and seeing if it helps...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:20PM
Black holes are just dark matter spirits cursed to bound to themselves, forever. That explains them as well as thermodynamics of gravity. Those forgiven ones are slowly released back into universe as Hawking's radiation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:30PM (24 children)
Were always wrong about everything. We're just are slightly less wrong than yesterday.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:40PM (20 children)
Definitely some signs that, no, we're getting more wrong than yesterday about some things.
For example, I'd go as far as to conjecture that the field of economics is so far astray from anything resembling reality and so far up it's own ass, that if you used methods produced in 2019 for a problem we've known about since 1800, you'll get worse results. Mileage will vary, behavioralists are less up their ass than praxeologists.
The assumption that science culls bad ideas runs against the problems that bad ideas help some people stay rich.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:47PM (8 children)
Yep, dark matter, string theory, everything based on NHST. Science is in a bad place currently.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 12 2019, @10:09PM (7 children)
What is your alternative to null hypothesis testing? And don't say "hurr hurr do real science derp," actually lay out your replacement methodology.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @11:28PM (6 children)
I already explained this to you last time. The "alternative" is to test your hypothesis instead of a strawman hypothesis. Literally just go read the scientific literature before 1940 or so and do what they did: science.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday September 13 2019, @12:47AM (1 child)
Yes, you did. As I recall, the explanation was that you are an obsessional layman who does not understand science. Is that about right? Something about the null hypothesis being that you are a 14 year-old in a basement somewhere, but since our theory provides a better explanation, more congruent with observed phenomena, it is to be taken, provisionally, as proven. WE HAVE the P VALUE!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @02:43AM
Keep your hands inside your cloak when speaking publically!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday September 14 2019, @12:29AM (3 children)
Enlighten me. Spell the methodology out step by step. Do you even Bayes, bro?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday September 14 2019, @08:06AM (1 child)
Bayesian Hazuki! Oh, my god, don't even get him started (has to be a "him", right?), because the probability of the theory in advance is the theory is always less than the probablity of the theory after the theory is understood, but not as great as the theory deduced into a experimental matrix. He has "one thing", the p-value. Do not make his head explode by bringing in Bayes, or Popper. or Quine, or god-forbid Lakatos. He will understand none of this, and this should be a lesson to him, in case the Azumi Hazuki's lesson was not clear? Idiot? Do you now understand how and why you are an idiot? We can explain it again, in smaller words, if you need.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @10:25PM
Lakatos agreed with me. He called NHST "intellectual pollution that will destroy our cultural environment before we get a chance to destroy the physical environment".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @03:09PM
I don't know how you can be so dense. DO THE EXACT SAME THING EXCEPT TEST YOUR HYPOTHESIS INSTEAD OF A STRAWMAN HYPOTHESIS.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:04PM (5 children)
Equating economics and science is the main problem in the stated thought process...
I had a realization earlier yesterday: nuclear power, unscientifically and unfairly made into the big bogeyman over the last 5 decades, doesn't make as many people filthy rich as the alternatives - thus explaining quite simply its political challenges and (purchased) popular perception.
If you want to make something happen in this world, make a large number of people rich, rich to the level that they can buy politicians, a larger number of people than the entrenched alternatives that are being harmed by the "new thing."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:12PM (1 child)
So basically... the BIT Coin.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:43PM
A combination of: market speculation (gambling), pyramid scheme, and international funds transfers... trifecta!
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:46PM (2 children)
Nominally, as a philosophical point, economics should absolutely be a soft science. It should, at its core, make testable predictions that can help guide understanding reality.
And it sucks shit at it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:30PM
Sure, and we should all get pretty ponies for our birthdays... the economists with access to the most complete, accurate source data are, to a great extent, politically captive - if not by a specific set of government officials then to the corporate and wealthy interests the government serves first/best. They tell the tale that their masters want to be told, and one might occasionally argue that, when they lie and how they lie, they do it for the good of the masses - if for no other reason than a more prosperous population feeds a more prosperous ruling class.
We may well achieve greater understanding and repeatable behavior from black holes than we ever do from economists. In fact, we may have passed that point already.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday September 14 2019, @12:31AM
Economics sucks at making testable predictions because nearly all of it is predicated on the idea that humans are rational actors. This is somewhere between "not even wrong" and a form of secular blasphemy, and I am surprised anyone says it with a straight face. My only guess is that the people saying it know damn well it's not true, consider *themselves* some sort of rational ubermenschen, and intend to flatter people with the idea that they are rational actors in order to take advantage of their irrationality.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:33PM (4 children)
I'm not sure that economics is a science. It seems more like religion to me.
This explains it pretty well. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:44PM (3 children)
Economists just don't collect good enough data to test their theories. So they are left philosophizing.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:55PM (2 children)
Economists also cannot generally conduct live real-time experimentation unless they can persuade government officials (or others with authority) to do so, or more accurately become government or banking officials themselves. Even then, the experiments are never clean and have so many counfounders as to always leave questions to the methodology. Or unless they are employed by a gaming company [ctvnews.ca] and then their results are even more questionable as to real life applicability.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:02PM
Astronomers did fine with much less information available. At least once they got the positions of all the planets sufficiently precise.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday September 13 2019, @01:56AM
Strange that every other field of sociology doesn't suffer from such problems.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:58PM (2 children)
First statement is true.
Second statement is often false, why? See first statement.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:18PM
Someone has been reading too much Godel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @07:45AM
First statement cannot be true, why? See first statement.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:31PM (2 children)
Hawking just needs:
Guaranteed: we're not entirely "right" about black holes, and they do bear precious little connection to physical reality as we understand it.
When we can get close enough to one to drop various things in and see what happens, we might start to understand them a little bit better - observing them from the current distances is really missing the finer details - kind of like trying to map Pluto with the HST, but worse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:40PM (1 child)
Black holes are just the "edge" of the universe. The end.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday September 13 2019, @02:07PM
I always thought they are the peep-holes for the turtles to take a peep when they are tired of carrying the universe (the all-the-way down thing). They use black shields just so we are not scared. (Once they made a mistake and that is how we know about the turtles).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:36PM (8 children)
Remember black holes are mathematical constructs.
We can see spots in the universe that act like these mathematical constructs. We are pretty sure what they do and how they will act on the outside.
Inside however is a whole different story. We can not observe inside. We can speculate. Our math points to particular things. But it is like looking at a totally sealed cardboard box with no writing on it and asking 'whats in the box' and not being able to do anything other than observe it from behind a brick wall.
a useful analogy stretched too far
Very possible or could be perfect.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:34PM (1 child)
It is like looking at a titanium sphere, three feet thick and seven feet in diameter, at the bottom of the deep ocean, from a satellite in orbit of Uranus, and asking what's going on inside.
No, actually, it's much worse than that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @11:37PM
Except, of course, having the ability to see its effects and a decent model of how it works. And what is "inside" for a black hole?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:40PM
oh please, we all know schrodinger's cat is in the box.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:58PM
Based on that speculation, I would take some meatballs and red sauce with me if I were to jump into a black hole. And bring a camera to film the end of the universe.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:11PM (3 children)
It's the sheep you asked for.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:22PM (2 children)
But the sheep will suffocate in that box!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @12:52AM (1 child)
That's why I drew in some black holes in the box. Shh! The sheep is sleeping.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday September 14 2019, @08:25AM
FOURTH WALL!! You Philistine Soylentils! Or, is it me for pointing it out?
Le Petit Prince [gutenberg.net.au]
But the crucial comment is from Chapter One:
Especially to engineers, and triply so to software engineers. Twinkle on, B-612. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:38PM (3 children)
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:06PM (1 child)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a hole.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:20PM
Is "hole" British slang for "grue"?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:09PM
That will only make them larger...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:51PM (15 children)
When you buy socks for your feet, buy a bunch of pairs that are identical. Don't just buy one of a particular style, but buy about a dozen pairs.
On topic:
Socks disappear into block holes. In a reverse Hawking Radiation like phenomena. Only one sock disappears behind the event horizon. The other sock remains where you can find it.
At a macroscopic level, you may not notice this increase in entropy, nor the missing sock. That is, when you have a dozen or more pair of the same identical sock.
(This also makes it easy to pair-together clean socks when they come out of the dryer, just like all gold atoms of the same isotope are identical.)
When pairing clean socks, you may then notice a missing sock, unless you are now at the point where an even number of socks have gone missing. Over the life of the universe, the total number of socks you have will decrease. But you can still easily pair them together and have enough pears between laundry days.
This theory does not explain what happens to ball point pens and plastic hair combs, which do not come in pairs, yet still spontaneously disappear into block holes at random times.
In the epitome of laziness (aka efficiency) have two dishwashers. One named Clean and one named Dirty. Remove dishes from Clean, use them, then place into Dirty. When Clean is empty and Dirty is full, then run the dirty dishwasher and flip their names. You never have to unload dishes, and save cabinet space.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:04PM (10 children)
Might work if you live alone and only eat the same type of food every day. For anyone else it rapidly breaks down.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:24PM (6 children)
Family of four here, would work for us most of the time - might have to run twice a day, but that's true with the single dishwasher as well. When it's time to run "Dirty" any dishes remaining in "Clean" can be put away, but most of the time for us there's be precious little left in "Clean" by the time "Dirty" gets full.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:47PM (4 children)
"Anything clean can be put away" means it has a place to go that isn't in a dishwasher, which according to the plan it shouldn't need. It's always in a dishwasher.
And that's where it breaks down. We go through enough dishes like you that we might have to run it daily, if not twice a day. But we don't eat soup everyday... so either the soup bowls stay in a dishwasher all the time taking up space or they get put in a cabinet, and if they go in a cabinet, then we now have to 'unload' the dishwasher after having soup. Same goes for pots and pans, mixing bowls, salad bowls, cutting boards, cheese graters, strainers, measuring cups, cake pans, tupperware...
Either we have to unload the dishwasher daily; or we don't own all that stuff, because there's no way we're going to use all that stuff every day. But a family of 4 IS going to run out of plates and need to do another load pretty quickly -- long before all that other stuff has been used. So either we're unloading the dishwasher daily, or we don't own that stuff. Unloading the dishwasher daily violates the rule, and getting rid of all that so that we can just rotate daily without unloading *dramatically* reduces what we can eat. Either that or you need two enormous dishwashers, and a weeks worth of plates and bowls (dozens for a family of four!)... which is also not practical. :p
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:33PM (2 children)
Well, any theory of everything is full of holes, many of them black.
I do think the storage space occupied by a 2nd dishwasher might be a good trade for the otherwise general storage space. I don't think that maintaining two functioning dishwashers sounds like a good idea.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @02:46AM (1 child)
Are you taking into account the energy cost? Dishwashers are like 1 kW. It is much easier and cheaper to just wash your dishes.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 13 2019, @06:07PM
Actually, dishwashers use less energy (and less water) than washing by hand.
Assuming you wash your dishes by had properly, of course. And of course assuming you actually fill your dishwasher, instead of turning it on when partially filled.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @11:05PM
In that case, get 4 dishwashers. Divide dishes up into more and less frequently used.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 13 2019, @12:16AM
If you need to run Dirty and you still have Clean, you're doing something terrible wrong. Like refusing to have your icecream serve from the stockpot or something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:26PM (2 children)
I don't know about you, but I eat vastly different types of food from the same of plates.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 13 2019, @05:27PM (1 child)
Not only do I eat different food from the same plates, I quite frequently eat the same food from vastly different plates. I think the original idea is excellent. (I already do the sock thing.)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 13 2019, @06:23PM
Try this one that I remember from years gone by:
The vegetable part of my stomach is full, but the french fry part of my stomach is empty.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:11PM (3 children)
It has been established: socks disappear while hangars increase. Thus: socks are hangar larvae.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @10:46PM
Paper clips are hanger larvae. Hangers are abandoned bicycle larvae.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 13 2019, @06:25PM (1 child)
Hangars? As in buildings?
I think you mean: Hangers. As in closet / clothes hangers.
Or what I once in my youngster daze called "hookers" because of the characteristic hook.
That doesn't work so well in certain situations. What, only three? I'm going to call the front desk and demand they send at least a dozen more hookers up to our room right now!
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 13 2019, @06:41PM
Closets are for hangers, winners use the door.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:53PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:30PM (1 child)
Maybe we'd fix our p-hacking and reproducibility problems if more scientists appreciated the philosophy of science. Because that sure seems to be a glaring weakness through the kinds of papers with those problems. No one asking "How am aligning my hypothesis testing to the ideals of the scientific method"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:50PM
They just have to read good philosophy of science, ie Paul Meehl and Imre Lakatos.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:27PM (3 children)
If we're talking about hard science we need to use the fucking hard science definition of entropy. Which isn't "disorder". It's a co-related concept to enthalpy that measures the distribution of enthalpy across possible states. The second law of thermodynamics describes the statistically true tendency of moving systems to distribute their energy more evenly, in the same way you don't expect a random cue ball shot into a billiard's table to rerack all the balls.
But it also doesn't apply in a strictly intuitive way as energy changes forms. A extremely fast moving moon close in orbit to a planet plus a slightly heated planetary crust(from the tidal forces) seems like more concentrated energy than a moon in a much further orbit with higher gravitational potential energy. Having energy all in one place intuitively seems less chaotic. Less entropic. But it's not. There's more possible ways to re-arrange the energy of the wider orbiting state than the lower orbiting state.
So by the same fucking token, things falling into a black hole decrease possible arrangements of their energy through the system they're part of. Quite substantially, in fact, because none of the possible arrangements afterwards have any part outside the event horizon.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday September 12 2019, @11:24PM (1 child)
Can you please point to a precise (mathematical) definition of the entropy of a physical system, either classical or quantum or relativistic?
Can you please also point to an effective procedure to measure what you defined above. If such procedure is not currently feasible, it should still be theoretically feasible to carry out in the future, with better instruments.
This is a question for everyone, and I am really curious. I have a deep-seated suspicion that most people, even physicists, do not have a clear (mathematical) idea of what entropy is.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday September 13 2019, @02:10AM
I'm most familiar with it in the context of chemistry. This is a very limited context because it only really describes the entropy of gasses in terms of particle motion, but such descriptions are usually much easier to fully grok than some 30 million variable universal formula.
dU = T*dS - p*dV
U Interrnal Energy
T Temperature
S Entropy
p Pressure
V volume
Now, that looks like a hellacious differential equation to solve generally for real world scenarios, but it's quite intuitive to visualize. As your "perfect environment containment box" expands in volume, if your energy and temperature and pressure remains constant, entropy goes up proportionately. The particles have more possible states that they're then scattering into as those physical spaces become available to fly into.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @02:25AM
Were you there?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @08:50PM
APK annihilated that STUPID lying deluding itself it is a real woman (when it never can be) "TrAnSteSticLe" monstrosity aberration abomination of desolation https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=33430&page=1&cid=889582#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] made technical errors galore vs. him and lied saying apk started it when proof quoted proves otherwise!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:37PM
APK annihilated that STUPID lying deluding itself it is a real woman (when it never can be) "TrAnSteSticLe" monstrosity aberration abomination of desolation https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=33430&page=1&cid=889582#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] that made technical errors galore vs. him and lied saying apk started it when proof quoted proves otherwise!