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from the did-it-never-happen,-or-was-it-unhappened? dept.
In the real world, your past uniquely determines your future. If a physicist knows how the universe starts out, she can calculate its future for all time and all space.
But a UC Berkeley mathematician has found some types of black holes in which this law breaks down. If someone were to venture into one of these relatively benign black holes, they could survive, but their past would be obliterated and they could have an infinite number of possible futures.
Such claims have been made in the past, and physicists have invoked "strong cosmic censorship" to explain it away. That is, something catastrophic -- typically a horrible death -- would prevent observers from actually entering a region of spacetime where their future was not uniquely determined. This principle, first proposed 40 years ago by physicist Roger Penrose, keeps sacrosanct an idea -- determinism -- key to any physical theory. That is, given the past and present, the physical laws of the universe do not allow more than one possible future.
But, says UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Peter Hintz, mathematical calculations show that for some specific types of black holes in a universe like ours, which is expanding at an accelerating rate, it is possible to survive the passage from a deterministic world into a non-deterministic black hole.
What life would be like in a space where the future was unpredictable is unclear. But the finding does not mean that Einstein's equations of general relativity, which so far perfectly describe the evolution of the cosmos, are wrong, said Hintz, a Clay Research Fellow.
Vitor Cardoso, João L. Costa, Kyriakos Destounis, Peter Hintz, Aron Jansen. Quasinormal Modes and Strong Cosmic Censorship. Physical Review Letters, 2018; 120 (3) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.031103
Source: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/02/20/some-black-holes-erase-your-past/
(Score: 1, Troll) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:33PM (15 children)
Since when is a sex indeterminate physicist a "she". Granted I just skimmed TFA, but feminine pronouns seemed to pervade it. I see a Peter Hintz quoted. I could be wrong, but Peter seems unlikely to be a she. One of the few things English has going for it is not having to memorize genders for sexless nouns to use it properly. I see that the article is credited to a PR drone and not the Physics Department or a proper paper, but it still grates. Is it no longer proper English to use the appropriate masculine pronoun when sex is unknown? I get that rules change and adapt over time, especially with a language as amorphous and all-absorbing as English, but I didn't get the memo on this one. Am I going have to start memorizing the sexes of inanimate objects or professions for English like some other Romanced languages do? Maybe just science and technology workers are "she" now, but it is still fine to use "he" for say garbage collectors? I'm not outraged by this or anything, but it just smacks of bad grammar and takes away from any of the rest of the content, whether it has merit or not.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:41PM (8 children)
Well, a statistically average human is going to be female, so using "she" isn't really wrong, nor did I find it distracting.
But yes, the author probably should have used a non-gendered pronoun like "they/their/them" or even some of the creative singular pronouns non-binary people have been coming up with for themselves like "ze/zer".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:57PM (4 children)
From...
To...
...but that wouldn't be nearly as sensational. Or, you know, as inaccurate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:10PM (3 children)
i cannot believe people are arguing over the gender
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:09PM (1 child)
The color of the bikeshed [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:19PM
It seems to me that there is a world of difference between trivialities and encouraging the devolution of language, particularly as it relates to edited or curated material.
Certainly we can allow language to devolve from the top down, where edited material is carelessly or incompetently managed. But I have never seen a reasonable argument as to why we should — if we know better.
If I'm going to write for others, I intend to offer them the courtesy of trying to do it well. I know for a fact that for the sophisticated reader, it is considerably more pleasant to read well-written prose than it is to be stabbed in the eye by trivially avoidable errors. The better educated they are, the more likely this is to be the case.
Finally, when one writes incompetently, particularly when it is really obvious, some readers are going to take that as an indication of (lack of) quality of the writer's thought processes. That does the actual content and intent of the writing no favors at all.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:01PM
I cannot believe PC idiots decided that "she" was a reasonable change to make in presumptuous gender forms rather than pushing people to simply write without gender when gender is not at issue.
"He" was no worse than "she"; changing from the former to the latter is simply an attempt to poke people in the eye by an overly PC stylist — it fixes nothing.
If you want to write about things that aren't gender-specific, take the care to actually do that. If gender is an actual issue, then use the correct gender. If gender is unexpected or unconventional, then be politely specific.
If you can't be bothered to write well, then you can expect to be called upon the carpet for it.
Writing is an art. You can carelessly and sloppily spew out crude work like a kid finger-painting on a wall, or you can try to approach a standard where people will either enjoy your work, or at least, not see it as the random fumbling of an incompetent.
You get exactly one guess as to which will be better received.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:41PM (2 children)
Can you explain what you mean by this? When people casually invoke the field of Statistics I usually prepare to run screaming into the night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio [wikipedia.org]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:45PM (1 child)
Or is this a "women live longer" argument? In which case not sure if the two would cancel out. Especially because some societies may purposely not raise as many female offspring.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:52PM
https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/demographic-facts-sheets/faq/more-men-or-more-women-in-the-world/ [www.ined.fr]
https://qz.com/335183/heres-why-men-on-earth-outnumber-women-by-60-million/ [qz.com]
https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-are-there-more-men-in-the-world-than-women-boys-girls.html [scienceabc.com]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:21PM
It is amusing how some folks get bent out of shape about someone using the female pronoun in general but don't stop to think about the centuries where the male pronoun was used. So its fine to lump women in with men, but not men in with women? TWIGGAHD!
PS: get a new username, you're not fit to have 42 in yours if you're upset about he/she usage. Maybe find a constructor fleet that is hiring?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:48PM
This Sourcery42, might upset she is about the pronouns. Perhaps it would like to Romance some languages? (verbs and adjectives seem to more her difficulty)
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:58PM (2 children)
Never, except for situations in the minds of people incapable of understanding pronouns.
The gender-indeterminate pronouns are he, him, and his, accompanying gender-indeterminate nouns like man and mankind.
If the gender is feminine, there are specific pronouns like she, her, and hers. These mean only feminine type beings are being referred to.
If the gender is either unknown, or masculine, then it's he, him, and his. This means either you don't know/can't say, or if you do know, then and only then are you referring to men.
"Their" is neither a synonym of her nor his; "they" is neither a synonym of him nor her.
Consult your favorite style guide that predates the poor-english-as-poor-gender-politics people for more details.
There is an argument that since this indisputable fact comes from a tradition "started by men" that its intent is to "oppress everyone else." However, as it neatly fills the need for a gender-neutral pronoun by actually providing one, the intent is arguably instead "to have gender neutral pronouns", an intent neatly thusly carried out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:00PM (1 child)
It's not entirely accurate to say that the "gender-neutral" pronouns are he/him/his, as the feminine form is most commonly used for objects which have no gender (as opposed to objects which have a gender, but which is unknown).
"Aye, she's a fine ship"
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 28 2018, @12:43AM
I would point out that objects determined to have no gender are not of indeterminate gender.
uh, right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:26AM
The rule about he being a non-gendered 3rd person singular pronoun was deprecated. There was some ugly hack nobody liked that repurposed the 3rd person plural pronouns for a non-gendered pronoun. Eventually, everybody settled on using she as the non-gendered 3rd person singular pronoun.
Not that it fucking makes women interested AT ALL in studying maths and science, but I see no problem with it otherwise.