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More mystery objects detected near Milky Way's supermassive black hole
Astronomers have discovered several bizarre objects at the Galactic Center that are concealing their true identity behind a smoke screen of dust; they look like gas clouds, but behave like stars.
[...] "These compact dusty stellar objects move extremely fast and close to our Galaxy's supermassive black hole. It is fascinating to watch them move from year to year," said [Anna] Ciurlo. "How did they get there? And what will they become? They must have an interesting story to tell."
[...] GCOI [UCLA's Galactic Center Orbits Initiative] thinks that these G-objects are the result of stellar mergers—where two stars orbiting each other, known as binaries, crash into each other due to the gravitational influence of the giant black hole. Over a long period of time, the black hole's gravity alters the binary stars' orbits until the duo collides. The combined object that results from this violent merger could explain where the excess energy came from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:06AM (10 children)
I thought the whole point of science was that it's a process which embraces skepticism, empirical justification for theory, and reproducibility.
At what point does "We did not expect this" become "Maybe we should re-think our assumptions."
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @06:06AM (9 children)
Science, now, is all about saving Einstein's face: if it looks like Einstein got something wrong, invent something to save him (re: dark matter to save GR, instead of thinking"maybe something is wrong with GR in this arena").
Wave your hand and you have DARK MATTER! We don'need no stinkin'science.
(Note: I love Einstein and did a school speech on him when I was like 10 years old (I think I was 11 when I did a speech on the Michelson-Morely experiment), so don't say I think he's completely wrong. I just believe he got SOMETHING wrong and I believe it is somewhere to do with time and space being inseparable (he originally believed in a Machian approach in which time and space are separate but decided the math would be too hard, so combined them. That is where I believe the mistake is.)
Let's find the mistakes, not cover them up.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @06:56AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:08PM (1 child)
'Creating' dark matter because GR says galaxies should fly apart: instead of looking for a scientifically reasoned answer, they made up dark matter that has to be added to each galaxy in an additional hoc way to keep it from flying apart. There is no science there, just a child's answer.
"Einstein says galaxies should fly apart but they don't. Should we spend time looking for a reasoned answer to why he is wrong or just make something up in order to keep him right at all costs?
Let's just make something up."
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @11:19PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:58PM (1 child)
You can't throw away a theory until you have something better. Not only are we still teaching kids Newtonian physics, it's flaws were known decades before Einstein came-up with something better.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:14PM
You're thinking like the Church: "The heavens go round the Earth, so stop with this nonsense, Copernicus/Aristarchus".
Hand waving is NOT an answer.
"The galaxies should fly apart and Einstein is an infallable God, so........ummmmmm........errrrr.....DARK MATTER!"
Sigh... science has lost its reason.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @07:17PM
It's no disrespect to Newton to say that his contributions were mighty, but his descriptions of reality weren't quite right. Einstein gave a more complete description. But Einstein started where Newton had taken us.
It will also be no disrespect to Einstein if someone else comes up with a more complete description of reality than Einstein did. We will still be starting where Einstein has taken us.
It's more of an insult to any scientist to venerate them and their work, than it is to try to extend their work farther than they could.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:30PM (2 children)
Or LIGO, as we now like to call it!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday June 10 2018, @07:49PM
Huh...nice. Never thought of LIGO that way.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @12:28PM
Wait, so you are saying Michaelson and Morley were so lucky they didn't caught some gravitational wave with their apparatus, which would totally mess their results up even worse than it did considering what they knew and believed in back then?