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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:33PM   Printer-friendly
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/


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by melikamp on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:41PM

    by melikamp (1886) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:41PM (#644647) Journal
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:44PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:44PM (#644648)

    Quantum mechanics already says that we cannot predict the future from the past (e.g. when measuring a quantum state in superposition, we cannot predict the outcome). So while it surely is interesting if such a thing can also happen with a purely classical black hole, it certainly should not be the downfall of physics, or otherwise that would have come long ago when quantum mechanics was introduced.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:50PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:50PM (#644650)

      Exactly!

      The summary has it completly backwards. The problem with time travel to the past is not, that there would always be only one possible future; the number of possible futures is irrelevant (as long as > 0); the problem with time travel is, that there should only be one actual past.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:31PM (4 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:31PM (#644658)

        Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps time travel to the past creates a new timeline where the original timeline (that you just left) remains unaltered, and your actions are only affecting events in your new timeline. This avoids the paradox where you can prevent your own birth by murdering your parent.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:25PM (1 child)

          by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:25PM (#644746)

          > This avoids the paradox where you can prevent your own birth by murdering your parent.

          Why would it need to be avoided? Does it cause the universe to collapse, or just the observer to get confused?

          Look, I'm taking my time-machniegun, setting it to 1955, and pointing at my dad. Hi Dad! Don't worry, just doing science shit.
          Now, you will have to agree with me that as I pull the trigger

          • (Score: 3, Funny) by Osamabobama on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:05PM

            by Osamabobama (5842) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:05PM (#644854)

            Use the preview button, people!

            If he had previewed his post, he would have known how this would turn out.

            --
            Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
        • (Score: 2) by termigator on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:15PM (1 child)

          by termigator (4271) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:15PM (#645441)

          I think this would violate the law of Conservation of Energy: Altering the past by creating a new timeline while the original still exists basically creates a whole new, split universe. Where did all the energy come from?

          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:02PM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:02PM (#645469)

            No, it doesn't, because energy is conserved only within a single universe. Asking where the energy comes from makes no sense, because you're basically assuming that the new universe exists within the existing universe, which clearly it doesn't. A universe simply exists. You can't ask where the energy or matter in it came from, or what came "before" the universe. Those questions have no meaning (the last one because time only exists within a universe, so the concept of something existing "before" a universe doesn't work). We humans only think of things like this because we exist within this universe and can't really comprehend existence outside it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:19AM (#644905)

      Not quite, superdeterminism could still be in play, and if that is not the case then QM has already provided a potential patch in the form of the many worlds interpretation.
      Just because we have no way of determining from first principles the precise outcome of an interaction does not mean that it doesn't actually happen deterministically (think of the three body problem as a parallel).
      Determinism isn't dead, its literally cause and effect.

      (And just to nitpick, we can predict the probability of different outcomes of a superposition state collapsing, just not exactly what it will be)

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Justin Case on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:49PM (8 children)

    by Justin Case (4239) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:49PM (#644649) Journal

    If a physicist knows how the universe starts out, she can calculate its future for all time and all space.

    This was the belief over a century ago, before quantum anything. (And also before physicists were "she".)

    sacrosanct an idea -- determinism -- key to any physical theory

    Ideas are only "sacrosanct" in religion. Science must bend to observations, no matter how much it hurts. P.S. fancy math is not an "observation", though it may suggest new places to look.

    What life would be like in a space where the future was unpredictable is unclear.

    Protip: It might look an awful lot like here, where the future is unpredictable.

    Journalist: The longest four-letter-word in the English language.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:29PM (6 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:29PM (#644686)

      This was the belief over a century ago, before quantum anything.

      Even if you ignore quantum anything, it's still a lousy conclusion, when we know:
      1. There are influences on physical objects that we still haven't figured out, such as the thing we call "dark matter" because we don't know what it is. Physics doesn't yet know everything about physics, not by a long shot.

      2. The calculation involved is impossible: To make such a calculation, we'd need a way to store the information necessary to said calculation, and it's impossible to build a storage device within the universe that contains all the information in the universe. For a simple thought experiment, assume that we needed 1 atom per binary bit, and we were going to store the mass and velocity of each atom as 16-bit numbers: That would mean that to describe 1 atom, we'd need a 32-atom storage device, but each of those 32 atoms in our storage device needs 32 more atoms to describe themselves because they're part of the universe, so now you have to add in 322 more atoms to your storage device (making it 32 + 322), but each of those needs 32 atoms, so you now need 323 more, in an infinitely increasing exponential curve.

      When you put quantum physics back into the mix, then Heisenberg shuts you down pretty thoroughly. The conclusions physics can draw about the ultimate fate of the universe are necessarily broad as a result, and amount to "We're all gonna die, in a Big Crunch, or heat death of the universe, or both at the same time."

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:29PM (4 children)

        by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:29PM (#644713)

        > That would mean that to describe 1 atom, we'd need a 32-atom storage device

        Are you trying to demonstrate that the universe cannot contain the information about the universe? Mind blown.

        Your logic failure is "if I store one bit per cluster of galaxies, I can't seem to store enough information, therefore it's not possible to store the information".

        But I agree that quantum physics/chaotic effects make the proposition apparently impossible.

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:59PM (3 children)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:59PM (#644724) Journal

          A part of the universe cannot contain the full information about all of the universe.

          It's like if you've got 4GB of memory in your physical computer, you cannot run a virtual machine with 4GB of memory on that machine that emulates that physical computer.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:15PM

            by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:15PM (#644738)

            Not disagreeing with the impossibility of the full-universe-within-the-universe task.

            I'm taking exception with the "For a simple thought experiment" part, and its idea of storing one bit per atom, which is not fundamentally less absurd than one bit per galaxy cluster.
            How much information do you have to store for each quark, if you just want to simulate one atom?

          • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:46PM (1 child)

            by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:46PM (#644785) Journal

            It's like if you've got 4GB of memory in your physical computer, you cannot run a virtual machine with 4GB of memory on that machine that emulates that physical computer.

            Depends upon:
            1. How compressible the data in the memory tend to be (unallocated memory, for example, compresses away to nothing + a memory map), and
            2. How well the virtual machine uses data compression in managing that virtual memory in the virtual machine.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:07PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:07PM (#644801)

              i dunno man. my body cells contain my dna which is enough to recreate me if implanted in an egg cell (which could even be my own) thus creating a clone.

              now that future cannot be predicted as to how it behaves, but we can get a pretty good idea by my past. its experiences may differ and the outcome will, but there'd be measurable differences

              so it could be that the universe can be described fully as a topology via information contained in just part of the universe, in much the same way that all life as we know it can be thus explained via a small part of it. We cannot know what it knows without further query, but we can determine the outline and what it contains--maybe even predict some of the behavior from now until the end of its run.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:07PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:07PM (#645474)

        When you put quantum physics back into the mix, then Heisenberg shuts you down pretty thoroughly.

        That's why you just need some Heisenberg compensators.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:58PM (#644879)

      This was the belief over a century ago, before quantum anything.

      So true.
      I also wish that all the idiots who use the word deterministic like they know what it means would study some of the math they like so much to throw around and understand chaos theory. It even says on the wikipedia page: "In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable."

      Go see for yourself:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:26PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:26PM (#644655)

    Ignore the fnords.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:07PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:07PM (#644711)

      You were born too soon to be able to commit suicide by black hole.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @12:44PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @12:44PM (#645099)

        Where ethanol with a joke about black bitches and aids when you need him?! Fucking slacker.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by turgid on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:49PM (23 children)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:49PM (#644668) Journal

    If a physicist knows how the universe starts out, she can calculate its future for all time and all space.

    What about the poor oppressed WHITE MALE FIZZYCYSTS?!!!! THEY CAN DO IT TOO!!!!! It's political correctness gone mad I tell you!!!!!!!

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:31PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:31PM (#644688)

      If you have fizzy cysts, you probably need to go to the doctor.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 1, Troll) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:33PM (15 children)

      by Sourcery42 (6400) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:33PM (#644691)

      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)

        by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:41PM (#644700)

        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)

          by fyngyrz (6567) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:57PM (#644708) Journal

          From...

          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.

          To...

          In the real world, your past uniquely determines your future. Given precise, invariable descriptions of the applicable behaviors, a physicist can calculate future outcomes for a universe where the starting conditions are fully known and the intermediate variables can all be accounted for.

          ...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)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:10PM (#644804)

            i cannot believe people are arguing over the gender

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:09PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:09PM (#644828)

              The color of the bikeshed [google.com]

              -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

              • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:19PM

                by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:19PM (#645134) Journal

                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

              by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:01PM (#645121) Journal

              i[sic] cannot believe people are arguing over the gender

              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)

          by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:41PM (#644845)

          Well, a statistically average human is going to be female,

          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.

          Like most sexual species, the sex ratio in humans is approximately 1:1. Due to higher female fetal mortality,[2] the sex ratio at birth worldwide is commonly thought to be 107 boys to 100 girls,[3] although this value is subject to debate in the scientific community.

          Even in the absence of sex selection practices, a range of "normal" sex ratios at birth of between 103 and 108 boys per 100 girls has been observed in different economically developed countries,[18] and among different ethnic and racial groups within a given country.[citation needed]

          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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:21PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:21PM (#644767)

        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

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:48PM (#644786)

        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)

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:58PM (#644796) Journal

        Since when is a sex indeterminate physicist a "she".

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:00PM (#644852)

          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

            by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @12:43AM (#644896) Journal

            objects which have no gender

            I would point out that objects determined to have no gender are not of indeterminate gender.

            as opposed to objects which have a gender, but which is unknown

            uh, right.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:26AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:26AM (#644910)

        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.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:33PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:33PM (#644776)

      What about the poor oppressed WHITE MALE FIZZYCYSTS?!!!!

      If the only thing that you extract from this article is an attempt to take a (deliberately poorly-spelled) swipe at white males, I think that says more about your considerable preoccupation with gender and race than the interests of anyone else, and certainly adds nothing relevant to the discussion.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:46PM

        by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:46PM (#644784) Journal

        Just thought I'd try to fit in with the crowd. You're welcome.

      • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:59PM (3 children)

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:59PM (#644797) Journal

        that says more about your considerable preoccupation with gender and race than the interests of anyone else, and certainly adds nothing relevant to the discussion.

        One might say the same of deliberately misusing "she" as a gender-indeterminate pronoun.

        • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:39PM (1 child)

          by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:39PM (#644818) Homepage Journal

          that says more about your considerable preoccupation with gender and race than the interests of anyone else, and certainly adds nothing relevant to the discussion.

          One might say the same of deliberately misusing "she" as a gender-indeterminate pronoun.

          Why? the usage of 'she' (or 'he' rather than 'they') as a pronoun in this case signifies the singular rather than the plural.

          Since that was (pretty obviously) the intent, and that intent was satisflied, what difference does it make?

          Language is defined by usage, not the other way around. If one unambiguously communicates the idea(s) one wishes to communicate, then the chosen phraseology has done its job.

          Were you confused as to the meaning/intent of the author? If the answer is 'no', then why do you care?

          That said, I was struck by the TFS in another (and actually relevant) way.

          It is true (AFAIK) that there isn't anything in the mathematical formulations of classical physics (other than some specific interpretations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) that precludes time proceeding in any direction (hence, making it possible for 'future' events to causally impact 'past' events).

          However, observational data strongly implies that, at least in the time dimension, cause must precede effect. In the absence of data refuting such observations, I can only assume that the hypothesis presented is most likely flat wrong.

          I'd go even further to say that such a hypothesis, since actual experimentation is likely impossible, isn't even wrong as it's not falsifiable.

          At best, it's an interesting mathematical quirk of classical physics.

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
          • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:10AM

            by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:10AM (#644903) Journal

            Why?

            The deliberate misuse, by implication, changed the statement "Here is something interesting about science" into "here is something interesting about science, and by the way did I mention my political views about sex roles in society and my desire to misuse language in order to keep bringing them up, like a vegan tells you what she eats, or the man without a TV tells you that she never watches TV."

            the usage of 'she' (or 'he' rather than 'they') as a pronoun in this case signifies the singular rather than the plural. Since that was (pretty obviously) the intent, and that intent was satisflied, what difference does it make?

            Setting up number (singular vs. plural) as a strawman may sound really relevant, but it isn't; number never seems to have been at issue. If you need to have it explained to you that deliberate misuse of pronouns is distracting, then the explanation might not help you.

            Language is defined by usage, not the other way around.

            Well, this is true in the final analysis, but let's look at how that works.

            At a given time (say, now), the language has a set of conventions. If you want to change them, you have to break them.

            If a billion people do things in manner "a", and you do them in manner "b", then you are wrong, and wrong by an enormous ratio, because "Language is defined by usage."

            If you get a million people to do it wrong with you, then all of you are only about 90% wrong, again, because "Language is defined by usage."

            Eventually, you can tip the scales, and if you get enough screwups on board, you can redefine what's "correct" by usage.

            This is why dictionaries now tell us that literally means figuratively, infer means imply, and for all I know, up is down. There are enough people bad at language to break it, because "Language is defined by usage."

            The pronoun-hijack people are not even misusing language out of ignorance--in general, they know the right way, and are deliberately doing "language" wrong to co-opt it to undermine opposing political causes and ever-so-slightly appear to strengthen their own. Because of this, I hope they, collectively, come to the linguistic equivalent of getting hit by a bus--even if I otherwise support their cause and encourage them.

            if one unambiguously communicates the idea(s) one wishes to communicate, then the chosen phraseology has done its job.

            Yes, it has done it well, done it poorly, done it excellently, done it in a barely recognizable manner, has done it according to almost innumerable values of "has done its job."

            It is possibly to do a job well or poorly, and still have done the job. A job poorly done is still poorly done.

            Were you confused as to the meaning/intent of the author? If the answer is 'no', then why do you care?

            Again, for someone who would need to ask this question, under the premise that they were more than adequately enlightened by admittedly poor phraseology, further enlightenment probably won't be helpful nor appreciated. Perhaps just know that "some people can tell the difference and it bugs them."

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:23AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:23AM (#644908)

          Pay no attention to requerdana, she is just all butthurt about the Olympics.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:31PM (#644689)

    Theoretical physicists: the frustrated mathematicians of science.
      Without any observations (experimental data), it's not really science.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by JustNiz on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:37PM (7 children)

    by JustNiz (1573) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:37PM (#644697)

    > If a physicist knows how the universe starts out, she can calculate its future for all time and all space.

    This hypothesis is has already been proved wrong.

    > it is possible to survive the passage from a deterministic world into a non-deterministic black hole.

    ...presuming you can somehow survive the event horizon where the massive gravity difference just between various parts of your body would cause you to be stretched into a very long one atom-wide string.

    > What life would be like in a space where the future was unpredictable is unclear.

    Just look around you...

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:45PM (1 child)

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:45PM (#644718) Homepage

      This hypothesis is has already been proved wrong.

      No it hasn't.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:50PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:50PM (#644790) Journal

        This hypothesis is has already been proved wrong.

        No it hasn't.

        LaPlace is dead. This is what happens when you have scientists practicing metaphysics without a license.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:58PM (3 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:58PM (#644723) Journal

      There are disagreements between quantum physicists and relativity physicists about the nature of the boundary of the black hole. Relativity physicists say that there is no special place where you can observe the boundary. Some quantum physicists disagree. Nobody says you can survive falling into a small black hole, but one large enough should have a gradual boundary, such that the tide wouldn't tear you apart.

      Then we get to the question of what the inside is like.... I'm not absolutely certain what the current belief is, but it has usually been believed that you have no way of escaping being compressed to infinite density, at which point the equations break down. IF there's no friction on the inside, which implies that all contained matter has either escaped earlier or condensed down to the core, then there are supposed to be paths through it which lead outside...possibly to the past, or another timeline, or some such. But this state of affairs is not generally believed to obtain.

      Also, when observed from the outside it will appear to take an infinite amount of time to fall into the black hole. Most paths into it require either friction or achieving a velocity approaching that of light as a limit.

      So the question really is what are the internal conditions like? And the best guess is that the spiraling accretion disk continues to spiral slowly inwards, and that you would be compelled to join that accretion disk. But this could be wrong, and there's no way to observe it so we'd know.

      OTOH, if the "firewall" quantum physicists are correct, all the information contained within your capsule (including you) will be incinerated as you pass the boundary, and the information will be re-radiated as Hawking radiation. This will be spread over time (as measured from outside), as at that point you will be almost in orbit at nearly the speed of light.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:25PM (2 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:25PM (#644773)

        >it will appear to take an infinite amount of time to fall into the black hole

        For a generous enough definition of "infinite" and "appear" I suppose. Time would be passing only a bit slower than normal for the thing making the journey, meanwhile it will appear to accelerate rapidly toward the event horizon until it gets quite close, at which point it will seem to slow down and red-fade out to invisibility as the photons leaving it take an ever-increasing amount of time to travel the first small distance away from the horizon. Of course, there are a finite number of photons leaving it, so at some non-inifinte time the last one will have escaped, redshifted into the extreme infrared.

        Of course it's likely that at some point long before that ideal "fade out", that the fluctuations in the event horizon will have released or absorbed the last bunch of photons all at once - after all black holes are constantly evaporating through Hawking radiation, and sometimes growing through absorbing more matter, and the event horizon itself will be constantly fluctuating as it's perturbed by other gravitational fields. Not much maybe, but that final burst of photons is probably trapped within a tiny fraction of a millimeter of the event horizon, so it wouldn't take much to tip them one way or the other.

        Inside, last I heard, it's believed that their are no forces in existence that can resist the compression of gravity - that's why the thing collapsed in the first place. There's also no possibility of back-action - light itself can't move outward, and neither can any forces, so there's nothing to slow you down except your own angular momentum, which should, I would think radiate away from you (inward) as gravity waves. Or I suppose, collisions with things on their own degenerating orbit. And by "things" I mean "isolated atoms", or less, since even inter-atomic forces can't propagate outwards to hold larger structures together. The increasing non-locality of subatomic particles might allow them to behave differently, I really have no idea.

        There's also no reason to assume you'd orbit anywhere near the speed of light. Light itself could theoretically hold an orbit just outside the event horizon, but nothing else has that kind of angular momentum, any massive particle would fall inwards on an elliptical path until it hit the event horizon, still going far slower than light speed.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:52PM (1 child)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:52PM (#644878) Journal

          Sorry, a bit of confusion. To the external observer it will appear to require an infinite amount of time. To the one falling time will appear to be passing as normal, in fact, things will be happening uncomfortably quickly. Also, to the external observer the frequency of the light emitted by the falling item will appear increasingly red shifted. This, in fact, is why it will appear to take an infinite amount of time, as each successive photon emitted will follow a path that takes it longer and longer to reach the external observer, stretching the wavelength as it traverses the path (losing energy to the gravitational field). Eventually, no matter how sensitive your detector, you won't be able to detect the falling item any longer, but there will be no indication that the fall has completed, and if you build an even more sensitive detector, you will still be able to detect it's increasingly red-shifted signal.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:06AM

            by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:06AM (#644941) Journal

            in fact, things will be happening uncomfortably quickly.

            Now that's +1 material right there.

            In reading TFS, and learning that instead facing certain "horrible death," one may now be assured that "for some specific types of black holes in a universe like ours... it is possible to survive the passage", I couldn't help but thinking something along the lines of "After you, kind sir." I was, to be honest, perhaps not so reassured as I should have been, and did suspect that things might go, as you say, "uncomfortably quickly" even absent the horrible certain death science would previously have predicted, and absent any particular sensation as the Schwarzschild radius is irrevocably crossed.

    • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:36AM

      by FakeBeldin (3360) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:36AM (#645077) Journal

      > it is possible to survive the passage from a deterministic world into a non-deterministic black hole.
      ...presuming you can somehow survive the event horizon where the massive gravity difference just between various parts of your body would cause you to be stretched into a very long one atom-wide string.

      First of all, it's not the event horizon that causes spaghettification [wikipedia.org], it's the insane gravity of the black hole. So it's not about surviving the event horizon, it's about surviving the insane curvature of space-time.

      Secondly, Stephen Hawking describes in "A Brief History of Time" that certain black holes may be so massive, that their event horizon is very far out. For such black holes, you're not spaghettified at the event horizon. It's the point of no return, but that does not imply the point of spaghettification. In other black holes (smaller ones, e.g. ~10 solar masses), you'll be spaghettified before reaching the event horizon.
      Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification#Inside_or_outside_the_event_horizon [wikipedia.org].

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:42PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:42PM (#644702)

    The title of this is very wrong.

    Reading the paper it doesn't say anything about losing your past.
    What they are saying is that the chaucey horizon may be enterable, if that is the case then it is possible that your future would not be predictable from your past, it becomes non-deterministic.

    This is because the assumption of an expanding universe was not taken into account before and the are some points in the universe already accelerating away at supraluminal speeds.
    What this means is that if you went into one of these black holes and managed to survive, the stability within the chaucey horizon might be sufficient for you to jump from one point to another, or for different causal lines to converge. Your own past though would not be changed however...

    You remember things because your mind has recorded little snapshots of the macroscopic average of the sum of the quantum states around you, i.e. your causal horizon.
    If this is truly as they claim, then it behooves us to remember that you are a wave function describing a cloud of atoms that have decided to be you for the time being.
    Since your memory is a snapshot of those states, but is also comprised of a cloud of atoms, any time evolution which occurs in a non-deterministic manner would very like set those quantum states differently within the memory snapshots contained in your neural network.

    This is equivalent to hitting a tape backup archive with a degausser.
    Therefore, if you found one of these, your past would not change, but your memory (assuming it survived at all), would be fuzzed severely.

    The events that happen from there on out, to the cloud of atoms that had decided to be you for awhile, would probably feel non-deterministic, and since you can't remember it your past is gone too!

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:29PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:29PM (#644839)

      The title of this is very wrong.

      Reading the paper it doesn't say anything about losing your past.

      [quantum quantum quantum quantum]

      The events that happen from there on out, to the cloud of atoms that had decided to be you for awhile, would probably feel non-deterministic, and since you can't remember it your past is gone too!

      Are you saying that subjectively the participant's past would be gone, but the causality is still in place as far as the universe is concerned?

      --
      "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 HiThere on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:09PM (2 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:09PM (#644732) Journal

    This kind of story often makes me wonder:
    Does the universe have enough average density to fall within its own Schwarzschild radius?
    If so, does that give us grounds for assuming what the interior of other black holes is like?

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:56AM (1 child)

      by FakeBeldin (3360) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:56AM (#645083) Journal

      Alexander Friedmann asked that question too! He even set about calculating possible answers using general relativity.
      He found 3 models:
      - One with a big crunch, where the universe first expands but then recollapses
      - One with the expansion ever ongoing
      - One with the expansion ever slowing down, but never stopping.
      (Note that if the expansion ever stopped, gravity would ensure that things would contract, leading to the first model).

      The difference between these being the amount of matter in the universe (which encompasses its average density).

      Physicists have been on the hunt to find which of these models best describes the universe. Turns out the amount of visible matter is *very* low. it's a few percent of what would be needed. Actually, it turned out to be so low it couldn't even account for the observed structure of the universe. We saw that that the universe contained gravitational structures (stellar systems, galaxies, clusters, super clusters, mega-super-duper clusters and more), but the amount of observable matter in these structures was not sufficient to explain the gravitational bindings.
      Hence physicists proposed "dark matter" - there has to be something causing a gravitational effect, but we're not seeing it.

      Skipping over other inconsistencies in observations (leading to "dark energy"), we get a very interesting observation:
      It seems that the universe is actually expanding faster and faster [wikipedia.org]. (Seriously, wrap your head around that one!)

      At any rate, that acceleration has to be caused by something. So what we right now know, is that the average density of the universe is not the only factor involved.

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:59PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:59PM (#645308) Journal

        Well, if it were rotating quickly enough, then gravity wouldn't necessarily make it collapse. But the question of "rotating with respect to *what*" sort of boggles the mind. And *if* it were the inside of a black hole, the answer would be "rotating with respect to the outside stuff", but does that even make any sense when there's no possibility of communication?

        Still, presuming it's a black hole, formed through and accretion disk, then it *must* be rotating, or a conservation law is broken. So it *could* be rotating fast enough to expand, since stuff enters the universe at about light speed WRT the external universe. And I guess it could be pumped up by increasing matter falling in (at about light speed). Now clearly this would imply that the spacial dimensions of the inside of the black hole were decoupled from those of the outside, and the relative speeds might imply that matter transformed into energy during the in-fall and made virtual particles become real within the interior. I can't really wrap my head around the way space twists at the edge of a black hole, but it might mean that the entire interior of the black hole was equally in contact with the exterior. Otherwise the infalling matter would necessarily happen at the edges, i.e. outside our light cone, where it could neither be observer, nor presumably affect us (though perhaps it could affect space strains which we could perceive as either dark mass or dark energy).

        This is all playing around with words, because the math is totally beyond me, but the words seem to sort of make sense. So dark energy would be infalling matter converting into energy as it fell in, and dark mass would be some of that energy causing virtual particles to become real. I've no idea whether this is reasonable or not, of course. But none of the other explanations seem to make sense either. It does seem to require either increasingly smaller universes, or that particle size be defined only within the universe within which they exist. If this scenario is correct, then black holes actually do lead to another universe, but there's no apparent method to either survive the transition or to communicate back if you do. (it seems to require being converted into energy, possibly space strains, during the entry process.)

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:10PM (#644734)

    Well, it could, just as black holes could cause weird things. Any headline that says "could" is just someone's imagination and should be followed by "or maybe not".

  • (Score: 1) by Revek on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:30PM (4 children)

    by Revek (5022) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:30PM (#644749)

    A way to get you of student loans.

    --
    This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
    • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:02PM (3 children)

      by Justin Case (4239) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:02PM (#644758) Journal

      If you something important to maybe you should proofread before.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:52PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:52PM (#644791)

        I thing that what GP saying was.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:08PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:08PM (#644802)

          Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday February 28 2018, @07:02PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @07:02PM (#645309) Journal

        It really would be nice if you could edit posts a bit after you submitted them. Possibly until someone has replied to them. (If the reply is posted while you're editing, your edits get rejected.)

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:11PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:11PM (#644830)

    For those of you not familiar with the Mandela Effect, look it up. It is real and is having real consequences. They go into the past to change something and all your life goes upside down. Look into it and then make a decision. I know it to be real.

    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:21AM

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:21AM (#644944) Journal

      the Mandela Effect, look it up. It is real

      If you assume that your ideas will have so little credibility that you feel have to start out with telling people that they are real and not imaginary, you may not have the evidence to back up your claims that you feel that you do.

      A small change in confidence might result in something like "the Mandela Effect, look it up. Its ability to (do whatever it does) is startling and undeniable; you will be (fascinated/interested/at least not totally disinterested). (Bonus: The data show that...)"

      I know that elsewhere in this discussion there is some disagreement over pronouns, but here, specifically, you use a pronoun without apparent antecedent, "they." Perhaps explain to whom you're referring with that?

      Also, in performing some research as you requested, I learned that many people can't properly spell the names of fictional characters, and assert confidently that their being wrong is actually being right. However, the Internet is full of people who don't know what they are talking about and will confidently, adamantly tell you that their brand of wrong is totally right.

      I did learn that there is a significant number of people who believe that someone who is confidently wrong *must* be right (perhaps because they feel confident?), but must also have migrated here from a parallel universe, Occam's razor notwithstanding. So thanks for that.

    • (Score: 1) by ACE209 on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:32PM

      by ACE209 (4762) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:32PM (#645109)

      The effect can seem real - because our memory is not as reliable as a digital storage medium.

(1)