Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 3/22/2005

Question
Dear friend,

i really dont wanna waste your time, but iīm very curious about certain aspects of space and physics, altough I dont fully understand them.

Could you kindly help me with the following?

a) I heard that a black hole is just an hyphotesis, that has never been proven, itīs just a necessity to fit in Eisnteinīs theories to make the whole sense. But if they do exist, what are they, whatīs the purpose?

b) What is the big bang? Because a very commom question bothers me: What existed before big bang? Because, naturally, from nothing, nothing is created...

Iīm very anxious to hear from you, regards,

Victor.


Answer
Hi Victor,
I am not a mind reader,..but i get a sneaky feeling that you do very much have some "other" interest behind your questions.

I am not able to fathom what it is.

I do hope you are not going to say "hey did i not say so?"..all this black hole and big bang thing is a humbug..no proof..It is God who created the universe on friday such and such a year etc...!" (Arch bishop of Usher said so once!).

Hey just voicing my concerns ..
But the "pointedness" of your questions just made me a bit jittery..that's all.

Victor..The main thing in all scientefic effort so far is its open-ness to constant questioning. There is no "preferred" "divine" gospel to stick to in science. It is truly secular. Mainly it openly acknowledges when it does not know certain facts, rather than pompously say God created the world in a week and rested on sunday!

Black holes...have no purpose that i know of! Indeed what is the purpose of even you and me existing in this universe?
This is a trivial question as it serves no purpose at all..it does not offer any answer positively, but "just negates"!

Coming back to the constructive part...(the factual part that humbly at least "tells us something if not all of it"), Black holes are collapsed remains of really masssive objects, with gravitational forces that prevent the escape of even light.

These have been indirectly detected due to the X rays emitted by hot matter as it spirals into them. Cygnus X-1 is one such source.

Secondly the other question is equally trivial..How is THAT question going to help us at all? For it is an "absolutist" question! In this line of argument, we have already pre-judged that Nothing existed before the bang! The universe is NOT just 3 dimensional. If matter ceases to be on 3 dimensional level, it could yet "be there" in some other form in other epochs or dimensions. The point is NOT TO question something we have no way of knowing about, and then point THAT out as a weak point of this or that theory!

One often finds biblical guys always out with hammer and tongs on such fronts! GOD KNOWS what they get out of it, if one is to only hear all of the above i told you so stuff complete with details like on which day god created what! And all of it based on a book written 2000 years ago! (That too with whole sections based on some previous "holy books"!)

I do hope it is not religion that has prompted this line of questioning. I have nothing against religion mind you..
It is us puny humans who are lacking!:) We soon over do things and start "holy" wars and burn libraries and ..yes!
question science itself!

Brings to mind how a 1000 years of dark times descended on Europe thanks to the Zealots who flayed hypatia alive, burnt bruno at the stake,  and burned all the libraries they could find in Europe!

I for one am always on gaurd as this line of thinking needs to be nipped in the bud.

Hope you get my point.

Jayen