M87: "Einstein's Shadow: A Black Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable" by Seth Fletcher

“The so-called hair-theorem maintains that they can be entirely described by three parameters: mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. They have no bumps of defects, no idiosyncrasies or imperfections – no ‘hair’.”

In “Einstein's Shadow: A Black-Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable” by Seth Fletcher

“There are actually three principles that come into conflict at a black-hole horizon: Einstein’s equivalence principle, which is the basis of general relativity; unitarity, which requires that the equations of quantum mechanics work equally well in both directions; and locality. Locality is the most commonsense notion imaginable; everything exists in some place. Yet it’s surprisingly hard to define locality with scientific rigour. A widely accepted definition is tied to the speed of light. If locality is a general condition of our universe, then the world is a bunch of particles bumping into one another, exchanging forces. Particles carry forces among particles – and nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, including force carrying-particles. But we know that locality sometimes breaks down. Entangled quantum particles, for example, would influence one another instantaneously even if they were in different galaxies. […] And after all, the whole reason black holes hide and destroy information is because of the principle of locality – nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and therefore nothing can escape a black hole. If some sort of non-local effect could relay information from inside a black hole to the outside universe, all was well with the world.”

In “Einstein's Shadow: A Black-Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable” by Seth Fletcher

“The 20^th century produced two spectacularly successfully theories of nature: general theory of relativity, and quantum theory. General relativity says the world is continuous, smoothly evolving, and fundamentally local: influences such as gravity can’t travel instantaneously. Quantum theory says the world is twitchy, probabilistic, and non-local – particles pop in and out of existence randomly and see to subtly influence one another instantly across great distances. If you’re a scientist who wants to dig down tot eh deepest level of reality, the obvious question is: which is it?”

In “Einstein's Shadow: A Black-Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable” by Seth Fletcher

Fascinating stuff but once again inspires some readers with more questions:

1. The silly one. Is it possible that Black-Holes are actually a life-form simply moving through space? 

They have found a way to attract, trap and ultimately consume what they need to grow.

2. What is the nature of the material ejected (by M87) as opposed to the material ingested?

3. If different, what material, if any, has been left behind inside the Black-Hole, M87?

4. Probably also silly. If the jet of material is shooting out from the Black-Hole (M87), does this mean that this material is traveling faster than the speed of light? We have been told that even light cannot escape from a Black-Hole;

5. What about the sexual connection? (This question always pops up when talking about Black-Holes. Why?).

My answers:

1. Yes very silly. Complete nonsense;

2. Ionised matter accelerated to relativistic speeds. It's not stuff being ejected from inside the black hole itself it's matter and energy ejected from the excretion disc. Black-holes theoretically can evaporate over time via hawking radiation in the form of thermal energy;

3. Not really understood however since no information about what has fallen into the black-hole is retained so in that sense it has to be different;

4. Nothing can travel through space-time faster than the speed of light. Actually light has nothing to do with it. It's the speed of causality;

5. Spout I must. Since I first learned about black-Holes many eons ago in my teens, they've seemed most compelling as emblems of obscenity (literally, off scene) and extremity, paralysis and paradox. There is some kind of human projection into understanding the universe (vide Willard Quine on under determination of scientific theory), and black holes seem like a high watermark of human interest sneaking into developing hypotheses using mathematical and objectively measuring tools. How can that happen, you ask? Somehow, the full proof wall develops a crack and human reality--you might liken it to Kierkegaard's infinite interest, without his theological bent--rushes in. (Another powerful example from classic lit is the door opening at Garcin's demand in “No Exit” by Sartre) Black-Holes are teasingly and luridly sexual, gapingly and irresistibly dangerous, appallingly and exquisitely frightening, puzzlingly and perturbingly unfathomable. The bizarre end of the empirical quest through modern history is something you "a priori" can't directly see. Our math either has to make uncomfortable moves to accommodate them while retaining some sense of a "finite" universe, or give up the ghost of such a universe and joyride the slippery slope into metaphysics. They have a human face--I'm wagering more than they do not. As so many on the social sciences side of the fence see it, reality is social reality, and that seems truer as I age. There!

With my reviews of physics’ books, I get all sorts of questions regarding Black-Holes. Because I can’t be bothered to answer them as they trickle in, here’s a summation of some of them (with my answers to the best of my knowledge):

1. Do we have any evidence regarding the interactions of black-Holes?

Answer: There is speculation that at least some forms of 'gamma ray bursts' (intense but short term bursts of radiation high energy radiation detected by satellites) may be due to colliding black holes formerly in binary systems. Some bursts are probably due to binary pulsars so it is possible some arise from colliding black holes. Surprisingly nothing more dramatic than an even larger black hole is theorised to develop after the collision;

2. How does space-time behave when two black-Holes interact at a distance? Can this interaction provide interesting ways to move through space-time: without getting trapped or ripped apart?

Answer: The options for using variations on black holes as gates for space travel don't look hopeful but are under theoretical investigation;

3. How do black holes influence matter-energy in our solar system, beyond maintaining our orbit around Sag A? Can we exploit this interaction in any way?

Answer: The black-Hole at the centre of our galaxy isn't that influential. It is rather lightweight compared to the total mass of our galaxy. If it disappeared today we would still travel around the galaxy's centre. Whether the black hole there formed there and drew mass progressively around it to form the galaxy, or whether it formed elsewhere and drifted into the centre isn't certain, though the former case is favoured. But its mass is relatively insignificant compared to the rest of the galaxy - it just happens, for whatever reason, to be at the centre;

4. Is it possible that what we see as the death of many solar systems results in the birth of a universe?

Answer: Vide point above;

5. Can the preponderance of black-Holes account for some of the missing mass of the universe?

Answer: Black-Holes, of a smaller size than those in the centre of galaxies, have been postulated as the 'missing mass' but the required number hasn't been found using a number of strategies. It is more likely the missing mass is due to currently undetected new fundamental particles. But you never know....

Bottom-line: As a side note, until all of the information is properly correlated, and all error sources identified, namely with the data coming from the South Pole Telescope, we won’t get any direct confirmation of the existence of Sagittarius A* or M87 black-Holes via radiation imaging. So, hold your horses.

Flexible Belts: "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

(My Portuguese Edition)

(Original Review, 1980-11-17)

A lot of talk has been going on about the flaws in Carl Sagan's COSMOS series. These flaws center on either Sagan's unusual speaking style and acting(?) abilities, or the show's contents. I certainly agree that he looks stupid when displaying the "awed" look; however, the complaints about the content of his shows are not justified. Yes, he is short on reasons and long on visual effects, and, yes, he talks as if the viewer did not know the obvious. What we are all forgetting is this: the average person doesn't know what we would consider "obvious". We should realize that Carl Sagan has his work cut out for him making science digestible for the average person. A big gripe is his lack of explanations and providing all information as "given". This is due to the belief that science involves explaining why things are as they are. Certainly, COSMOS ignores this premise, but that doesn't mean it doesn't serve a purpose: a person must be aware of something's existence before he can wonder "why". COSMOS makes the public aware of the existence of the world around us as scientists see it. Once they are aware and wondering, then they will seek to find out "why".

I, too, have found myself increasingly interested in Cosmos, mostly for the conceptual simplicity on things I already understand and, more importantly, some fantastic visual data. I have to mind a nonce when he showed a sequence of shots by Voyager approaching Jupiter, which gave an animation of Jupiter turning in the sky and its moons orbiting it. That was lovely.

I've been only mildly enjoying it, and then I sat thru 2 1/2 hrs of pre- and early Saturn flyby last Tuesday night -- and realized how poorly appreciative of Cosmos I'd been! My favorite so far might have been the Martian one, except for 2 things: wondering if the simulated Valley of the Mariners was accurately proportioned... it didn't \feel/ right; and, the *%#$& sitting beside me who shouted as Sagan's 'ship' went careening down that canyon, "Use the Force, Luke!"

But from the very 1st show, it's been the music which has most impressed me -- so VERY right for what's on the screen that one has to almost consciously attend to it to appreciate how right it is. It's great having knowledgeable BBSers identify it. Just which of the recordings mentioned is the "impressiveness of the starry universe" one, with those gorgeously sonorous piano chords?

It seems that @i(Cosmos) is giving us just enough information to read science fiction. Mr. Sagan has described to us the concept of scooping up interstellar hydrogen into a fusion reaction chamber as a means of fueling an interstellar spacecraft. Such a craft would accelerate toward the destination for half the journey, turn around, and run in reverse the rest of the way. Larry Niven's Known Space was explored this way.

The problem, which neither Carl Sagan nor Larry Niven has approached, is that the ramscoop is "looking the wrong way" to pick up any fuel. Presumably, the reaction chamber must be turned independent of the ramscoop, or something, so that the ramscoop is still looking forward when the engine is running in reverse. Ideas?

The music of one of my favorite synthesizer artists, Vangelis, has been used in several PBS productions: most recently Cosmos (parts from the albums "Albedo 0.39" and "Heaven and Hell") and earlier on Death of a Princess (Albedo 0.39). What puzzles me is that there were no credits given for the music on either of these shows. Does anybody know why that is? I can think of three possibilities:

1) ripoff, 2) Vangelis didn't WANT credit (?), or 3) the music isn't "important" enough to deserve credit (again, ??)

Some thoughts on some later Cosmos episodes: I've come to really enjoy this show, despite Sagan's sometimes infuriating hand gestures (at least his "cosmic awe" of the earlier installments has ebbed). While the technical information is 99% old hat to SF types, Carl has managed to present the historical aspects of science in a way cohesive enough to keep my attention. Names like Kepler, Copernicus, and Democritus haven't meant much to me before; I'd read about them, be suitably impressed for a little while, and promptly forget everything. I think Sagan's visuals and constant tying-together of everything make it easier for the audience to associatively recall the information in the series. And themusic's real good, too.

It's true that Sagan looks dumb when trying to look awed, but what the hell, he's not an actor. The science may not be 100% correct or detailed enough to suit this crowd, but there are masses of people out there that Cosmos is good for. Remember, the goal is to get lots of people to be pro-science, technology, engineering, etc, not to educate them.

This handsome book, Carl Sagan's tenth, was intended as a sort of course syllabus for his current Public Broadcasting Service science series of the same name. With the exquisite sense of timing for which the book industry is famous, Random House officially published it Friday (Oct. 24), just in time for the fifth show in the series. Sagan has become justly famous in a very few years as a popularizer of science, one who is dedicated to raising the consciousness, and the enthusiasm, of the public about the scientific method and what it has given us since mankind's earlier intellectual stirrings. As a practicing scientist with a university institute of his own, who needs all the public financial support he can get, Sagan might be accused of conflict of interest, but we can let that pass.

What Sagan has done in this book, is to review the history of science from the very earliest times and to engage in speculation about where scientific inquiry may lead us in times to come. No one who has read widely in the literature of science will learn much from this book. Isaac Asimov's "Intelligent Man's Guide to Science" comes to mind as a much more comprehensive treatment of the general theme, and on specialized aspects of science history there have been scores of better books, among them Willy Ley's "Rockets, Missiles and Space Travel" and James R. Newman's four- volume anthology, "The World of Mathematics."

The strong point of Sagan's book is precisely the same as the TV version: the graphics. The book is lavishly, one might even say fulsomely, illustrated, largely with frames from the PBS series. But some of the graphics are rather old hat, the artists' conceptions of other worlds being more than vaguely reminiscent of Chesley Bonestell's paintings for Collier's magazine a generation ago that became enshrined in hard covers under the title "Across the Space Frontier."

Sagan, a practicing astronomer, has excellent scientific credentials, and his ability as a writer speaks for itself in the cogent prose of both "Cosmos," the book, and "Cosmos," the TV show. But in some ways I found the book a disappointment. To deal with the planet Mars, for instance, without mentioning Asaph Hall as the discoverer of its two moons, Deimos and Phobos, is simply inexcusable. Similarly, he discusses the scientific method from the ancient Greeks to the present with no mention of William of Ockham, who taught in the 13th century that the simplest explanation of any phenomenon is usually the best one. "Ockham's razor" survives to this day as a test of scientific truth, and its omission from this book is puzzling. Also, I fear Sagan is at times too caught up in his own role in science to remember history as it actually happened. In the foreword, for example, he records that "in the summer and fall of 1976, as a member of the Viking Lander Imaging Flight Team, I was engaged, with a hundred of my scientific colleagues, in the exploration of the planet Mars. For the first time in human history we had landed two vehicles on the surface of another world." In a single sentence, Sagan manages to brush off six manned lunar landings in Project Apollo - all before 1976 - to say nothing of five unmanned Surveyors that had reached "another world" (the moon) eight to 10 years before Viking.

As Sagan clearly indicated in the first episode of the TV "Cosmos," he has a fascination with antiquity that borders on mania and that most science buffs share. No one can question the seriousness of the loss of the Alexandrian Library. But it seems to me that Sagan minimizes (without actually ignoring) the thickness of superstition that overlays ancient science.

I was curious, too, about Sagan's statement, in a discussion of the Pythagorean view of the universe, that "the cube is the simplest example (of the regular solids), having six squares as sides." I am open to correction, but it would seem to me that the tetrahedron, having four equilateral triangles as sides, is at least 25 percent simpler than the cube.

These are perhaps quibbles because, as story-telling, "Cosmos" is well done, as one has come to expect from Carl Sagan. As a topic, it couldn't be bigger; Sagan says at the start of the TV series and in the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of the book, "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be," and this, too, we have come to expect. Sagan by now must be the most famous popularizer of science the world has ever known, and he deserves a good, strong B-plus for effort.

But like a brand-new car with a dent in its fender, this book has its shortcomings. And one should recognize that this is largely recycled material: You've seen the movie; now read the book. The $20 price tag seems hardly justifiable, unless you are looking for something new for the coffee table this fall.

   

Final opinion after having seen the series in its entirety and reading the book from cover to cover:

I found Cosmo's not only dull, but was offended by Sagan’s bombasity. Many of the things that were presented on Cosmo's as FACTS. As per the question of material flexible to loop around in a flat loop versus a typical belt loop. I remember seeing somewhere a luggage moving belt that did just that. It consisted however, of rigid metal plates that overlapped, rather than abutted. When it came time for them to go around a corner, the part of the plate near the inside radius just overlapped more, while the outside portion stayed constant. It would be little tricky to stand on, but I imagine standing on a stretching rubber band would be too.

Firstly, I have not been enlightened as to the "mysteries of the Cosmos." What I have been watching was the way in which Sagan aimed his own feelings about science at the public. He is, I think, doing a damn good job at relating some of the "Romance of Science" to the lay public. I think that I feel some of that same "romance", but Sagan expresses it more clearly than I can. I think that, by relating the basics of science to the public, he is giving them much of the same *spirit* of science that I feel when I read that it is presently believed that the universe has been relatively homogenous for the first 10^-25 seconds of its existence. (From Scientific American - Imagine explaining that in ancient Alexandria). I watch Sagan much more for aesthetic/public-presentation reasons than for learning facts which I get in more depth in school anyway. Secondly, on cetacean intelligence. A few years ago, in Hawaii, a researcher was working on dolphin-human communication using an intermediate language. A lab assistant, after being fired, came and released the dolphins to the ocean. The assistant claimed that he aimed to stop the "slavery" of dolphins, who as intelligent beings, should not be imprisoned. I don't recall what the verdict was, but I heard that "the defense was hopeful".

[2018 EDIT: I remember having conflicted emotions about both the book and the TV show, but I didn’t remember having identified so many glaring omissions and errors in both. I gave 3 stars to both the book and the TV Show…go figure…by reading this review now, everything seemed to be going well at the beginning and then my brain started picking up maladroit stuff; I still can't stop doing it nowadays; that’s why I still like debunking stuff today…lol].

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.]