Steve81

Nice! I suspect I’ll still have to use the blanket for a simple explanation of the curvature caused by gravity, but that additional info is fascinating, and a good addition to the explanation. Just picked it up on Amazon.

Thanks! I’ll check it out when I get home. I’d give you an upvote, but I ran out of reactions to give! Apparently this site has an issue with positive feedback 😆

FWIW, what I'd be looking for is a superior, but understandable by "average" people like myself, way to demonstrate why escaping from a black hole is...problematic. Knowledge is power, and I'm always ready to learn. On the other hand, if one can't effectively share that knowledge with others, it loses value.

No, of course not; on the other hand, I'm not attempting to demonstrate/communicate the full complexity of the black hole either. I'm trying to explain why "even" light can't escape, since the "simple" definition of gravity as a force shouldn't apply to massless particles. I've watched Interstellar, so I'm familiar with the time dilation effects 😆

Would you mind pointing me in the right direction? I did a search, but there's a great many responses to the query. Also how inaccurate are we talking? Not good enough for a simple visual demonstration inaccurate?

Actually it was a civil engineer I worked with at my previous job 😛

That was exactly the point behind my "What wouldn't you pay" comment. Because we're obligated to partake in the healthcare system (unless we wish to suffer or die), for a for profit healthcare system is inherently broken, especially accounting for the fact that physicians don't exactly grow on trees. Correct. It's a holdover from the depression era, when wages were frozen to try and limit inflation. One "workaround" to help make employment more desirable was to offer an employer sponsored health plan, and take that from pre-tax earnings. That system hasn't sadly hasn't died yet.

Hence why I said we need to make a mild leap. It’s still just a blanket. 😆

It takes a mild leap, if we’re imagining our blanket as an analogue for spacetime, to imagine a weight/gravitational effect so strong that the blanket wraps completely around the weight. The curvature is such that anything trapped inside can’t get out.

Any thoughts about the rest of what I wrote, or do you prefer to be pedantic?

The spring can work to demonstrate the pull of gravity, but the blanket, at least IMHO, is a better visual to represent how gravity curves spacetime. With a large enough weight, the blanket really starts to wrap around the weight (pulling in adjacent objects too, to demonstrate that aspect of gravity). If you disagree, or don’t see the merit, that’s fine. Other people have understood my meaning, and I accept that I won’t please everybody.

I’m was countering the implication that diabetics represent a tiny fraction of hospital patients. Given the 11/100 ratio you provided, combined with the fact that we spend more time in hospitals, that seems unlikely to be true, depending on one’s definition of tiny of course. I’d also note that a balanced diet relatively low in carbohydrates benefits more than just diabetics as well. It’s not a cure all by itself of course for things like heart disease, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The South Beach diet was developed by a cardiologist after all. I do agree with the issues of a for profit medical system. The fundamental issue as I see it is, what wouldn’t you pay to save your life?

I would counter that diabetics are a pretty large specialty group with a greater propensity to be hospitalized than the “average” individual.

Perhaps not 😂 But is it still not a consequence of the gravity, and therefore the point essentially remains the same, with a little added info?

It’s obviously not a perfect representation. It’s a blanket for crying out loud! But I’ve used that to get the point across in the past. Re: the black hole, that depends on what you mean by size. It’s a matter of mass.

The blanket is a two dimensional representation of spacetime. The depression demonstrates how massive objects warp spacetime (gravity). With a black hole, this effect becomes so profound, it creates an inescapable pocket of space. At least that’s my rudimentary understanding.

I'm reminded of a sci-fi video game I played as a child called Wing Commander. It was more than a game really, they produced books and as a result, an entire backstory. The bad guy's of the game were an interesting case study for why Star Trek's prime directive exists. They were on the verge of annihilating themselves as they had just discovered atomic weapons. They were "fortuitously" visited by another race from the stars who were kind enough to give them the ability to travel among the stars. What did the bad guys do? They proceeded to wipe out the visitors and anyone else they came into contact with. One can start to see why the Vulcans were so hesitant to assist the relatively barbaric humans in Enterprise, even if as humans, we were meant to view the Vulcans as *pejorative of choice*. Depending on the point of social development and their tendency towards xenophobia, a species simply may not be ready for even basic contact with another species. Best to just let nature take its course, and when they are deemed "ready", make contact.

Depends on the teacher. I’d use a suspended blanket and a series of progressively larger weights. A small weight would create a small depression in the blanket, and eventually you’d get to a point where a sufficiently massive weight would break the whole dang setup. Seems like a fair way to visualize it. Another fun way to put it, Black Holes = Hotel California. We are programmed to receive…but you can never leave.

You could use a multistage system ala a multistage coilgun to get where you’re going to avoid ridiculously strong magnetic fields.

I learned that the front USB ports on computers don’t always supply enough power for an X-ray sensor. Technically I learned it yesterday, but I got to apply and confirm it today on an unrelated job.

My wife and I were walking by a swanky new restaurant one day. “Did you smell that food?” she asked. “It smells absolutely incredible.” Being a loving husband, I thought what the heck, I’ll treat her. So we walked past the restaurant again!

I’d say it’s worth a rewatch, simply to see the advances we made in comparison with some of his predictions at the time on subjects like computing, genetics, etc.

Well, as anecdotal evidence goes, of the three people in my office, two of us have chronic diseases, and lucky me, I have multiple 😄 Of course since dementia runs on both sides of my family, I welcome that early (but hopefully not too early) demise.

A year ago, I was admitted to the hospital with acute pancreatitis; the heavy doses of painkillers they gave me caused me to develop a bowel obstruction, which resulted in a perforation. Fun times as you might imagine. I also happen to be a diabetic, which presented some issues. They didn’t allow me to eat or drink for two weeks (talk about a crash diet), and when I was finally able to put something besides ice chips in my mouth , I learned they had nothing in the way of diabetic friendly fare. Essentially they you ordered whatever and they just shot you up with enough insulin to compensate. I mentioned that to the doctor, and while he agreed with the wastefulness of it all, he said he couldn’t fight the system. Apparently the hospital had outsourced the nutritional side of their operations, so that was that. One wonders how much insulin could be saved by obligating hospitals to have diabetic friendly meal options.

Anybody ever watch the old BBC show Connections hosted by James Burke? My cousin clued me in to it, and I find it utterly fascinating. It basically links various inventions throughout history that lead us to where we are today. It’s freely available to stream on archive.org