baric

This is untrue.

Keep in mind that all black holes are spinning and doing so at an extremely high rate. There's no other way to conserve angular momentum. It's just all happening within the event horizon.

This is exactly correct.

Here's a thought experiment.. (yes, I know this is implausible, but please accept the premise) Premise: Astronomers discover a huge, Pluto-sized body deep in the Kuiper Belt and realize that, due to a recently perturbed orbit, that it will directly impact Earth in 30,000 years -- destroying all life on our planet. Because of its size, this impact is unavoidable. Many suggest that the only way for humans to survive extinction is to start an intensive and expensive effort to terraform and colonize Mars, which would take at least 20,000 years to complete. Question: Does our generation choose to do anything about it, or do we shrug and decide to let future generations worry about it?

We all understand the timescales involved, but the reality is galactic colonization (or even noticeable super-advanced civilizations in a single star system) are contingent upon futuristic technologies that remain undiscovered. To suggest colonization for example, requires either the possibility of relativistic speeds or the ability for organisms to survive eons in deep space (in transit). There are significant technological hurdles to both of those options and clearing those hurdles may simply not be possible for biological civilizations constrained to the resources a single planet. Even terraforming nearby Mars is projected to take THOUSANDS (>10K) of years. While that may seem like a blip in galactic time, that planet is a very close analogue for our own (lucky us!) and yet the timescale is still much longer than our written history. It's just as possible that interstellar travel is so impractical that it makes far more sense for civilizations to simply terraform their local system to suit their needs.

Your bias towards your own species clouds your judgment. The most populous and durable organisms on this planet consist of just a single cell. And are you really suggesting that we are more well-adapted than this species? http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm

I wish I could +1 your post separately for each of those excerpted comments.

So you are drawing conclusions governing evolution on the grand scale of eons from population trends in the last ten thousand years? Also, your "rule" is incorrect. Better adapted organisms replace less adapted organisms. Conditions could change on this planet (and have in the past), that could make single-celled organisms the most well-adapted forms on the planet. Are you aware that some scientists believe that the "more advanced" humans almost became extinct just 70,000 years ago when our population crashed to possibly under 10,000 due to catastrophic environmental changes? http://en.wikipedia....astrophe_theory

Perhaps we are simply quibbling over a semantic definition of "smart". I am not talking about some innate, inborn characteristic. I am talking about environmental characteristics like rationality (learned), academics (learned), and passion for their field of study. These things combined make scientists, as a group, the undisputed experts in their fields of knowledge. They are SMARTER than those whose desires and efforts took them into other fields. Of course not. "Scientist" is a profession. Being a skeptic is certainly a valuable, perhaps indispensable, prerequisite for being a good scientist. But that alone does not make you one. Ridiculing those less able is symptom of insecurity, an unfortunate characteristic of human personality. It occurs in ALL professions, and human scientists are no more immune to that personality flaw than anyone else. You need to recognize it as a flaw of the ridiculer, not you, and shrug it off. All that ultimately matters in science is the pursuit of knowledge.

I hate to burst your bubble, but scientists as a whole ARE far smarter than the average person. There is a huge academic threshold that has to be crossed and then they spend their entire lives in the pursuit of knowledge in their particular fields. So yes, in their fields, they are much SMARTER than you or I. It's a fact. If they weren't, they could not cut it as scientists. Just like soldiers are braver. Models are prettier. Professional athletes are more fit. etc etc

Still an incoherent, undefined term. If you admit that you don't know what "god" is (an "unknown force"), then how can you rationally posit it as an explanation for anything?

Until you can provide a coherent definition of the word "God", then you can say the same thing by positing that the universe is the product of blarg. (Blarg is another incoherent, undefinable word I just made up.) No one can really define what "god" means, so using that word renders a statement ultimately meaningless.

By "ridiculous" assertions, I mean an those so detached from established science that there are only two plausible explanations for their existence: 1) There is a known, non-scientific agenda being pushed that requires ignoring clearly established observations. Examples include creationism/ID (religious agenda), global warming denial (economic/political agenda), crop circles, ancient astronauts and telepathy (huckster agenda). or 2) There is pattern of willful ignorance by a particular presenter who rehashes the same, tired theories without acknowledging previous refutations. In both cases, ridicule is warranted rather than repeating the same, meticulous refutation that has been made many times before. Unnecessarily wasting time on frauds like these diverts attention from more productive activities! This does not mean we should ridicule someone who is innocently presenting a flawed case. However, if they are really uninformed there is no shame in plainly letting them know that they need to learn a bit more before, for example, attempting to disprove relativity.

The first thing is to think of an example of ridicule. That was the first to come to mind. However, Hoyle's labeling of "Big Bang" had the opposite effect intended because it gave a memorable name to the new theory. My example about cold fusion is more concrete. Except that there is no ID theory to prove. Seriously. It's little more than an untestable "God did it" statement that falls apart upon cursory examination.

Fred Hoyle's rejection of a competing theory that he dismissed as the "Big Bang" theory. Also, the rapid rejection and ridicule of "cold fusion" in the late 80s undoubtedly redirected a lot of research time back away from it and onto more worthy subjects.