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you said..... I replied....... referring to this extract in my post addressed to you thus..... The first sentence above was in reply to your statement that evolution did not explain consciousness....Obviously since evolution is indisputable, and we are conscious, this consciousness seems to be a step in the evolutionary ladder. The second statement was in reply to your claim that consciousness is not being properly addressed. Perhaps your denial that I had answered your questions/statements, was more a reaction in giving you a history lesson as to how far science has taken us and at the same time, how it has demolished any need for baseless faith and hope in mythical situations? Let me soften his approach then. Faith, and hope in some extraordinary higher power, is more to do with individuals wanting and needing comfort and solace, and a desire for some purpose in their life and being terrified of the fact that one day they will be nothing more then an empty carcass, left to decompose and in time be scattered amongst the stars from whence he or she, along with all of us came.

Has anyone yet informed you that "faith" is independent of "reason"? You may also be interested in the following.......https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason#Evolution_of_reason Evolution of reason: " A species could benefit greatly from better abilities to reason about, predict and understand the world. French social and cognitive scientists Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier argue that there could have been other forces driving the evolution of reason. They point out that reasoning is very difficult for humans to do effectively, and that it is hard for individuals to doubt their own beliefs (confirmation bias). Reasoning is most effective when it is done as a collective – as demonstrated by the success of projects like science. They suggest that there are not just individual, but group selection pressures at play. Any group that managed to find ways of reasoning effectively would reap benefits for all its members, increasing their fitness. This could also help explain why humans, according to Sperber, are not optimized to reason effectively alone. Their argumentative theory of reasoning claims that reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with the search for the truth."

Science is reason: Maintaining a warm inner glow and comfort through unsupported mythical beliefs in magical spaghetti monsters is not. Not if it isn't supported by empirical evidence and the scientific methodology. The only dismissing I see, along with avoidance in answering questions, is your own replies. All we have is the same rhetoric repeated over and over. Your obtuseness is staggering to say the least. For the third time, Science is not obliged to describe your "truth" or "reality" per se.....It models observations, and makes successful predictions. As models improve and as theories become more certain, your so called reality may be reached or approached, if it at all exists.

I just said that But that's no excuse to imply some unsupported myth. Obviously it does because we are an example. Of course it is! We just do not have any scientific answers as yet. 100 years ago we were not aware of how the elements were created....nor what mechanism drove the Sun and Stars.

Well said! While my better half is a devout christian in the true sense of the word, we still get along well and have now for 43 years....Tolerance on both our parts. Both our first and only marriages.

No science does not really explain that, didn't I just say that? A process of evolution though is the best concept, plenty of time for it to happen....Same process re Abiogenesis being the only scientific answer re universal appearance of life... Again you are insinuating this mythical higher power for which there is no evidence for, and is self contradictory. Remember we have come a long way since science enabled us to get out of the trees and walk on the ground...we have come a long way since humanity believed in deities in the Sun, Moon, Mountains etc....we have come a long way since those ignorant early days when we had no explanation for how we, or the universe came to be.....Finally arriving at the BB, which even the Catholic church now recognise along with evolution. no need for faith, no need for mythical comforting dreams to warm the cockles of your heart. We are simply all a product of the BB, stellar and planetary formation, synthesisation of the elements, Abiogenesis, and finally evolution. Where did the BB come from and why? As yet we can't be sure, but some reasonable speculative science answers are available...In essence, no need for faith in any higher power. It makes all the sense in the world to reject unscientific mythical unsupported comforting dreams, through a means that has proven itself....science.

Again, you are wrong. Science does not neccessarily give any description of reality, rather it constructs models/theories that align with what we observe, and like all science, is open to modification, change or simply scrapping. "Reality" is simply our conscious view and experience of the world around us. Science is a reasonable explanation based on observation and evidence. Only if one rejects science. My rejection and dismissive, "straight to the point" approach only applies to the non scientific concept of the supernatural and/or paranormal. Far more truthful then "beating round the bush" obtuseness with half truths, double meanings, and veiled closeted implications and inferences.

No you provide hairy fairy hand wavy rhetoric at best. We are all star stuff, born in the belly of stars. No, science gives explanations, and constructs models/theories based on what we observe....if that happens to align with reality then all well and good. Unlike the recalcitrant nature of religion and accepting some mythical higher power in place of science, science is a discipline in eternal progress.

Yes, that is precisely how I see this thread and apparent similarities with others from the same poster. The crusade continues. Yes, the great man had many unconventional and weird aspects of his life, not the least being that he almost never wore socks.

Thanks! Yes it will be presented orally by your's truly, and you have raised a good point re BH formation and S/novas. A fun group it is! Still 11 of us left...three have passed on over the last 6 years or so, so the rest of us have contributed $100 each into a fund, with the last one standing, collecting the money!

The title of the thread tells me different. Science is what we know: Philosophy is what we don't know. Bertrand Russell:

Wormholes, Einstein Rosen Bridges? These are speculated to exist at the singularity region of a BH. So can we also logically speculate that what we are seeing are "naked singularities"? But wouldn't one throat of a wormhole act like a BH, and the other like a White Hole? Bingo!! I said it somewhere else today [perhaps in my tutorial summary of BH's? too lazy to look ]if BH's don't exist, then we would have an even more counter intuitive, incredible object to describe and catorgorise. The effects we do see, including as you said, accretion disks, and the fact that we have observed them [Cygnus X-1] actually disappearing into nothing [BH] along with recent GW discoveries have shown BH's to be as near certain as we could wish.

No probs...Your comment re AGN and Quazars/Blazars are differentiated by the fact that from Earth, Quazars/Blazars are orientated in such a way that we are receiving the immense radio signals from polar jets that are aligned pointing towards the Earth, from an obvious "point like" object from our perspective.. The term Quazar actually arose before AGN, and the first was discovered by Jocylin Bell and named 3c273. From memory she was an "post graduate" ? yet it was her senior Professor Hewish that received the Nobel for that momentous discovery. Hmmm, Imagine the outcry if that had of occurred today!

Fire is plasma or ionised atoms.

You certainly have handled your words carefully, but I do see the following as evidence of intent. I also see your many threads "imposing" some higher power, as ignoring what the scientific method entails, and totally unscientific to boot.

Thanks taeto, having seen it in print a hundred times, I should recognise that fact.

OK, I have my 59th Old Boys reunion coming up shortly.....a right royal piss up it looks like being. As the only one interested in cosmology to the extent that I obviously am, three of the more interested old farts have asked me to properly describe BH's. So here it is..........Any errors, alterations and/or corrections recommended by our on line professionals is welcome? BH's of sorts, were hypothesised to exist in 1789 by John Michell. This Newtonian variety were called "Dark Stars" and did have a surface just below where the density of the relevant matter, had an escape velocity equal to "c". His work was not taken seriously and was pigeon holed until many years later when Neutron stars were discovered and questions were asked about further possible collapse of stellar objects. Arthur Eddington called them a cosmological absurdity. GR and its equations predicted their outcome, yet Einstein originally thought that there would always be a physical barrier to prevent such catastrophic collapse. When a star uses up its available fuel for fusion, it has one of three paths to take, based on the original mass of that star. It can end up a White Dwarf as our own Sun will eventually see out its life. These WD's are held up from further collapse by EDP [Electron Degeneracy Pressure] Larger mass stars finish their lives as Neutron/Pulsar stars, held up from further collapse by NDP. [Neutron Degeneracy Pressure] Inevitably even larger mass stars are monstrous enough to overcome both EDP and NDP, and forming what was to be known as Black Holes. First known as Gravitationally Completely Collapsed Objects, John Wheeler coined the BH. Simply put a BH's EH [Event Horizon] is where the escape velocity equals "c" the speed of light in a vacuum. Beyond this point nothing can escape, including light. A BH's size can vary from those predicted to have occurred at the BB, microscopic quantum sized BH's, to stellar collapse BH's a few 10s of kms in diameter, and the monsters that lurk at the centers of galaxies ranging from millions to billions of solar masses. These are termed Super Massive BH's. BH's can only have three properties of mass, charge and angular momentum. Charge would obviously be quickly negated, leaving mass and angular momentum. Angular momentum also would gradually be negated, but over much slower rates. This leaves the end state of all BH's in the distant future, as the Schwarzchild variety, or a BH with no spin or charge, also the most mathematically convenient to work with. If we were to categorise all the BH's we have in our Universe today, the most common would be the Kerr BH, or the one with angular momentum, first suggested by Roy Kerr. GR tells us that once any massive object is forced to undergo collapse, once it reaches a point called the Schwarzchild radius [which for a BH is the EH] then further collapse is compulsory. This means that if we squeeze the Sun inside a volume of around 5 kms diameter, it would reach its Schwarzchild radius, further collapse would continue and it would become a BH. Once a stellar remnantcollapses to or below this radius, light cannot escape and the object is no longer directly visible, thereby forming a BH. It is a characteristic radius associated with every quantity of mass. The name itself results from Karl Schwarzchild a German astronomer, who calculated the exact solution during the first world war in 1916. This compulsory collapse leads us to what we refer to as the Singularity. Mathematically speaking, the Singularity is where all our known laws, including GR break down, or are not applicable. Most cosmologists today worth his salt, accept that this mathematical singularity and associated infinities, does not really exist. Rather a surface of sorts just at or below the quantum/Planck level should exist. This is where GR fails to tell us anything. Many other seemingly weird aspects of BH's are known, but as weird as they are, they are aligned with the facts borne out by SR/GR that space and time are not absolute and that all frames of references are as valid as each other. An example of one of these seemingly paradoxical scenarios is as follows...... If myself and a companion travel towards a BH and I stay a safe distance away, while my curious friend travels on towards the BH and its EH, due to gravitational time dilation, I will from my position in space, never see him cross the EH to his doom, only slowly and gradually just redshifted beyond my instrumental viewable ranges. From my friends point of view though, he proceeds towards the EH, and crosses it with no changes from his perspective in time, ignoring tidal gravitational effects which depend on the BH's size...the smaller the BH, the more critical and sooner will be the effect of spaghettification as it has become known. Both views, mine and my intrepid friend's are as valid as each other. Physically speaking the Singularity lies at the heart of the BH, and is where all its mass is concentrated in a form that as yet we have no description for. It lies at the quantum/Planck level of spacetime, and may in the future have more light shed upon it by a validated QGT [ Quantum Gravity Theory] A quantum effect called Hawking radiation which theorises on particle pair creation at near a BH's EH, where one escapes and the other succumbs to the BH, tells us that over the lifetime of the Universe, BH's should evaporate. Hawking radiation though, just like BH's have never been observed. Though we still have some that will claim that BH's do not exist, none can ever describe the effects on matter/energy and spacetime, that are observed in any other logical scientific way, the effects that can only ever be attributed to BH's. BH's for all intents and purposes, and based on the current laws of physics and GR, and as evidenced by recent gravitational waves discoveries, most certainly do exist. If not then some other even more incredible unbelievable object is present. Likewise Hawking radiation, and what we know about the quantum world, tells us that logically it is a real concept, but in most cases, would be only evident over the lifetime of the Universe, and we are talking time frames of many hundreds and even trillions of years. Stephen Hawking once used a phrase from a poem by Dante, about the gates of Hell. "Abandon all hope ye, that enter here" probably aptly describes a BH. Would a bunch of old 74 year old farts accept that science?

OK, I believe I have my question answered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sign_languages There are perhaps three hundred sign languages in use around the world today. The number is not known with any confidence; new sign languages emerge frequently through creolization and de novo (and occasionally through language planning). In some countries, such as Sri Lanka and Tanzania, each school for the deaf may have a separate language, known only to its students and sometimes denied by the school; on the other hand, countries may share sign languages, though sometimes under different names (Croatian and Serbian, Indian and Pakistani). Deaf sign languages also arise outside educational institutions, especially in village communities with high levels of congenital deafness, but there are significant sign languages developed for the hearing as well, such as the speech-taboo languages used in aboriginal Australia. Scholars are doing field surveys to identify the world's sign languages. LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL So, probably both. Hmmm, not sure how logical or sensible that is, when we think of the braille concept for the blind...although that aint perfect either, but slightly more logical I suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille Under international consensus, most braille alphabets follow the French sorting order for the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet, and there have been attempts at unifying the letters beyond these 26 (see international braille), though differences remain, for example in German Braille and the contractions of English Braille. This unification avoids the chaos of each nation reordering the braille code to match the sorting order of its print alphabet, as happened in Algerian Braille, where braille codes were numerically reassigned to match the order of the Arabic alphabet and bear little relation to the values used in other countries (compare modern Arabic Braille, which uses the French sorting order), and as happened in an early American version of English Braille, where the letters w, x, y, z were reassigned to match English alphabetical order. A convention sometimes seen for letters beyond the basic 26 is to exploit the physical symmetry of braille patterns iconically, for example, by assigning a reversed n to ñ or an inverted s to sh. (See Hungarian Braille and Bharati Braille, which do this to some extent.)

No you were simply pushing your own barrow, and justifying your own questionable "qualities" : Using Einstein to push that barrow on a science forum, therefor was your modus operandi. No I'm sure Einstein was not racist, rather simply a product of his times and the severe lack of political correctness. And as another just said, and taking into account your general anti science, and extreme anti equality persona, going on your posts, why do you come here? Is this just another example of another crusade against those evil atheists/agnostics and equal opportunity members that generally are part of a science forum?. Perhaps you need to realize and accept that if it wasn't for science and the scientific methodology, you would still be swinging in the trees, along with yours [and mine] cousins.

On another form we had a "god fearing" member who claimed he was "dumb" In the opinion of many on that forum, including myself, he was actually out to gain some sympathy after being "put down"many times in scientific debate. This sparked my interest soley because when I was a kid, I actually had a cousin who was born profoundly deaf, and couldn't really talk either. Obviously her and others born profoundly deaf, cannot hear sound to "learn"how to talk. So in effect she was not really "mute". Another reason why this person from another forum claims were doubted. I mean it simply isn't acceptable to call a person who cannot talk as "dumb" and insulting to boot. After some research I became aware that being born mute was fairly rare. https://healthyliving.azcentral.com/what-are-the-odds-of-being-born-mute-12573591.html it is extraordinarily rare for a person to be born mute and calculating the exact odds of this occurrence happening is practically impossible. Muteness may result from two conditions: physical muteness, where the person has a problem with the throat or vocal chords rendering them unable to make sounds; and deafness, which the person can make the sounds but not speak. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" In my childhood, due to interactions with my cousin who was 15 years older then myself, I learnt the sign language generally used by those profoundly deaf and having never learnt to talk. But on occasions when watching news telecasts particularly North American news items, there is sometimes a person on the sideline using sign language to help obviously those that can't hear. It is not the sign language I learnt many years ago at about 8 years of age. So is this just a North American concept? Or has the signs changed over those many years?

This forum is not interested in your obsession with me either here or anywhere else. But yes, you are certainly an obsessive fan of mine from another forum...perhaps if we review all of your 37 posts on this forum and find out if any of those posts were not in reference to myself or otherwise with regards to myself. And alternatively I have given many links referring to the terminal shock and associated heliosphere as the edge of the solar system, and of course the hypothetical nature of the Oort cloud., informal or otherwise. The Oort cloud is hypothetical despite you avoiding that fact. I was also a teenager in the 50's with a great interest in astronomy etc and I still doubt you remembering the figures I mentioned....I mean Pioner's 1 and 2...Give us a break! Of course not, since as I believe you probably checked prior to your vendetta...plus of course I did say .... I believe that a better "understanding" of your agenda would be gauged in checking out your 37 posts and finding out how many of them are not in someway directed in my direction. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-1-helps-solve-interstellar-medium-mystery Voyager 1 Helps Solve Interstellar Medium Mystery NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft made history in 2012 by entering interstellar space, leaving the planets and the solar wind behind. But observations from the pioneering probe were puzzling with regard to the magnetic field around it, as they differed from what scientists derived from observations by other spacecraft. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" As I also previously Interstellar space, the space between stars, or the interstellar medium is described as follows.....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_medium In astronomy, the interstellar medium (ISM) is the matter and radiation that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dustand cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space. The energy that occupies the same volume, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, is the interstellar radiation field. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: NB: We see a reference to the space that exists between the star systems. Of course each star system, which may mean more then one star gravitationally bound, may also contain planetary systems, our own being called the solar system with reference to Sol, the latin word for Sun. Again, https://www.space.com/22729-voyager-1-spacecraft-interstellar-space.htmlThe study team wanted to know if Voyager 1 left the solar system sometime before April 2013, so they combed through some of the probe's older data. They found a monthlong period of electron oscillations in October-November 2012 that translated to a density of 0.004 electrons per cubic inch (0.006 electrons per cubic cm). Using these numbers and the amount of ground that Voyager 1 covers — about 325 million miles (520 million kilometers) per year — the researchers calculated that the spacecraft likely left the solar system in August 2012. LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/images/history/August2012_2.html Voyager 1 is the first man-made object to leave our solar system and pass into interstellar space. Scientists confirmed this finding a year later after studying Voyager’s data, which showed clear changes in the plasma or ionized gas right outside of the solar bubble. Last Updated: Aug. 7, 2017 Editor: Thuy Mai

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/news-listing/index.html As Solar Wind Blows, Our Heliosphere Balloons What happens when the solar wind suddenly starts to blow significantly harder? According to two recent studies, the boundaries of our entire solar system balloon outward — and an analysis of particles rebounding off of its edges will reveal its new shape. """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Of course! One can never really doubt the words of Issac Newton...."I see as far as I do because I stand on the shoulders of giants" [or words to that effect]

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-astronomers-distant-eruption-black-hole.html Astronomers see distant eruption as black hole destroys star For the first time, astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole ripped apart a star that wandered too close to the cosmic monster. The scientists tracked the event with radio and infrared telescopes, including the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299, nearly 150 million light-years from Earth. At the core of one of the galaxies, a black hole 20 million times more massive than the Sun shredded a star more than twice the Sun's mass, setting off a chain of events that revealed important details of the violent encounter. Only a small number of such stellar deaths, called tidal disruption events, or TDEs, have been detected, although scientists have hypothesized that they may be a more common occurrence. Theorists suggested that material pulled from the doomed star forms a rotating disk around the black hole, emitting intense X-rays and visible light, and also launches jets of material outward from the poles of the disk at nearly the speed of light. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-astronomers-distant-eruption-black-hole.html#jCp LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the paper: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/06/13/science.aao4669 A dust-enshrouded tidal disruption event with a resolved radio jet in a galaxy merger Abstract Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are transient flares produced when a star is ripped apart by the gravitational field of a supermassive black hole (SMBH). We have observed a transient source in the western nucleus of the merging galaxy pair Arp 299 that radiated >1.5 × 1052 erg in the infrared and radio but was not luminous at optical or x-ray wavelengths. We interpret this as a TDE with much of its emission reradiated at infrared wavelengths by dust. Efficient reprocessing by dense gas and dust may explain the difference between theoretical predictions and observed luminosities of TDEs. The radio observations resolve an expanding and decelerating jet, probing the jet formation and evolution around a SMBH.

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-black-hole-clouds-puzzling-features.html One black hole or two? Dust clouds can explain puzzling features of active galactic nuclei: Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), believe clouds of dust, rather than twin black holes, can explain the features found in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The team publish their results today (14 June) in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Many large galaxies have an AGN, a small bright central region powered by matter spiralling into a supermassive black hole. When these black holes are vigorously swallowing matter, they are surrounded by hot, rapidly-moving gas known as the "broad-line region" (so-called because the spectral lines from this region are broadened by the rapid motion of the gas). The emission from this gas is one of the best sources of information about the mass of the central black hole and how it is growing. The nature of this gas is however poorly understood; in particular there is less emission than expected from gas moving at certain velocities. The breakdown of simple models has led some astrophysicists to think that many AGNs might have not one but two black holes in them. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-black-hole-clouds-puzzling-features.html#jCp LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the paper: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/478/2/1660/4961154 Partial dust obscuration in active galactic nuclei as a cause of broad-line profile and lag variability, and apparent accretion disc inhomogeneities Abstract The profiles of the broad emission lines of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and the time delays in their response to changes in the ionizing continuum (lags) give information about the structure and kinematics of the inner regions of AGNs. Line profiles are also our main way of estimating the masses of the supermassive black holes (SMBHs). However, the profiles often show ill-understood, asymmetric structure and velocity-dependent lags vary with time. Here, we show that partial obscuration of the broad-line region (BLR) by outflowing, compact, dusty clumps produces asymmetries and velocity-dependent lags similar to those observed. Our model explains previously inexplicable changes in the ratios of the hydrogen lines with time and velocity, the lack of correlation of changes in line profiles with variability of the central engine, the velocity dependence of lags, and the change of lags with time. We propose that changes on time-scales longer than the light-crossing time do not come from dynamical changes in the BLR, but are a natural result of the effect of outflowing dusty clumps driven by radiation pressure acting on the dust. The motion of these clumps offers an explanation of long-term changes in polarization. The effects of the dust complicate the study of the structure and kinematics of the BLR and the search for sub-parsec SMBH binaries. Partial obscuration of the accretion disc can also provide the local fluctuations in luminosity that can explain sizes deduced from microlensing.