G Anthony Posted September 8, 2011 Posted September 8, 2011 Admit that some critics have some valid points. But other valid points have been made. There is something called modern medicine too. Then, there is "alternative" medicine. Many of the therapies of alternative medicine really work. Many of the therapies of alternative cosmology really work too. Alan Guth made a giant contribution to modern cosmology. Singularities as point masses are cental to "inflation-like" solutions to the flatness and horizon problems which had vexed astrophysicists for years prior to Guth. If these paradoxes had been so simple that they could have been dismissed in a few sentences, they would have been. There have been numerous attempts to refine Guth's inflation but the original formulation still stands the test of time, so far. It is not as if there is no precident for singularities. Point masses and point charges are common in quantum mechanics. Guth's proposal implies that the universe was a quantum object, that is all. If it was a quantum entity in the past, then it still is. Then, all of the conundrums of quantum theory will apply to it. Shall we apply the Copenhagen Convention or shall we apply the Many Worlds Interpretation? Should we consider that there could be a quantum universe, an anti-universe and interference universes all superposed to make a total global universe that satisfies the missing mass problem? This would solve certain other problems with the "Standard Model". Black hole singularities are extrapolations from general relativity (GR) that are not "renormalizable" and resist easy quantization except to use the Schroedinger tactic of simply assuming them as postulates. Yes, there are difficulties imaginng what happens when matter falls into a black hole toward the center of mass when time must slow to as near zero as one may like. This is the meaning of the phrase "tends to infinity". It means only that the quantity may be considered to be as close to infinitely large or small as one may need for any given purpose. The profile of an infinitely deep gravitational field potential (in a 2D plot, for instance) is represented by an hyperbola having the abscissa as an asymptote. It is as easy to graph as a parabola that has no asymptote. The graphical parabolic gravitational potential is a representation of Newton's Law of Gravity. The hyperbolic gravitational potential results from relativistic consideration of black holes. The black hole singularity is part and parcel of GR. To rule them out, one must rule out GR. Singularities (and infinities) are distasteful to mathematicians because little more can be done with them - they are mathematical dead ends. But, Schwartzchild and others found that such singularities must be real. And, considering that black holes must have non-Newtonian hyperbolic gravitational fields, certain problems, conundrums or paradoxes of modern cosmology disappear without the invention of ad hoc Dark Energy or Dark Matter. See the thread "MOND", Prelude to "Critique of the Universe" and the thread Critique of the Universe. Also see http://www.lonetree-pictures.net . In addition, the thread Stephen Hawking Retracted His Paradoxical View is pretty cute.
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