God & Gravity

[Flanders]

I did not see this article when it was first published:

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Scientists close to first sighting of black hole in the Milky Way
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
Fri 11 Jan 2019 01.00 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/science...-of-black-hole-at-the-centre-of-the-milky-way
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God and black holes always fascinated me since scientists first told me that gravity’s pull in a black hole is so dense not even light can escape.

Here is a bit of philosophical fluff that I used to play with:

A manned space ship is flying along when it is instantly sucked into a black hole at the speed of light killing the crew.

Here is the exercise for anyone who wants to bat it around:

If you believe in any form of life after death can the essence that lives on after the body dies escape from the irresistible gravity in a black hole?

If you have a life-in-the-hereafter turn of mind you have to be rooting for essence to escape because God created gravity —— or so says Thomas Aquinas’ prime mover theory.

Gravity (from Latin gravitas, meaning 'weight', or gravitation, is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass or energy—including planets, stars, galaxies, and even light—are brought toward (or gravitate toward) one another. On Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects, and the Moon's gravity causes the ocean tides. The gravitational attraction of the original gaseous matter present in the Universe caused it to begin coalescing, forming stars – and for the stars to group together into galaxies – so gravity is responsible for many of the large-scale structures in the Universe. Gravity has an infinite range, although its effects become increasingly weaker on farther objects.

Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915) which describes gravity not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by the uneven distribution of mass. The most extreme example of this curvature of spacetime is a black hole, from which nothing—not even light—can escape once past the black hole's event horizon. However, for most applications, gravity is well approximated by Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes gravity as a force which causes any two bodies to be attracted to each other, with the force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity

There must be dozens of possibilities worth examining; most of them grounded in superstition. Have fun if you decide to explore any of them. Just do not let your equilibrium get sucked into a theological black hole.

 

[Controlled Opposition]

I am high enough that I first read the thread title as, "God and Gravy." My bad.

 

[Flanders]

I am high enough that I first read the thread title as, "God and Gravy." My bad.

To Controlled Opposition: You must be as high as a dirigible!

 

[Cypress]

The premise of the post is based on classical Newtonian physics.

I am pretty sure the current state of science is that classical Newtonian physics do not work inside the event horizon of a black hole. Newtonian physics works for massive gravitational bodies, aka stars, galaxies, planets. A black hole is a infinitesimally small, highly dense object which is more at the scale of quantum physics.

The theory that "nothing can escape a black hole" I believe is somewhat outdated, especially since quantum considerations came into play. I believe the current state of science is that black holes do not last forever, but are slowly leaking energy and dissipate at cosmological time scales. We would have to defer to professional physicists to be sure, and to have an accurate accounting of the current theories.