I took a physics course at a community college over 20 years ago and one of the things that stood out to me was the professor telling us not to overthink or assign too much romanticism to the idea of black holes.
His message was basically “it just means the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light… if you plug the size and mass of the universe into the escape velocity formula, the result you get back is greater than the speed of light, so our entire universe is a black hole.”
If this was being discussed at a community college decades ago then I think the new discoveries aren’t as revelatory as they would at first appear to the general public.
I took a physics course at a community college over 20 years ago and one of the things that stood out to me was the professor telling us not to overthink or assign too much romanticism to the idea of black holes.
His message was basically “it just means the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light… if you plug the size and mass of the universe into the escape velocity formula, the result you get back is greater than the speed of light, so our entire universe is a black hole.”
If this was being discussed at a community college decades ago then I think the new discoveries aren’t as revelatory as they would at first appear to the general public.
Theory is one thing.
Observation is the next step.
another thing I learned at some point: Just because a physics formula returns a result, doesn’t mean that it’s reality
Nah really it was probably some small thing the media got a hold of and just ran with. I think you’re spot on
Relevant xkcd
And a relevant smbc for good measure.
Smbc is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, but what does xkcd stand for?
Xaturday Korning Creakfast Dereal