Did anyone else beat Hawking?

For those who have been in a total news vacuum, Stephen Hawking conceded defeat to John Preskill regarding the nature of black holes.The two were at odds on whether matter was actually removed from the universe at black holes (to vastly simplify the argument). Hawking said it was, perhaps moving into parallel universes, and Preskill said it was not, matter being conserved in some way.Hawking has apparently solved the problem (I can only assume mathematically) to such a degree that he feels confident that he has lost the fight with Preskill.Now the first thing I would like to do is point out that here is a great example of science at work. Unlike the bizarre "creation science" description of how science and scientists work, this showed scientists that though fighting between two major competing theories used investigation of their own theories and evidence to formulate a reasonable solution. And in the end one admitted when their theory was wrong and did NOT hang on to win simply by "defeating their rival".Second, and this is the main point of this thread... who ELSE won the bet? And I am talking about you guys, not other scientists. Personally, I never bought Hawking's explanation as it did not seem necessary to solve the "problem" and included entities occam's razor would naturally shave off.It seemed to ignore time as a factor which could end or alter a black hole (like they just go on and on forever?).So I was on Preskill's side and am glad to see it came out right (or at least it SEEMS to have been borne out).I guess I'd like to hear from those that sided with Hawking as well, and see if they are interested in forming a special branch of science just to attack Preskillian Cosmologism.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Actually, I've been completely neutral all this time. Why pick a side because I like how the theory sounded?But yes, this is a great example of how real science works. Real scientists should never hesitate to admit defeat, unlike the so-called creation scientists.

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The Laminator

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Well I didn't mean to say my opinion was based on how either sounded.Methodological Naturalism tends to operate with occam's razor in effect. That is the most likely theory does not introduce more mechanisms than it needs to solve the problem, particularly "unknown" mechanisms."Parallel Universe" is an "unknown mechanism". It's almost as good as "goddidit" as far as I'm concerned.His theory also included a pretty much steady state phenomenon, and I think every steady state theory ever presented by science has fallen (someone correct me if I am wrong).Thus it looked like he had a much harder case to make.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I just read the NY Times article on this. I'd have been more careful if I knew I was going to be quized.One physcists was quoted as saying something like "Stephen is the only one who still had it wrong." It seems many others have already decided that information can get out.It may be that Hawking is the one to finally show this intuition to be correct. That is the way I read the article anyway.In a few weeks Science News might have a more extensive article that should explain some of the details.

Black holes are where god divided by zero. matter/zero=zero

True.

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The Laminator

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I was with Hawking. I believed that there was an exchange of matter not necessarily from this universe to another, but from one place in the universe to another. I postulated that supernovae were part of this exchange (black holes take it in, supernovea spit it out).

I'm rather sure Hawking would disagree with you. As I'm sure our knowledgable member on this subject (Eta) will. You seem to be good at making up nonsense. It is, at best, amusing.

You guys are kind of like sticks in the mud when it comes to theories...are you sure you're not a flat earther too? Thy're just theories, I know what causes a supernove, it's just a star exploding...no big deal.

Well as far as I understood, that is actually separate from Hawking's position, and I do (and did) find that an intriguing option. It was much better (and less problematic) than moving the matter to an "alternate universe".Where we leave company is on the connection between black holes and supernovae. That seems to be a pretty well understood phenomena... enough to knock out them being "gates".

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Did you know about the issue before, Ned? Did you have a position? Just wondering.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

They're called white holes. Not a single one of them has been found, though. We have found black holes... or evidence of them, but we haven't found any white hole.

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The Laminator

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The age of a star is the critical factor, it becomes unstable when it starts to run out of fuel.

There appears to be an abundance of blackholes (or at least, areas of space that demonstrate thevisual and physical characteristics ocs of blackholes) it has also been speculated not by me) that blackholes are the entrance and exists of wormholes.