- #1
Jonathan Scott
Gold Member
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- 1,149
I just tried to respond to what appeared to be an unnecessarily rude response from JustinLevy to a post of mine in the thread "Black holes and whether General Relativity views light as a ballistic particle?" in the Special Relativity forum, only to find that the thread had been locked.
I don't know who locked it, or why, but it seems very impolite to do so without warning just at the point where someone has effectively just declared that I don't know what I'm talking about. I've been calling attention to the existence of an alternative viewpoint about black holes, based on Schwarzschild's original solution, including references to peer-reviewed papers (and I was about to supply some further references when the thread was locked). This was presumably considered heretical by someone (despite the fact that it is fully consistent with GR as described by Einstein).
[I myself don't know for certain which side is right in the debate about black holes, so my position isn't even that I fully support the less conventional view, but rather that it appears to me to be worthy of consideration, so if the standard, extraordinarily weird, interpretation is correct there should be some really robust reason why Schwarzschild's original and physically simple solution should be dismissed.]
Overall, I feel as if I've probably been censored by someone who holds a specific opinion which differs from mine, but without further information I can't tell, so I don't know how to proceed. I can understand that some people genuinely think that there is no debate, but I thought that calling attention to ideas being promoted by peer-reviewed (if somewhat controversial) sources, such as papers by Leonard S Abrams, Salvatore Antoci and Abhas Mitra, was considered reasonable.
As followers of the relativity and astrophysics forums are probably aware, I generally fully support standard SR and GR apart from these doubts about the assumed mass point location in the vacuum solution, and even then I'm happy to answer questions from the standard viewpoint on black holes, with the proviso that in some contexts I will call attention to the fact that I'm not sure they exist, with references to Schwarzschild's original solution and its implications.
If I try to start a new thread and point out honestly that it's a continuation of a locked one, I'm sure that won't help its chances of survival. I guess I could use one to at least summarize the position and provide references to the relevant papers, but if someone out there thinks it's already heresy by their definition then they could find that grounds for an infraction!
Is there no PF policy of informing people why a thread is being locked (for example by posting to it first)?
Advice?
I don't know who locked it, or why, but it seems very impolite to do so without warning just at the point where someone has effectively just declared that I don't know what I'm talking about. I've been calling attention to the existence of an alternative viewpoint about black holes, based on Schwarzschild's original solution, including references to peer-reviewed papers (and I was about to supply some further references when the thread was locked). This was presumably considered heretical by someone (despite the fact that it is fully consistent with GR as described by Einstein).
[I myself don't know for certain which side is right in the debate about black holes, so my position isn't even that I fully support the less conventional view, but rather that it appears to me to be worthy of consideration, so if the standard, extraordinarily weird, interpretation is correct there should be some really robust reason why Schwarzschild's original and physically simple solution should be dismissed.]
Overall, I feel as if I've probably been censored by someone who holds a specific opinion which differs from mine, but without further information I can't tell, so I don't know how to proceed. I can understand that some people genuinely think that there is no debate, but I thought that calling attention to ideas being promoted by peer-reviewed (if somewhat controversial) sources, such as papers by Leonard S Abrams, Salvatore Antoci and Abhas Mitra, was considered reasonable.
As followers of the relativity and astrophysics forums are probably aware, I generally fully support standard SR and GR apart from these doubts about the assumed mass point location in the vacuum solution, and even then I'm happy to answer questions from the standard viewpoint on black holes, with the proviso that in some contexts I will call attention to the fact that I'm not sure they exist, with references to Schwarzschild's original solution and its implications.
If I try to start a new thread and point out honestly that it's a continuation of a locked one, I'm sure that won't help its chances of survival. I guess I could use one to at least summarize the position and provide references to the relevant papers, but if someone out there thinks it's already heresy by their definition then they could find that grounds for an infraction!
Is there no PF policy of informing people why a thread is being locked (for example by posting to it first)?
Advice?