Troll points?

[BillTre]

Maybe we should create a new troll points system (like the likes) for cases like the guy in this thread who is either dense or trolling the site.

 

[weirdoguy]

either dense or trolling the site

I think that, unfortunately, real trolls are almost extinct.

 

[.Scott]

I don't think @kickaxe was a true troll. That discussion broke down on semantics - not concepts. And it didn't help that he was trying to do arithmetic with infinities.

 

[russ_watters]

Maybe we should create a new troll points system (like the likes) for cases like the guy in this thread who is either dense or trolling the site.

I'm not sure what you are after with that - or are you not aware we have an infraction points system? You've probably never used it...

 

[BillTre]

I'm not sure what you are after with that

People who seem to be intentionally stupid irritate me. They would seem to have a high probability of being trolls. @weirdoguy thinks they are not common now.
If they act like a troll, they could be labeled troll-like at least and might change their behavior. Not a completely thought out process.

- or are you not aware we have an infraction points system?

only a bit

You've probably never used it...

nope

 

[phinds]

I don't think @kickaxe was a true troll. That discussion broke down on semantics - not concepts. And it didn't help that he was trying to do arithmetic with infinities.

He REPEATEDLY said that a black hole is a singularity, continuing to do so after having been told 6 or 7 times that it is not. That seems very troll-like to me, as I pointed out in the thread.

 

[.Scott]

He REPEATEDLY said that a black hole is a singularity, continuing to do so after having been told 6 or 7 times that it is not. That seems very troll-like to me, as I pointed out in the thread.

Yes. I definitely noticed that.
In the OP, he stated, "It is a singularity, where a star collapses into a single point in space."
He also said, "A point cannot accrue anything, otherwise it wouldn't be a point any longer, hence couldn't be a black hole."
His reasoning is that if everything keeps falling until it reaches the same "place", then the black hole is in that "place".

On the very first response, @PeroK was explicit and spot on with his explanation. Unfortunately, "extended spacetime geometry" and "breakdown of the mathematical model" totally overshoot the target.
This is evident in his response: "I know it has an event horizon. But a singularity is a singularity. A single point in 'space time' according to math or 'reality'. [How are they connected?]" (I rephrased his poorly stated question).

@PeroK responded "... It's not a point in space." Simple enough, but you haven't disturbed his image of material falling to a single point-like final destination.

@Bandersnatch responded (in part): "Does it make physical sense for all the mass to be compressed to zero size? - maybe? possibly not? But you can still use your physics toolkit to try and describe in a self-consistent manner what the interior would look like, in terms of fields and geometry and causal interactions, with all the mass in the singularity and otherwise empty. Once you assume that there can be a mass in the form of a singularity, then it shouldn't matter to you whether that mass is X or 2X or X+1 or any other amount."

I think @Bandersnatch 's response came close enough to the target that the OP focused more specifically on his issue: "One infinite in space should be just as infinite as the other."

This reveals a few misconceptions. One is the nature of singularities. But @Bandersnatch addressed another one: "It isn't. A black hole is a mass surrounded by the event horizon. That may or may not have a singularity in it."

The OP responds: "An event horizon is when nothing can escape the gravitational pull. So what does that except a singularity? Still doesn't answer my question.".

At this point, team PhysicForum pretty much gave up. Well, not really @russ_watters gave it a shot.

I would've suggest this - though after reading through the posts, I am convincing myself that it could be futile:

Any suitably dense mass (such as a collapsing star) will create an event horizon. It doesn't have to be a singularity.
When we follow the rules of General Relativity (GR), whatever that dense mass started out as would inevitably continue to a singularity. But chances are, that's not exactly what happens because that GR model completely ignores quantum mechanics (QM). It would be really great if Physicists could describe the whole thing, but that QM part hasn't been nailed down yet. They're working on it.
More to your point (no pun intended), any physical singularity still has to obey conservation of mass. So, combining two physical points will result in a physical point with the sum of the masses (whatever a "physical point" is).
And from a Math stand point, performing a circular integral around two singularities will result is the sum of the integrals around each one - even if they lie at the same point. So, singularities (whether physical of Mathematical) need not be as featureless as you presume.
One more thing: It is not the singularity's mass that is infinite. It is presumably the mass density. Your attempt to then calculate the mass by multiplying the volume (presumably zero) with the density (infinite), just doesn't work. The precise reason for this is a bit technical, but it's because "infinity" is a cardinality, not a number.

 

[PeroK]

Maybe we should create a new troll points system (like the likes) for cases like the guy in this thread who is either dense or trolling the site.

At some point I reported his posts as potentially "trolling?". He's on my ignore list now. What's the point of trying to help someone who refuses to listen?

 

[Ibix]

I agree with .Scott here - I read the guy as overconfident in his mental model of black hole, and not really realising just how badly wrong it is. Also, I'm not sure he was clear on the distinction between mathematical models and reality. I'd written a longer reply than the one I wrote while waiting for the kettle to boil, but the thread got locked while I was writing it.

 

[.Scott]

... I'm not sure he was clear on the distinction between mathematical models and reality.

That seemed to be key. After sleeping on it, there are four points/singularities:
1) Geometric points. This is what you constructed in your geometry class. They are basically language constructs. They don't interact with anything, so you can put as many as you want in the "real universe" and it doesn't matter. For example, I will call the center of Earth's mass to be point $E^c$.
2) Mathematical Singularities: This would be like $for \, Zs=(2i-7): \frac{1}{z-Zs}$. It isn't just that curious point at (2i-7), it's that whole domain.
3) Physical Singularities: Like what is proposed to be found at the center of a BH.
4) Physical points: The kind of thing that @kickaxe had in mind. I'm not sure if leptons or photons would fit this bill. Perhaps the closest thing to what he has in mind is the electron - point-like with a fixed mass - and, if you don't count the positron, a fixed charge.

 

[pinball1970]

I am on another site and there are trolls every other day. Almost like some production line is churning them out, they come alive, then stumble on in.
We hardly get them here from my experience and the level of trollness seems to be much lower, like only the smartest trolls come here and dim versions go else where.
Perhaps mods pick them off before they reach us?

 

[Nugatory]

We hardly get them here from my experience and the level of trollness seems to be much lower, like only the smartest trolls come here and dim versions go else where.
Perhaps mods pick them off before they reach us?

There's a fair amount of that, yes.

 

[russ_watters]

If they act like a troll, they could be labeled troll-like at least and might change their behavior. Not a completely thought out process.

Ok - not a terrible idea to use peer pressure, but we're not going to do that because we don't want disciplinary actions public. We do the floggings in private.

 

[Ibix]

The other problem with user-supplied down votes is that the trolls can use 'em too.