Inescapable

I found a great site dedicated to one of my favorite topics, Black holes. While this isn't a single article per se, It is a collection of articles, games, and interactive features that I will sum up as if it were. This site allows you to take an interactive journey to a Black hole, (like the center of the Andromeda galaxy for example.) It asks you to select a speed for your ship that will allow you to escape the gravitation of earth, and then will ask you to boost the power 100 billion times to reach Pluto in 19 seconds, and so forth. You then are treated to a nice visual window from the spacecraft as you pass Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn on your way to the center of the Galaxy. And while I found the site extremely engaging and actually fun to navigate. I found that this site suffers from a very dangerous and increasingly common problem of  presenting hypothesis and theory as fact.

            While most of the scientific community accepts that black holes exist, (and I am not disputing it categorically,) but a black hole has never been observed. By definition, it cannot be observed since in order to observe something it must emit or reflect light, and a Black hole is the absence of light. to Quote the website, "Yet we know that black holes exist. We know how they are born, where they occur, and why they exist in different sizes. We even know what would happen if you fell into one." How do they KNOW how black holes are born? No one has ever seen one form. And how do they KNOW what would happen if someone were to fall into one? You can suppose what would happen but you could never KNOW what would happen unless a person was observed falling into one. This is an outright lie, and I don't mind people posing hypothesis' but lets be clear about the information we parade around as fact! Let's remember, there was a time when higher learning educators taught that large objects fall faster than smaller ones. How does history remember those individuals? And if information cannot be proven but requires faith to believe in, then how is that different than any religion of this world? And if it is no different than religion, then is anyone who proselytizes that information not a scientist but now a preacher? Let's be clear about the information that we present as to what is fact, and what is not fact lest we become preachers rather than teachers.

Link to Website:

http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/home.html