Thank you for taking the time to post the above links.
I have only looked at the utube stuff so far..however at the time I read your post I had just completed 1 hr 53 minutes of a Suskin lecture (yet another) (out of Stanford) on gravity ...or in other words it is probably not the right time to try to take in all your suggested reading which question many of the notions I am trying to come to grips with..
However a simple question directed to those believing in black holes would be...if so powerful such that zip can escape once past the event horizon then how could any gravity messenger particle escape a black hole so as to tell the rest of the universe of its (BH) presence...I understand that string theory speculates upon a particle ..the graviton..to convey the message of gravity....so the question must present as to why a graviton can/must be able to escape when not even light is able to do so... if nothing else the black hole model may need adjustment so the graviton can leave and be a messenger
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I think Dr A did not go along with the black hole concept and given that the black hole was born from GR this tends to make me feel skepticism is appropriate.
Cosmology appears to present the notion there is a super massive black hole at the center of some..er all galaxies and that all the stuff is held in orbit because of its presence...if you do the math you find one needs a black hole many multiples of magnitude greater than the mass of the entire galaxy... they are not like the Sun to the solar system as they apparently have little or no gravitational influence upon the host galaxy...and in this regard it seems clear galaxies are held together by an external force rather than an internal "attraction" system..... and if not there for such a purpose why have them... only one reason ...which I wont state
It seems to me what Dr A said and what others say he said are not always the same. Wishing something may be so does not entitle anyone to change what the man said.
Happily I found the weak link in the physics when considering the proposals set out in Suskins lecture. He as do all physicists start with a blank sheet of paper to embrace the concept of "an inertial frame of reference". This theoretical outline of a region of our universe comp templates "nothing" but there is always something and maybe the something should be the first thing recorded.. even before the simple formula F=MA so as to get a real picture of what influence must be taken into account in our inertial frame of reference.
I can not find when such a condition may exist in our universe (it is in itself a statement that we can consider "nothing" yet I suggest the fact must be that there is simply no place in the universe where we can find a physical recreation of "an inertial frame of reference"... I think all can reasonably observe that even the most remote part of space..a void..we indeed must recognize there is indeed a great deal of something..to use the worst of double negatives..."there is no nothing" or simply and cleanly...there is always something...which must make our inertial frame of reference highly suspect..a term of "aether" would seem appropriate however MM proved there be non.
I find such a result difficult as one can imagine that even in a void at any single point we must find at the very least EME coming from everywhere
...and so physics only takes a convenient view if the aether (or whatever term we use to replace the one MM threw out) is not first set in place as the background to any premise as to how anything must work or indeed how gravity shall work.
Anyways I did find the lecture interesting and it gave me a better understanding of the math at play...many here encourage me to take time to include math in my kit and it was for them I took the lecture..and my earlier position has been affirmed...math is great to support a supportable premise....er in fact I believe math can also support an unsupportable premise as well.. I intend to take many more lectures even though I disagree with the conclusions that the universe obeys the math humans set out to explain why it does what it does but I wish to understand how GR was built from the math alone in the absence of experiment and observation.
AS to arguing the toss as to why GR and SR must agree or that GR is wrong I am not that interested in such argument as finally it is SR and GR that must fit the push universe not the other way around
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Why argue the existence of God with the Pope? because you will never win... in that case, as it will be when arguing SR or GR, even if you make a valid point you will never win the entire argument as those in the camp are most happy with all their explanations and of course the math (given the inputs) is most reasonable and seemingly accurate.
So I like the idea of starting with a clean sheet upon which I can place a field that will command everything else placed upon our "blank" sheet.
Hope my rambling can be understood and I apologize for the haste and poor review and edit of this post.
alex
... thanks for that Alex I found it very interesting
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... may I ask if that is correct
