# Black holes..and a bible question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 16, 2000, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705 "2000-03-16T11:53:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Second](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Second](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Second)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/1 "2000-03-16T11:53:00Z")
Sorry these things are interesting to me. What would happen if two black came close enough to attract eachother, would one just ‘swallow’ the other? Also this one has been bugging me. In a christain view, god is perfect, god is all knowing, nothing is more powerfull, god can do anything; right… So if he can do anything can he create a creature more powerfull than he?? how can he if nothing is more powerfull, but if he can’t do it then he is not perfect, cause that is one thing he can not do. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/2 "2000-03-16T12:22:00Z")
If two black holes collided head-on, I don’t see why they shouldn’t just merge into a single black hole. The mass of the resulting black hole would be the sum of the original black holes. I wonder what the collisional cross-section of a black hole would be though. The Schwartschild radius? I think I’ll leave the second question to others… ---
**Author:** ![Glitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/0ea827/32.png) [@Glitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Glitch)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/3 "2000-03-16T13:00:00Z")
God is omnipotent, not all powerful. There is a big difference. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything that is “doable”, it is not the ability to do anything that is “describable”. ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/4 "2000-03-16T13:14:00Z")
> [@](#): > > can he create a creature more powerfull than he? Yes, but He chooses not to. * * * _It is too clear, and so it is hard to see._ ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/5 "2000-03-16T13:36:00Z")
> [@](#): > > So if he can do anything can he create a creature more powerfull than he?? Not to mention the old question, “If God can do anything, can he make a rock so big he can’t move it?” * * * “What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet. [www.sff.net/people/rothman](http://www.sff.net/people/rothman) ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/6 "2000-03-16T13:46:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Second: > \*\*So if he can do anything can he create a creature more powerfull than he?? > > how can he if nothing is more powerfull, but if he can’t do it then he is not perfect, cause that is one thing he can not do.\*\* Contrarily: If He _can_ do it, he’s not ‘all powerful’, since if He can, there is obviously some power He doesn’t have. If He _can’t_ this says nothing about whether He is ‘all powerful’ or not, since either a) it’s impossible, since He is ‘All Powerful’ and therefore there is no power not his; or b) He simply has not the power to do it. * * * _Eschew Obfuscation_ ---
**Author:** ![Big\_Trigger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@Big\_Trigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Big_Trigger)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/7 "2000-03-16T14:35:00Z")
I have a question for you. Why are you questioning God? I was taught just recently that to question God and his “powers” means that one does not have full faith in God. Only one person knows that question you asked. Sorry if you don’t get a straight answer. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/8 "2000-03-16T14:42:00Z")
The question of whether God can create a “more powerful being” than Himelf, or create a “rock so big that he cannot move it” is to apply human concepts, and human language to God. It’s a semantic trick, a logic paradox, that has no ultimate meaning behind the cleverness with words. If we describe God as all-powerful, omnipotent, then we as human beings have no concept what that means. The notion of a being “more powerful” than “all-powerful” doesn’t make any sense, inherently. The notion of a rock “too big to be lifted” is silly, we’re talking about the God who created and moves galaxies. The best we could do, IMHO, in trying to understand God’s power, is to note that God limits Himself. He gives humankind freewill, and that means that He does NOT fully control things that he COULD fully control. If God did not so limit Himself, say the Jewish mystics (1500s or so, I think, give or take a few centuries), the universe could not exist. ---
**Author:** ![MrKnowItAll](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrknowitall/32/87_2.png) [@MrKnowItAll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrKnowItAll)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/9 "2000-03-16T14:43:00Z")
Hey Nickrz or manhattan? Can we get this moved to GD where it belongs? * * * _God is my co-pilot. Blame Him._ ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2000, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/10 "2000-03-16T14:59:00Z")
Yea, of course we can move it. But you know what? GD is Godded out at the moment, and moving yet another thread might screw up the board. Not to mention that **David B** and **Gaudere** will hit me with their moderator hats. So let me propose the following. For now, how about we ask people to answer the black hole question in more detail (like, has evidence of such a collision been observed) and let the whole God thing drop? ## If people just can’t resist God (and really, who can resist the Big Guy?), then I’ll move the thread. [Change Your Password, Please](http://204.95.48.199/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ubbmisc.cgi?action=getannounce&ForumNumber=3&Start=2451545.99&End=2451911&Session=2451598.1854) and don’t use HTML, as it has been disabled, but you can learn about superscripts [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000795.html) ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/11 "2000-03-17T06:18:00Z")
yeah, OK. To the best of my knowledge, no evidence of one black hole swallowing another has ever been observed. If two black holes came together, they would form one larger black hole, with an event horizon area at least as large as the combined areas of the two original balck holes. If it happened, lots of gravitational waves would be released. This is the sort of thing they are looking for at [LIGO](http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/). * * * _It is too clear, and so it is hard to see._ ---
**Author:** ![mcolville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7feea3/32.png) [@mcolville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcolville)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/12 "2000-03-17T06:39:00Z")
I asked this exact question (the first one, I’ll get to the second one in a paragraph or two) to my cosmology professor. He said; 'You’d get one big black hole." ``` Picture this, drop two bowling balls on a trampoline. They each make a big dent. Now take the bowling balls away, but leave the dents there. Then move the dents together to form one big dent. That's what would happen were two black holes to eat each other up. The question reminded my professor of his neighbors who went on vacation for three days. They left their two hamsters in their cage together with enough food for three days, figuring they'd be ok for 72 hours. Upon their return, the hamsters were mysteriously missing. They said, according to my professor (according to me, but I was actually there when he said this,) "We think they must have ate each other." He swears to god they actually said this. I would like not to believe him, but people are often just exactly this stupid. Re: God. This is often considered, by people of faith, to be a ridiculous question asked by smarty-pants. Ok, they're right about that last part, but it's something many interesting and important people have wondered. It's traditionally a question of the will and the intellect. The will is the bit of god that makes things he wants to happen, happen. The intellect is that part of god that can come up with ideas. Which comes first (importance-wise?) If the will comes first, God can do anything, even contradictory things. If the intellect comes first, then god's will is bound by what's imaginable, and even god can't imagine a square circle. Augustine thought the Will came first, and god could do anything, even contradictory things. He didn't put it this succinctly anywhere, but near as I can tell, God could create a person more powerful than he, but God would still be more powerful than that being. Make no sense? Exactly. Contradictory. God can do it. St. Thomas Aquinas thought the intellect came first, and God could *not* make a rock he couldn't lift (if I may mix examples for a moment.) Here's the cool part (and the reason I like Aquinas); Aquinas figured that the inability to do impossible things *wasn't a limit on god's power.* He was still omnipotent, in spite of his failure to make a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it. Nice solution. And what the hell, it might be right. We don't have any omnipotent people around to try the experiment, and this solution has the benefit of being neat (as in tidy.) ``` P.S. None of this has anything to do with God, however. No answer you’re going to get from anyone has anything to do with God. All you’ll learn is what certain people _think_ about God. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/13 "2000-03-17T06:49:00Z")
I can see that two black holes colliding would leave just one more massive black hole, but what sort of energy would be released in the collision, if any? What sort of phenomenon might an astronomer observe? As for the God question, the problem is a confusion between logical impossibility and practical impossibility. Any Omnipotent being would still be bound by the rules of logic, and not be able to create something which would contradict her own omnipotence. * * * Having an open mind means you put out a welcome mat and answer the door politely. It does not mean leaving the door open with a sign saying nobody’s home ---
**Author:** ![SingleDad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@SingleDad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SingleDad)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/14 "2000-03-17T07:28:00Z")
Read “Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy” by Kip Thorne. It’ll tell you everything you wanted to know about Black Holes, and much more. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/15 "2000-03-17T08:05:00Z")
> [@](#): > > I can see that two black holes colliding would leave just one more massive black hole, but what sort of energy would be released in the collision, if any? If they were pure black holes with no stuff around them, I think the only observable effect would be a gravitational wave. Just like you can get electromagnetic waves by taking an electrical charge and shaking it (that’s what an antenna is, a wire where electrons oscillate up and down) you can create gravitational waves by taking a huge compact mass and shaking it vigorously. See the link ZenBeam listed, if you want to take a look at what people are doing to try to detect them. Black holes usually have accretion disks around them. That’s the disk of material swirling around the black hole, like planets around the sun. The two accretion disks would interact and, well, I’m not sure what would happen, a shock wave that produces high energy X-rays? ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Dave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/46a35a/32.png) [@Great\_Dave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Dave)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/16 "2000-03-17T08:10:00Z")
In California, a ballot initiative can only address one issue at a time. Shouldn’t this apply to this board? These questions aren’t even in the same field of thought! * * * -Dave “Violence is the last refuge of the ignorant.” -I. Asimov ---
**Author:** ![NothingMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b77776/32.png) [@NothingMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NothingMan)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/17 "2000-03-17T10:28:00Z")
[QUOTE] Originally posted by ZenBeam: \*\*yeah, OK. To the best of my knowledge, no evidence of one black hole swallowing another has ever been observed. To the best of my knowledge, no black hole has ever been observed period. The existence of such objects is purely theoretical. ---
**Author:** ![WillGolfForFood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@WillGolfForFood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillGolfForFood)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/18 "2000-03-17T12:09:00Z")
True, you can’t observe a black hole directly, but you can observe its accretion disk and you can infer its existence from its effects on other objects. ---
**Author:** ![RussellM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed8c4c/32.png) [@RussellM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RussellM)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/19 "2000-03-17T12:18:00Z")
WillGolfForFood You are correct of course, it would be very difficult to make direct observations of something which absorbs everything and releases nothing, but I think NothingMan might have been asking if any observation of a black hole - direct / indirect /inferred had ever been made? I don’t really approve of WAGs, but I think black holes were originaly a theoretical concept only - albeit a well accepted one. (leaving aside any worm-hole / trans dimensional FTL nonsense) Has anyone verified their existence? Russell ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2000, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705/20 "2000-03-17T14:37:00Z")
Without wrangling over the semantics of observing something we can’t see, we _have_ identified a number of black holes: [http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html#q7](http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html#q7) (or, the seventh question at [http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html](http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html) ) There is a black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy. ## Just a couple of months ago they found a BH very “close” (astronomically speaking) in the constellation Sagittarius, along with a normal star dubbed V4641 Sgr. Tom~ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-holes-and-a-bible-question/8705.md?page=2)