Black holes are—no surprise—full of surprises

Moreover, if we rightly let the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into the picture of modern physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders of modern science),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:

November 2019 – despite the fact that virtually everyone, including the vast majority of Christians, hold that the Copernican Principle is unquestionably true, the fact of the matter is that the Copernican Principle is now empirically shown, (via quantum mechanics and general relativity, etc..), to be a false assumption. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/so-then-maybe-we-are-privileged-observers/#comment-688855 (February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673178 The evidence for the Shroud’s authenticity keeps growing. (Timeline of facts) – November 08, 2019 What Is the Shroud of Turin? Facts & History Everyone Should Know – Myra Adams and Russ Breault https://www.christianity.com/wiki/jesus-christ/what-is-the-shroud-of-turin.html

To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion (trillion) Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”

Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html

Verse:

Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

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And in the following quotes, the two Near Death Experiencers both testify that they firmly believed that they were in a higher heavenly dimension that is above this three-dimensional world, and that the reason that they have a very difficult time explaining what their Near Death Experiences actually felt like is because we simply don’t currently have the words to properly describe that higher dimension:

“Regardless, it is impossible for me to adequately describe what I saw and felt. When I try to recount my experiences now, the description feels very pale. I feel as though I’m trying to describe a three-dimensional experience while living in a two-dimensional world. The appropriate words, descriptions and concepts don’t even exist in our current language. I have subsequently read the accounts of other people’s near-death experiences and their portrayals of heaven and I able to see the same limitations in their descriptions and vocabulary that I see in my own.” Mary C. Neal, MD – To Heaven And Back pg. 71 “Well, when I was taking geometry, they always told me there were only three dimensions, and I always just accepted that. But they were wrong. There are more… And that is why so hard for me to tell you this. I have to describe with words that are three-dimensional. That’s as close as I can get to it, but it’s really not adequate.” John Burke – Imagine Heaven pg. 51 – quoting a Near Death Experiencer

That what we now know to be true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, dimension that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDEs is, needless to say, powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true and that they are accurately describing the ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension, that they experienced first hand, and that they say exists above this temporal dimension. I would even go so far as to say that such corroboration from ‘non-physicists’, who, in all likelihood, know nothing about the intricacies of special relativity, is a complete scientific verification of the overall validity of their personal NDE testimonies.

Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

It is also interesting to point out that, although Special Relativity can be unified with Quantum Mechanics, that General Relativity simply refuses to ever be mathematically unified with quantum mechanics in any realistic way,

Theories of the Universe: Quantum Mechanics vs. General Relativity Excerpt: The first attempt at unifying relativity and quantum mechanics took place when special relativity was merged with electromagnetism. This created the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It is an example of what has come to be known as relativistic quantum field theory, or just quantum field theory. QED is considered by most physicists to be the most precise theory of natural phenomena ever developed. In the 1960s and '70s, the success of QED prompted other physicists to try an analogous approach to unifying the weak, the strong, and the gravitational forces. Out of these discoveries came another set of theories that merged the strong and weak forces called quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, and quantum electroweak theory, or simply the electroweak theory, which you've already been introduced to. If you examine the forces and particles that have been combined in the theories we just covered, you'll notice that the obvious force missing is that of gravity (i.e. General Relativity). http://www.infoplease.com/cig/theories-universe/quantum-mechanics-vs-general-relativity.html

In fact, mathematically speaking, there is found to be an 'infinite divide' between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics that forever prevents them from being unified mathematically.

Why Gravity Is Not Like the Other Forces We asked four physicists why gravity stands out among the forces of nature. We got four different answers. Excerpt: the quantum version of Einstein’s general relativity is “nonrenormalizable.”,,, In quantum theories, infinite terms appear when you try to calculate how very energetic particles scatter off each other and interact. In theories that are renormalizable — which include the theories describing all the forces of nature other than gravity — we can remove these infinities in a rigorous way by appropriately adding other quantities that effectively cancel them, so-called counterterms. This renormalization process leads to physically sensible answers that agree with experiments to a very high degree of accuracy. The problem with a quantum version of general relativity is that the calculations that would describe interactions of very energetic gravitons — the quantized units of gravity — would have infinitely many infinite terms. You would need to add infinitely many counterterms in a never-ending process. Renormalization would fail.,,, Sera Cremonini - theoretical physicist - Lehigh University https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-gravity-is-not-like-the-other-forces-20200615/

Professor Jeremy Bernstein states the situation as such, “there remains an irremediable difficulty. Every order reveals new types of infinities, and no finite number of renormalizations renders all the terms in the series finite.”

Quantum Leaps – Jeremy Bernstein – October 19, 2018 Excerpt: Divergent series notwithstanding, quantum electrodynamics yielded results of remarkable accuracy. Consider the magnetic moment of the electron. This calculation, which has been calculated up to the fifth order in ?, agrees with experiment to ten parts in a billion. If one continued the calculation to higher and higher orders, at some point the series would begin to break down. There is no sign of that as yet. Why not carry out a similar program for gravitation? One can readily write down the Feynman graphs that represent the terms in the expansion. Yet there remains an irremediable difficulty. Every order reveals new types of infinities, and no finite number of renormalizations renders all the terms in the series finite. The theory is not renormalizable. https://inference-review.com/article/quantum-leaps Jeremy Bernstein is professor emeritus of physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Considering the extremely chaotic entropy associted with General Realtivity, this mathematically 'infinite divide' between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics reminds me very much of this quote from scripture concerning the rich man finding himself in hell and pleading with Abraham to get him out.

Luke 16:26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

But anyways, to continue on, the 'zero/infinity' conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics has some fairly disturbing theoretical implications. Specifically, when theorists try to combine the two theories, then the resulting theory predicts that spacetime, atoms, and even the universe itself should all be literally blown apart. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/at-quanta-how-gravity-differs-from-the-other-three-fundamental-forces/#comment-704725 And yet, despite both theories contradicting each other to the point of literally blowing the universe apart, quantum mechanics and general relativity are both tested to extreme levels of precision, (in fact, both general relativity and quantum mechanics are consider to be our most successful theories ever in the history of science),

The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science – May 5, 2011 Excerpt: So, which of the two (general relativity or QED) is The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science? It’s a little tough to quantify a title like that, but I think relativity can claim to have tested the smallest effects. Things like the aluminum ion clock experiments showing shifts in the rate of a clock set moving at a few m/s, or raised by a foot, measure relativistic shifts of a few parts in 10^16. That is, if one clock ticks 10,000,000,000,000,000 times, the other ticks 9,999,999,999,999,999 times. That’s an impressively tiny effect, but the measured value is in good agreement with the predictions of relativity. In the end, though, I have to give the nod to QED, because while the absolute effects in relativity may be smaller, the precision of the measurements in QED is more impressive. Experimental tests of relativity measure tiny shifts, but to only a few decimal places. Experimental tests of QED measure small shifts, but to an absurd number of decimal places. The most impressive of these is the “anomalous magnetic moment of the electron,” expressed is terms of a number g whose best measured value is: g/2 = 1.001 159 652 180 73 (28) Depending on how you want to count it, that’s either 11 or 14 digits of precision (the value you would expect without QED is exactly 1, so in some sense, the shift really starts with the first non-zero decimal place), which is just incredible. And QED correctly predicts all those decimal places (at least to within the measurement uncertainty, given by the two digits in parentheses at the end of that). http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/05/05/the-most-precisely-tested-theo/

And since quantum mechanics and general relativity are both tested to such an extreme level of precision, (and we can thus have a very high level of confidence that both theories are, in fact, true mathematical descriptions of reality), and since Godel’s incompleteness theorem itself requires something to be ‘outside the circle’ of mathematics,,,,

“Gödel’s incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”. Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010)

,,, then it is fairly safe to assume that there must be something very powerful that must be holding the universe together in order to keep it from blowing itself apart. ,,, For the Christian this theoretical finding from our very best theories in science, (i.e. that something very powerful must be ‘outside the universe’ that is holding this universe together), should not be all that surprising to find out. Christianity, a couple of millennium before the zero/infinity conflict between the two theories was even known about, predicted that Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together,,,

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Dr. William Dembski in this following comment, although he was not directly addressing the Zero/Infinity conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, offers this insight into what the ‘unification’ of infinite God and finite man might look like mathematically:

The End Of Christianity – Finding a Good God in an Evil World – Pg.31 William Dembski PhDs. Mathematics and Theology Excerpt: “In mathematics there are two ways to go to infinity. One is to grow large without measure. The other is to form a fraction in which the denominator goes to zero. The Cross is a path of humility in which the infinite God becomes finite and then contracts to zero, only to resurrect and thereby unite a finite humanity within a newfound infinity.” http://www.designinference.com/documents/2009.05.end_of_xty.pdf Philippians 2:8-9 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,

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In fact, gain in entropy, which is the primary reason why our material bodies grow old and eventually die in this universe,,,

Entropy Explains Aging, Genetic Determinism Explains Longevity, and Undefined Terminology Explains Misunderstanding Both - 2007 Excerpt: There is a huge body of knowledge supporting the belief that age changes are characterized by increasing entropy, which results in the random loss of molecular fidelity, and accumulates to slowly overwhelm maintenance systems [1–4].,,, http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0030220

,,, gain in entropy is found to be greatest at black holes. As the following article stated,, 'supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to the observable universe’s entropy.'

Entropy of the Universe - Hugh Ross - May 2010 Excerpt: Egan and Lineweaver found that supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to the observable universe’s entropy. They showed that these supermassive black holes contribute about 30 times more entropy than what the previous research teams estimated. http://www.reasons.org/entropy-universe

Thus the ‘eternity’ that is found at a black hole can rightly be called an ‘eternity of decay, death, and destruction’. Needless to say, to those of us who are of, shall we say, a spiritually minded persuasion, this finding of an eternity of destruction and decay should be fairly sobering. To continue on, the evidence from Special Relativity, (which is currently one of our most powerful theories in science), strongly supports the physical reality of a timeless eternity and of a heavenly dimension that exists above this temporal dimension. The timeless eternity aspect of both Special and General Relativity was already covered in this post. ,,, so to continue on, the only way it is possible for time not to pass for light, and yet for light to move from point A to point B in our universe, is if light is of a higher dimensional nature of time than the temporal time that we are currently living in. If this were not the case, then light would simply be ‘frozen within time’ to our temporal frame of reference. And indeed that is exactly what we find. “Hermann Minkowski- one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space.” In fact, Hermann Minkowski's work in higher dimensional mathematics proved to be vital for Einstein in his eventual formulation of General Relativity.

Spacetime Excerpt: In 1908, Hermann Minkowski—once one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space. A key feature of this interpretation is the definition of a spacetime interval that combines distance and time. Although measurements of distance and time between events differ for measurements made in different reference frames, the spacetime interval is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Minkowski’s geometric interpretation of relativity was to prove vital to Einstein’s development of his 1915 general theory of relativity, wherein he showed that spacetime becomes curved in the presence of mass or energy.,,, Einstein, for his part, was initially dismissive of Minkowski’s geometric interpretation of special relativity, regarding it as überflüssige Gelehrsamkeit (superfluous learnedness). However, in order to complete his search for general relativity that started in 1907, the geometric interpretation of relativity proved to be vital, and in 1916, Einstein fully acknowledged his indebtedness to Minkowski, whose interpretation greatly facilitated the transition to general relativity.[10]:151–152 Since there are other types of spacetime, such as the curved spacetime of general relativity, the spacetime of special relativity is today known as Minkowski spacetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

One way for us to more easily understand this higher dimensional framework for time that light exist in is for us to visualize what would happen if a hypothetical observer approached the speed of light. In the following video clip, at around the 2:40 minute mark, (a video which was made by two Australian University Physics Professors), we find that the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer approaches the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light.

Optical Effects of Special Relativity – video – full relativistic effects featured at around the 2:40 minute mark https://youtu.be/JQnHTKZBTI4?t=161

Interestingly, as was visualized at the 3:00 minute mark of the preceding video, (i.e. all of the light concentrating into the direction of travel, i.e. the light visualized at the ‘end of the tunnel’ in the video), is termed to be the ‘headlight effect’

Relativistic aberration Relativistic aberration is the relativistic version of aberration of light, including relativistic corrections that become significant for observers who move with velocities close to the speed of light. It is described by Einstein’s special theory of relativity.,,, One consequence of this is that a forward observer should normally be expected to intercept a greater proportion of the object’s light than a rearward one; this concentration of light in the object’s forward direction is referred to as the “searchlight effect” (or headlight effect). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_aberration

Now that we have outlined the basics of what we know to be physically true from special relativity, It is very interesting to note that many of the characteristics found in heavenly Near Death Experience testimonies are exactly what we would expect to see from what we now know to be physically true about Special Relativity. For instance, many times people who have had a Near Death Experience mention that their perception of time was radically altered. In the following video clip, Mickey Robinson gives his Near Death testimony of what it felt like for him to experience a ‘timeless eternity’.

‘In the ‘spirit world,,, instantly, there was no sense of time. See, everything on earth is related to time. You got up this morning, you are going to go to bed tonight. Something is new, it will get old. Something is born, it’s going to die. Everything on the physical plane is relative to time, but everything in the spiritual plane is relative to eternity. Instantly I was in total consciousness and awareness of eternity, and you and I as we live in this earth cannot even comprehend it, because everything that we have here is filled within the veil of the temporal life. In the spirit life that is more real than anything else and it is awesome. Eternity as a concept is awesome. There is no such thing as time. I knew that whatever happened was going to go on and on.’ In The Presence Of Almighty God – The NDE of Mickey Robinson – video (testimony starts at 27:45 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voak1RM-pXo

And here are a few more quotes from people who have experienced Near Death, that speak of how their perception of time was radically altered as they were outside of their material body during their NDEs.

‘Earthly time has no meaning in the spirit realm. There is no concept of before or after. Everything – past, present, future – exists simultaneously.’ – Kimberly Clark Sharp – Near Death Experiencer ‘There is no way to tell whether minutes, hours or years go by. Existence is the only reality and it is inseparable from the eternal now.’ – John Star – NDE Experiencer

As well, Near Death Experiencers also frequently mention going through a tunnel, towards an extremely brilliant light, to a higher heavenly dimension:

Ask the Experts: What Is a Near-Death Experience (NDE)? – article with video Excerpt: “Very often as they’re moving through the tunnel, there’s a very bright mystical light … not like a light we’re used to in our earthly lives. People call this mystical light, brilliant like a million times a million suns…” – Jeffrey Long M.D. – has studied NDE’s extensively The Tunnel and the Near-Death Experience Excerpt: One of the nine elements that generally occur during NDEs is the tunnel experience. This involves being drawn into darkness through a tunnel, at an extremely high speed, until reaching a realm of radiant golden-white light.

In the following video, Barbara Springer gives her testimony as to what it felt like for her to go through the tunnel towards 'the light':

“I started to move toward the light. The way I moved, the physics, was completely different than it is here on Earth. It was something I had never felt before and never felt since. It was a whole different sensation of motion. I obviously wasn’t walking or skipping or crawling. I was not floating. I was flowing. I was flowing toward the light. I was accelerating and I knew I was accelerating, but then again, I didn’t really feel the acceleration. I just knew I was accelerating toward the light. Again, the physics was different – the physics of motion of time, space, travel. It was completely different in that tunnel, than it is here on Earth. I came out into the light and when I came out into the light, I realized that I was in heaven.” Barbara Springer – Near Death Experience – The Tunnel – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv2jLeoAcMI

And in the following audio clip, Vicki Noratuk, who has been blind from birth, (besides being able to ‘miraculously” see for the first time in her life during her Near Death Experience), Vicki also gives testimony of going through a tunnel at a ‘horrifically’ rapid rate of speed:

“I was in a body, and the only way that I can describe it was a body of energy, or of light. And this body had a form. It had a head, it had arms and it had legs. And it was like it was made out of light. And it was everything that was me. All of my memories, my consciousness, everything.”,,, “And then this vehicle formed itself around me. Vehicle is the only thing, or tube, or something, but it was a mode of transportation that’s for sure! And it formed around me. And there was no one in it with me. I was in it alone. But I knew there were other people ahead of me and behind me. What they were doing I don’t know, but there were people ahead of me and people behind me, but I was alone in my particular conveyance. And I could see out of it. And it went at a tremendously, horrifically, rapid rate of speed. But it wasn’t unpleasant. It was beautiful in fact.,, I was reclining in this thing, I wasn’t sitting straight up, but I wasn’t lying down either. I was sitting back. And it was just so fast. I can’t even begin to tell you where it went or whatever it was just fast!” – Vicki’s NDE – Blind since birth – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e65KhcCS5-Y

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Of related interest, there are a couple of thought experiments that Einstein utilized to work out the basics of special relativity and then general relativity.

Introduction to special relativity Excerpt: Einstein's approach was based on thought experiments, calculations, and the principle of relativity, which is the notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers.,,, Each observer has a distinct "frame of reference" in which velocities are measured,,,, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_special_relativity

In the first thought experiment for special relativity, Einstein imagined that he was riding on a bus near the speed of light,

"In the spring of 1905, Einstein was riding on a bus and he looked back at the famous clock tower that dominates Bern Switzerland. And then he imagined, "What happens if that bus were racing near the speed of light.", (narrator: "In his imagination, Einstein looks back at the clock tower and what he sees is astonishing. As he reaches the speed of light, the hands of the clock appear frozen in time"), "Einstein would later write, "A storm broke in my mind. All of the sudden everything, everything, kept gushing forward.", (narrator: "Einstein knows that, back at the clock tower, time is passing normally, but on Einstein's light speed bus, as he reaches the speed of light, the light from the clock can no longer catch up to him. The faster he races through space, the slower he moves through time. This insight sparks the birth of Einstein's Special Theory of relativity, which says that space and time are deeply connected. In fact, they are one and the same. A flexible fabric called spacetime.") - Michio Kaku Einstein: Einstein’s Miracle Year (‘Insight into Eternity’ – Thought Experiment - 6:29 minute mark) – video https://youtu.be/QQ35opgrhNA?t=389

Whereas in his second thought experiment, which he termed 'the happiest thought of my life', Einstein imagined a man freely falling in an elevator:

"Ultimately, the thing that gives (Einstein) that clue turns out to be his old faithful way of reasoning; the thought experiment.",,, He's in his office at the patent office looking out the window. And he imagined men working on a roof. And he begins to wonder what would happen if one of those men were to fall off the roof." Kaku, "And then he had the happiest thought of his life. The inspiration of the ages.",, "He had a vision, the man would not be actually feeling his own weight.",, "He would be Weight-Less!",, "And then he imagined, if you are in a elevator and somebody cuts the cord, what happens to you?",, "You fall, but the elevator falls at the same rate you do, so you are Weight-Less inside the elevator. So then Einstein got it.",, "I is as though gravity has been switched off. What's really going on?",, "There is no such thing as gravitational pull. The earth has curved the space around me and (the curvature of) space is pushing me into this chair. Space itself can be curved." Einstein History Channel HD https://youtu.be/QQ35opgrhNA?t=987 Introduction to Tensor Calculus for General Relativity Excerpt: The second essential idea underlying GR is that at every spacetime point there exist locally inertial reference frames, corresponding to locally flat coordinates carried by freely falling observers, in which the physics of GR is locally indistinguishable from that of special relativity. This is Einstein’s famous strong equivalence principle and it makes general relativity an extension of special relativity to a curved spacetime. http://web.mit.edu/edbert/GR/gr1.pdf

And similar to when time, as we understand it, comes to complete stop in Special Relativity when we reach the speed of light, in General Relativity time, as we understand it, also comes to a complete stop when we reach what is termed to be the 'event horizon' of a black hole, As wikipedia states, "Travel to regions of space where extreme gravitational time dilation is taking place, such as near a black hole, could yield time-shifting results analogous to those of near-lightspeed space travel."

Time dilation Special relativity indicates that, for an observer in an inertial frame of reference, a clock that is moving relative to them will be measured to tick slower than a clock that is at rest in their frame of reference. This case is sometimes called special relativistic time dilation. The faster the relative velocity, the greater the time dilation between one another, with the rate of time reaching zero as one approaches the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s). This causes massless particles that travel at the speed of light to be unaffected by the passage of time.,,, Gravitational time dilation is experienced by an observer that, at a certain altitude within a gravitational potential well, finds that their local clocks measure less elapsed time than identical clocks situated at higher altitude (and which are therefore at higher gravitational potential). Gravitational time dilation is at play e.g. for ISS astronauts. While the astronauts' relative velocity slows down their time, the reduced gravitational influence at their location speeds it up, although at a lesser degree. Also, a climber's time is theoretically passing slightly faster at the top of a mountain compared to people at sea level. It has also been calculated that due to time dilation, the core of the Earth is 2.5 years younger than the crust.[32] "A clock used to time a full rotation of the earth will measure the day to be approximately an extra 10 ns/day longer for every km of altitude above the reference geoid."[33] Travel to regions of space where extreme gravitational time dilation is taking place, such as near a black hole, could yield time-shifting results analogous to those of near-lightspeed space travel. Contrarily to velocity time dilation, in which both observers measure the other as aging slower (a reciprocal effect), gravitational time dilation is not reciprocal. This means that with gravitational time dilation both observers agree that the clock nearer the center of the gravitational field is slower in rate, and they agree on the ratio of the difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Gravitational_time_dilation

It is important to point out that these 'eternities' found at both Special Relativity and General Relativity have fairly direct theological implications. As Dr. Richard Swenson states,

"The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality. Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to know how tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass." Dr. Richard Swenson - More Than Meets The Eye, Chpt. 11

Einstein himself seemed to concede this theological implication of his theory when he, upon his good friend Michele Besso's death, stated that, “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Einstein and Michele Besso Upon Besso’s death in 1955, Einstein wrote a letter of condolence to the Besso family—less than a month before his own death—which contained the following quote “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” http://quotingeinstein.blogspot.com/2013/06/einstein-and-michele-besso.html

And in what was, basically, an extension of Einstein's thought experiment for General Relativity, Kip Thorne worked out what would happen to a hypothetical astronaut who was unfortunate enough to fall into a black hole,

"Einstein's equation predicts that, as the astronaut reaches the singularity (of the black-hole), the tidal forces grow infinitely strong, and their chaotic oscillations become infinitely rapid. The astronaut dies and the atoms which his body is made become infinitely and chaotically distorted and mixed-and then, at the moment when everything becomes infinite (the tidal strengths, the oscillation frequencies, the distortions, and the mixing), spacetime ceases to exist." Kip S. Thorne - "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy" pg. 476 http://books.google.com/books?id=GzlrW6kytdoC&pg=PA476#v=onepage&q&f=false Kip Thorne and Charles Misner, and John Wheeler wrote Gravitation (1973), considered a definitive textbook on general relativity.

In short, what makes the eternity of General Relativity profoundly different than the eternity found at Special Relativity, is that the entropy associated with Special Relativity is extremely ordered whereas the entropy associated with General Relativity is extremely chaotic

How Special Was The Big Bang? “But why was the big bang so precisely organized (to 1 in 10^10^123 for the initial entropy), whereas the big crunch (or the singularities in black holes) would be expected to be totally chaotic? It would appear that this question can be phrased in terms of the behaviour of the WEYL part of the space-time curvature at space-time singularities. What we appear to find is that there is a constraint WEYL = 0 (or something very like this) at initial space-time singularities-but not at final singularities-and this seems to be what confines the Creator’s choice to this very tiny region of phase space." Roger Penrose – (from the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 copyright 1989, Penguin Books) http://www.ws5.com/Penrose/

bornagain77

Black Holes matter. ET