Micah Tillman

By Nancy Atkinson on Universe Today:

According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape.

Something about that sentence really bothers me. Einstein himself had nothing to say about black holes, as far as I know. (Here’s the Wikipedia version of the history of the concept after Einstein.)

The equations Einstein produced were later discovered to allow for black holes. Those equations led physicists to predict black holes.

But if you look at Einstein’s theory (however you would do that) you won’t find “black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape.”

This reminds me of when one of my wonderful students writes in her/his paper, “Locke says that fear occasions anger, and that difference occasions fear,” or “Plato wrote that all physical things are ‘of’ something else, like a picture is ‘of’ what it is the picture of.”

(Tillman said those things while trying to help his students understand what Locke and Plato said. But Locke and Plato themselves did not say them.)

Tags: Albert Einstein, Aristotle, John Locke, Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today