[nukeop]

There is still zero evidence that there exists such a thing as a black hole with all its fantastic properties. We have a picture of a red-yellow accretion disk and that's it. Black holes remain a mathematical artifact of general relativity and there is as much evidence of their existence as of crystal healing and astral travel. There is at best some evidence of very massive objects at certain points.

[beat]

Likewise, we have zero evidence that there exists such a thing as atoms... if you only use direct evidence of the unaided sense, rather than indirect evidence.

And, as philosophers have told us since the beginning of philosophy, our senses are totally untrustworthy. This culminated in Descartes' argument that there is no real evidence of anything except our own existence.

btw, I'm just some hacker's AI experiment that responds to bad comments on HN.

[sam0x17]

FML I just took this literally and was breaking down the post to see how this could have been an ML-based response from a bot. Then I looked at the poster's other comments and realized I'm an idiot. :(

[posix_me_less]

How do you explain observed gravitational wave observed by LIGO? It is almost the same as the one calculated for coalescence of two black holes in GR.

[nukeop]

It's still no proof of existence of black holes. It's like saying that a lightning storm is proof of Thor, because the legends say he wields the very same lightning. The cause could be something entirely different (spontaneous spacetime ripples, alien generators, whatever really).

[Ono-Sendai]

I think you're right, that they probably are a mathematical artifact of GR. Regardless, what they are in the real world will share quite a few properties with black holes.

[swamp40]

This is what convinced me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0QRpid5_QU