If you had an idea about something but the whole of the scientific community disagreed......

[Blobbenstein]

If you had a scientific idea which went against the mainstream, and a lot of scientist were against it, how would you feel? What would you do?

If you really thought it was the answer to something important, and that it could make a real shift in scientific advancement if it were accepted.

There is peer review, but there is also scientific peer pressure. Scientists can get quite invested in their paradigms.

 

[Andy_T]

I see your point.

But to be honest, I am a bit afraid that for every Galileo, who overcomes the resentment of his peers and advances science to see something that was not obvious before, there are 999 other scientists who fervently believe they are right, but are not.

The challenge is to find out ahich one you are

 

[Blobbenstein]

For instance I believe that black holes don't have event horizons, or singularities; they aren't holes at all, they are just small collapsing objects; and I have seen how scientist get quite worked up about such a position.

I think the position on black holes is graadually changing, and even Stephen Hawking has doubts, I think, on whether there is an event horizon, now.

Other people are not believers in the event horizon, but it probably is a minority at them moment.

If the mainstream view about black holes in incorrect that means, I think, that relativity hasn't been interpreted correctly, which could have huge implications for the rest of cosmology.

 

[Blobbenstein]

All the clues about black holes are there; maybe one day enough people will put them together to see what is happening.

here are two clues I read on another forum:
Event horizons are co-ordinate singularities; which means that all parts of the event horizon have the same co-ordinate, using Schwarzschild metric(or whatever it's called)...now what could that mean, I wonder?
What would you normally call something that only had one co-ordinate?

Objects near the event horizon appear length contracted, which means that if you fell to near the enent horizon the distant observer would see you as really short, but to yourself you wouldn't be(ignoring spaghettification etc); again, another clue as to what is going on.