Slashdot Mirror
Black Holes No More -- Introducing the Gravastar
Mark Eymer observes: "From the Space.com article: 'Emil Mottola of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Pawel Mazur of the University of South Carolina suggest that instead of a star collapsing into a pinpoint of space with virtually infinite gravity, its matter is transformed into a spherical void surrounded by "an extremely durable form of matter never before experienced on Earth."' While these objects may abound in the universe, they also say that our entire universe may reside within a giant gravastar." This new theory attempts to fill holes in the currently accepted concept of the "black hole".
the /dev/null of the universe!
I can't find any papers from the said authors on the physics archive, so these two obviously aren't well known or respectable among the scientific community. A lack of peer review in a strata where peer review accounts of all fault-finding leads me to believe this articles credibility is the same as those of new-age magazines who which posting about the Bermuda triangle and the creation fabled
self-professed scientists.
Until some well-known scientist confirms this, I think I'll just believe the 'official' story about black holes.
Just my 2 dollars.
Bet aliens wanting to visit our Gravastar will be forced to be fingerprinted and have their pictures taken.
But can they make a new non-stick pan surface out of it?
: This new theory attempts to fill holes in the currently accepted concept of the "black hole".
Is that the first step of filling up the black holes themselves?
Will it chase your ship around yelling out I hunger ? :P
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
after all, all of the bug reports submitted to Microsoft have to be stored somewhere
Its only noon... now I have a headache :(
This new theory attempts to fill holes in the currently accepted concept of the "black hole".
Ha Ha Ha! Your puny theory will never escape from the irresistible gravitic pull of this horrible pun...
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
Be carefull when clicking on those "picture of a black hole" links ;)
"Dude... what if, like... our whole universe... is just one tiny atom... in the toenail of some giant dude?"
"Woah, dude."
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
"So what you are saying is that an atom inside our fingernail..."
"That atom could contain a teeny, tiny universe."
"Woah!.................Can you sell me some pot?"
"While these objects may abound in the universe, they also say that our entire universe may reside within a giant gravastar." That statement makes no sense - its saying that everything that exists or can exist, exists inside something else. Where does THAT exist? This sounds a lot like the Skinner Constant, or Finagle's Fudge Factor. (the number in engineering, which when added to, subtracted from, multiplied or divided by, gives you the right answer).
+1 karma to anyone who gets the title of this post
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
our entire universe may reside within a giant gravastar.
If this appear to be true, I then guess we could find universes in atomic particles.
Smile, don't click...
So then there may be other universes within gravastars, and if you scale back far enough perhaps these gravastars are equivalent to atoms, by which I mean, we're making up the matter in some other ultra superverse!!
"This new theory attempts to fill holes in the currently accepted concept..."
And it sounds better in Russian than "black hole"
I guess...
lets see how many people get sucked in.
Summation 2
So what's on the outside of this giant gravstar we're in? :)
This new theory attempts to fill holes in the currently accepted concept of the "black hole".
but wouldn't any of these attempts just collapse into the singularity as well??
Then all you're left with is Vincent and Bob...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
So does this explain where the SCO evidence went?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
So, as I understand it, a black hole is a singularity, where the laws of physics and time itself do not add up and have no real meaning.
So my timesheet...
While these objects may abound in the universe, they also say that our entire universe may reside within a giant gravastar. The people i work with are to be used as evidence, there skulls are also gravastars as nothing gets in or out
Do you seriously doubt the existence of an infinite God when confronted with the silliness these "great minds" babble about?
Absolutely and without question. Religion is a security blanket for weak minds.
-Shadow
Mottola and Mazur have not worked out all the details of how gravastars might form. Yet they say the objects solve a flaw in black hole theory.
Call us when you work out those little details.
"Where are all these zillions of states hiding in a black hole?" Mottola said in a recent article in New Scientist magazine. "It is quite literally incomprehensible."
As I recall from reading Hawking's universe in a nutshell, if you consider black holes as being made of p-branes, waves in p-branes could encode all the states even if black holes had high entropy.
That's not a new idea. Well, the "gravastar" part is, but I think the "universe in a black hole" thing has been around for quite awhile.
Basically, if you look at the density/matter distribution required to create a black hole, and extrap. outwards, it turns out that the density vs. size of the universe as a whole is really close to what you'd need to make a black hole.
Now Disney is going to have to refilm "The Black Hole"! For some reason I think that "The Spherical Void" just will not be as much of a hit with the little ones.
It's held on the backs of four turtles.
A direct link to goatse.cx gets modded Insightful? Don't take the Black Hole thing too far, mods.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Just the fact that your vastly non-infinite mind cannot grasp some of the most advanced theories in Cosmology does not mean that they are 'silly'. Nor does it prove the existance of a God, infinite or otherwise.
Just felt the need to inject a bit of logic and reason there.
Wow, a picture of the "void". Kinda funny to see a goatse.cx link actually being on topic! My hat tips to the mod who scored this one "+1, Insightful".
do not read this line twice.
This idea was presented at a conference for the American Physical Society in 2002 and was on the news sites soon afterwards.
There is already a band named after it. It's old news.
"an extremely durable form of matter never before experienced on Earth."
Maybe, just maybe, there is some of that matter on Mars! Imagine how cool it would be if the little rover could grind the surface of that matter and send us pictures, since nobody on Earth has ever seen it!
Here's hoping...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
like a Red Giant star actually
Um... /dev/null is a standard Unix thing, not just Linux. Heck, even my Cygwin box (or GNU/Windows as RMS would doubtless call it) has a /dev/null.
Lee Smolin has a great book on black holes as universes and applies evolutionary theory to universe creation.
The Life of the Cosmos. Very good read.
-Shane
I love teh int4rw3b!!!!!111one1
Someone luckily stashed a PDF of this (Copyright 1999 The Onion).
There you go.
Are we April 1st? Nope... I'm confused.
its matter is transformed into a spherical void surrounded by "an extremely durable form of matter never before experienced on Earth."
Isle 3, womens's underwear. 5 for $2.00 - durable, breathable, washable, wearable.
OK, AC, I'll bite.
My problem with religious freaks is the ignore the obvious evidence that exists for theories like Evolution and they throw Creationism in our faces.
Not only is this article duplicate, but it even refers to an article dated 09:52 am ET
23 April 2002.
"Cosmologist Stephen Hawking has made a number of high-profile wagers on future discoveries. In 1975, he bet Kip Thorne a subscription to Penthouse (the loser would get it mailed to his home) that a celestial mystery named Cygnus X-1 would turn out to be a black hole. [I'm pretty sure only Thorne wanted Penhouse and Hawking wanted a different periodical] It didn't. In 1991, he again lost to Kip Thorne, betting $140 and a T-shirt "embroidered with a suitable concessionary message" that a naked singularity could not exist." A Brief History of Betting on the Future [Wired]
You can't conceive of "zillions of states hiding in a black hole" but you can facily throw us the concept of an infinite universe ruled by an infinite mystical entity not of that universe but having a one-to-one correspondence with that universe? I think I'll nominate you for the Miles Hayes Award for explaining the simple in terms of the complex.
Personally, I suspect that what we're looking at is the conservation of information--the indestructable info-quantum.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
When will they have empirical evidence that our entire existance is just Butterflies dream...
And that the butterfly in question is My Butterfly
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
IAALS.
namely, this one, Gravitar.
Your mission: to travel to alien planets, wipe out enemy bunkers, gather fuel units, and make the solar system safe for you and future generations of space pioneers.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
...the internal states are stored as half pairs of lost socks.
Not much scriptural evidence for atoms either. Or dont you believe in them?
You must have faith to believe in either.
Almost identical story appeared 2 years ago:
;)
CNN version
Maybe there's a time dilation effect near a Gravastar?
So you prefer a theory with only theoretical evidence, and no practical or physical evidence, that can't be changed without destroying the whole structure?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
... they can't stick the surface to the pan.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Can you immagine a Bewolf Closter of thoes?
Anything with pysical dimensions must be contained by something, and that thing must itself be contained by something.
The whole concept of physical existence is flawed.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Yes, let's just give up trying to figure it out. Good call.
For those of you with short memories, Slashdot covered the gravastar theory when it was announced last year.
See these articles:
Black Holes Disputed, 1/19/2002
Doubting the Existence of Black Holes, 3/26/2002
There must be black holes. That's how articles in the editors' database mysteriously disappear so they can be duped later.
Strangely, the behavior upon reaching the goal is very erratic. I would estimate a 10% chance of actually passing over to the side of the goal, casually named 'the trifecta'. This low percentage of success has led us to blackball this blackhole, err, gravastar.
Say it to yourself three times:
I will not link to goatse.
I will not link to goatse.
I will not link to goatse.
*shudder
that we still have no real idea whats happening
"suggests" = " i reckon.." = "iam guessing.."
The universe has gravastars but is inside a gravastar...
GNU is not Unix.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The researchers claim that there's a "flaw in black hole theory" which they're fixing. But from what I understand, there currently is no theory of black holes right now, mostly intelligent guessing. We have general relativity and quantum mechanics, and we don't know how to reconcile them when we want to analyze the interior of black holes.
So its not as though there's a whole nice theory and they're plunning a hole in it. Any theory of black holes had better be a TOE (theory of everything), otherwise it has no leg to stand on.
Also, I've never managed to make sense of the claims about our universe being one of many or just a tiny part of something else etc. By occam's razor, those other things are unknowable and so it doesn't make sense to talk about them. That would be theology, not science.
But then again, IANAP, but these guys are, so whatever I said could be complete BS.
That's insane, who do these people think they are, Astrophysicists? Geez!
Here's another link to a similar story at Scientific American if your interested:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?artNever before experienced? Before what?
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
The poster did NOT "facily throw us the concept of an infinite universe ruled by an infinite mystical entity not of that universe but having a one-to-one correspondence with that universe?" as you opine. Who the hell do you think you are to describe what anyone may believe what theit God is? For all I know it may be a pile of dog shit to that guy. The point is the gibberish these mental midgets feed the scientific community with just to be published is astounding. If they are confused they should STFU. Black holes Gravastars my ass, you need a special brand of faith to believe that poppycock.
"...its matter is transformed into a spherical void surrounded by 'an extremely durable form of matter never before experienced on Earth...'"
one pound of which weighs over TEN THOUSAND pounds!
You're new here, aren't you.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
lets see how many people get sucked in.
It is not surprising that the question of weather or not homosexuals are born that way often comes up here on Slashdot. I am of the opinion that they are born normal and just get sucked in to that lifestyle.
OB Hawking (obscure?): [A cosmologist's] speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. "Ah, yes, madame," the scientist replies, "but what does the turtle rest on?" The old lady shoots back: "You can't trick me, young man. It's nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down."
Gravastar. What is that all about? Is it good or is it whack?
They're predicting something that can't be observed. From outside the event horizon, both a point-like black hole and the sphere-like black hole will look identical. Theories that cannot be disproved are boring. Move along, nothing to see here.
Let me just say that every 4 months or so somebody writes a paper that tries to explain black holes as something other than black holes. Some of these papers are good, and some are not, but the fact remains that there are people out there who just don't like the idea of black holes and try to come up with other explainations.
Usually these explanations are far more complex physically than a black hole, so until I see a compelling, scientifically verifiably alternative to the theory of black holes I'll apply the principal of Occams Razor. I.e. The simplest answer is most likely the correct one. Theories that are 30 times more complex than black holes but are not measurably different I'll continue to ignore.
the hawk man is gonna whup this guys ass...and that failing, he will do a drive by and fuck up that bitch's christmas real good with his cambridge posse and his 9mm physics of justice
I think the current "confusion" in the black hole theory lies mostly in the minds of people who sre laboring under the illusion that physics works the same on either side of a black hole's event horizon. It doesn't. Physics breaks down at the edge of the event horizon, so beyond that there's no "gravity" or anything else. The event horizon of a black hole is the point at which anything, accelerating at the speed of light directly away from the black hole, stands still. Note the "accelerating at", not "moving at". Relativity says that accelerating to the speed of light takes infinite energy, and once that speed is reached, the object moving at that speed has one dimension (in the direction of movement) extended to an infinite length.. and time is either infinite, or zero (I forget). :)
So, once something actually gets to the event horizon, it's stuck there forever, as it's being accelerated toward the black hole at speeds greater than the speed of light (which takes more than infinite energy).. but this isn't the best way to think of what has happened to this hypothetical object. It's more elegant (to me) to simply say that the object simply doesn't exist in our universe anymore.. because, basically, it doesn't. One of its dimensions is infinite, and the others (including time, I believe) have been compressed to zero. It can never deaccelerate from this speed, either. It's just gone, never to return. The object doesn't go into the black hole, or to another universe, because it's stuck on the event horizon of the black hole... that would mean that it is going faster than the speed of light, which would take more than infinite energy.
So, while this "gravistar" idea is interesting and clever, is it really needed? Oh, wait.. maybe I should RTFA?
I'm reminded of Stephen Baxter's Raft [linked: much earlier short story draft], which takes place in a universe where the gravitational constant is thousands of times higher, humans produce noticable gravity wells, life is concentrated into breathable nebulas, and the black holes at the centers of these nebulas produce such wildly intricate tidal forces that "gravitic chemistry" occurs on the surfaces of their accretion disks. (Fact-check me as needed.) Coasting by one of these black holes, the characters even find intelligent gravitic life.
It's obvious: if it was, we would be composed of the matter that gravastars are made of (the exotic dark matter that the article talks about).
Without being a physisist, I find the idea that the universe is some kind of bubble enclosed in another bigger bubble, and perhaps being an "atom" of some sort in a bigger universe quite an acceptable idea; in fact, as acceptable as the idea of only one universe. I don't see why one can be preferred over the other; and it's not that there are physics knowledge on this particular topic.
Now that we are talking about physics, can someone answer these simple questions ?
1) how come energy/matter is constant, if in the begginining there was nothing ? the big bang process that created the universe maybe could be replicated into this universe, bringing more matter into it.
2) If (1) is possible, then it may be possible that black holes exist and consume matter, just like the big bang created matter. Maybe a black hole is the opposite of the big bang.
3) Why should it be that gravity pulls things together ? for all we know, it might be the void that pushes matter in clumps; excuse me if this is a wild and crazy idea, but this explanation solves many problems:
a) the round shape of bodies; just like in water bubbles take spherical form because of equal pressure around them, it might be the same with "empty" space.
b) the accelerating expansion of the universe. The force of the void just pushes the universe's boundaries back.
In other words, the void might not be so "void" after all; the Cassimir effect is confirmed experimentally, which means the void contains untapped energy (zero point energy), which may cause the force of gravity as we know it.
"hence the name gra (vitational) va (cuum) star, or gravastar".
Umm I don't think that explanation helped any.
This is somthing I wrote a while back: I call it the Imploding Universe. So, a sigularity is where all the formulas blow up ... right ? The IMPLODING hypothesis goes a bit like this; all matter in the black hole becomes a single point in which the space/time fabric is re-ignited in a whole new universe.
So what appears to be an expanding universe is really a remnant effect of the imploding nature. The reason the universe appears to be expanding is because matter is uniformly shrinking and space is expanding to take it's place. The quantum mechanics is explained as a rebirth of the matter.
The "dark energy" observation may well be effects of implosion. ...
Since then, string theory talks about 'Brane's. So it is quite concievable that "our" universe is within one of these "Branes" and that the "seeping of matter into the brane happens when a "tear" in the current brane is formed from the extreme acitivity of gravitons (since the hypothesis is that gravitons pass through branes while EM and Nuclear forces do not.
This is really spooky.
Yep, thats MY theory. You have to admit it's cute. Universe's popping up all over the place ...
The peer review starts now and ends when someone either proves black holes or disproves this theory. Right now the 'official' story is also in process. Belief is a wonderful and transient thing. The things that people believed 50 years ago are not exactly the same as the things that most people believe in today. This is true in both our daily lives and the sciences. Go back 100 years and you'll see that our predecesors were mostly wrong about a lot of things.
As far as this theory is concerned, I have some doubts but I am willing to hear them through. As for Black Holes, I have some long standing concerns which have never been sufficiently answered. The inner workings of a Black Hole, like time before the Big Bang, is currently unknowable. They are still only theories and should be labeled 'under consideration'.
But don't take my word for it. Believe anything you want to believe. Doesn't make it so or you smart or this new theory stupid.
Something I've wondered a bit about for a while: People frequently say that black holes are infinitely dense. As a physical quantity, infinity makes no sense to me. Are black holes genuinely considered by the experts to be actually infinitely dense, or just very, very (but finitely) dense?
Has he come up with anything unique? What?
Gravastar sounds way too much like a new SUV. As in, "I may have to trade in my Canyonero and buy me one of those Gravastars. I wonder what color I should get."
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Radiating away as X/Gamma Ray bursts, whose incredibly rapid modulation redistributes this "information" back into space
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Supposedly, you can take nothing and split it into positive and negative energy & matter (not the same as anti-matter, apparently).
How this happens, IIRC is the subject to a great amount of handwaving about spontaneous quantum fluctuations.
Where the quantum thingies came from isn't explained. Personally, I find this nearly as plausible as claiming the universe was created by a short jewish man named Nathan Brazil - but there you go.
Clear, Dark Skies
my betta splendon lives in a similar physical universe. It's called a fish bowl! Ever wonder why there are so many fish in the sea ... look around!
I can't find any papers from the said authors on the physics archive, so these two obviously aren't well known or respectable among the scientific community.
Arxiv (mirrored at xxx.lanl.gov) is not peer reviewed, it's just a place where pretty much anybody affiliated with any university or research lab can archive their technical reports. If you want peer reviewed publications, look in journal and conference publications (on-line or off-line).
Furthermore, Arxiv is so disorganized and cumbersome to use that many scientists just don't bother with publishing on it at all.
Until some well-known scientist confirms this, I think I'll just believe the 'official' story about black holes.
It's not for scientists to confirm, it's for observations to confirm. Right now, observations seem consistent with black holes, gravastars, and many other possibilities, so you might as well keep an open mind.
from General Products
Does this mean alot of good science fiction got thrown out the window?
[o]_O
Schwarzschild conceived of such things, but (I could be wrong here) I believe it was Hawking who actually tied observed phenomena to something which had been pure speculation until then.
Clear, Dark Skies
At least I mostly forgot about this dupe before I read it.
"an extremely durable form of matter never before experienced on Earth."
Sounds fascinating... So, why do I feel like he's going to try to sell me a frying pan made out of the stuff?
YHBT. YHL. HAND
Admit it, I mean, wasn't that the hole idea, to start with?
-- "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."
... that if you do enough navel-gazing, you will turn yourself inside out.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
At the top of the article:
Thick-Skinned Gravastars Vie to Replace Black Holes, in Theory
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 09:52 am ET 23 April 2002
Now c'mon, I can understand someone being dumb enough to post something from April 2003 and think it's news, from from 2002? And editors accepting it, damn...
WARNING! above link gets rerouted to tubgirl!
Isn't the gravastar idea almost as old as the black hole theory?
It seems to me that a lot of people have been debating this for a long time.
Clear, Dark Skies
First: Some following posts show the author didn't even do a rudimentary search of the archive let alone anything else. A place to start for example, "Where are all these zillions of states hiding in a black hole?" Mottola said in a recent article in New Scientist magazine. "It is quite literally incomprehensible." or The "unique and remarkable properties" of a gravastar "could explain several high-energy astrophysical phenomena that now are puzzling," says Marek Abramowicz, a black hole expert at Gothenburg University. Oh, and Mottola was a researcher at Los Alamos' Theoretical Division. RTFA, dude.
... yes, it was released by a very presitigious research lab.
Second: Anyone involved with the scientific community in the least, should know that peer review is actually quite a contentious issue and by no means considered as accounting for "all fault-finding".
Third: The theory itself resolves some troubling issues with black hole theory. The latter has become so fashionable that even lay men speak of them without seeming to question some of the root concepts that stretch all but a seasoned physicist's imagination. A quote from a related article: Physicists have struggled for years to account for the huge entropy of black holes, and largely have failed. Unlike their black hole counterparts, Gravastars would have a very low entropy.
Finally: This linkis to the Los Alamos release
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Not wanting to start any (literal) holy wars here, but the reason that Evolution is tagged as a theory is because the evidence does not provide conclusive proof. Other scientific precepts are tagged as Laws because there is consistent proof that states that this concept is always the case. Evolution and Creation are both tagged as theories. I happen to put my chips on Creation. Just remember, science cannot and does not prove or disprove the existence of God. If it did, there wouldn't be a debate. ;-)
...then how do they explain that our universe seems to be accellerating in its expansion? Unless all the matter and gravitational forces are centered on the "shell" of the bubble...which seems to defy all current theories. Should not the bubble collapse inward upon itself as each section of the shell pulls on opposing sections?
The gravastar seems more weird than a generally accepted black hole.
... a lot of people thought Einstein and Newton were crazy ...
Newton did go crazy, from (among other alchemical things) the mercury he ingested.
-kgj
-kgj
Are you able to fathom this question "How can the universe be finite and how can it be infinite." I have asked this question for 40 years. Perhaps in the afterlife face to face with God it will be answered to my satisfaction.
How about an intergalactic Beowolf cluster of these?
/. comments, sorry)
(Obligatory
My
Dont you see the analogy? We think we are unique and exist outside terrible places like black holes. But we might be inside one for all we know.
Gravastars my ass, you need a special brand of faith to believe that poppycock.
Its called vedaanta.
IIRC matter inside the gravastar shell should be gradually pushed outwards towards the shell, which might explain some recent astronomical measurements which indicate the existence of a long range "antigravity" force.
I dont believe it..
Dont trust discoveries made by ShameCocks (someone from USC)
-AC
YHBT
I don't measure penis size by slashdot ID or by karma points. I'm glad that my pointing out a logical fallacy in the summary of the article has given you such entertainment.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
to me a hole is an orifice in some kind of matter.
now from what i've read in general, "black holes" are in fact a point where matter and energy converge from all directions.
to me, they look more like potholes on the universe highway.
Just remember, the existence of The Bible cannot and does not prove nor disprove the existence of God. If it did there wouldn't be a debate.
As for Evolution, I incorrectly referred to it as a Theory. As this link refers to it, Evolution is a Theory in much the same way as Gravity is a Theory.
Wasn't this same article (at least in principle) posted a couple years ago when the theory was first developed?
I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
You need a special brand of faith to believe that poppycock.
Good point... I guess the scientists who wrote this article should try and get religion tax-exempt status.
But on a more serious note: whether or not you believe something is unrelated to whether or not it is true.
So how exactly is "You need a special brand of faith to believe that poppycock." related to the topic? Remember we're talking about science here, not your beliefs system.
It's extremely vain of you to believe you are worthy of having a face to face with a god, if there even is one.
So what's on the outside of this giant gravstar we're in? :)
The "other side" of the same gravistar.
It's like "what's beyond the north pole" on a sphere.
On the surface of a sphere there is no "beyond the edge". Inside a kliensphere there is no "beyond the rim", because there is no rim.
Imagine the space in the universe is the 2-D surface of the water hanging from a dripping faucet. You're on the new-forming drip. Then the drip comes lose. The surface you're on closes into the surface of the drop. In 2-D there IS no beyond - you need an extra dimension for that.
Now consider a dripping faucet in 4-space, where the "surface" of the 4-D drop is the 3-D space of our universe.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If I am correct (no I am not a physicist) then if the temperature of the Bose Einstein Condensate drops below a certain threshold the hole thing explodes... If there are not only local gravistars but if the universe is one big one (as mentioned in the text). Could this be the base of a repeating Universe?? Question: does the theoretical gravistar have a regular repeating internal structure (especially near the end). If it is superregular the Universe would repeat itself in much the same fashion....
The very idea of a black hole entails that matter within its grasp is lost forever. (There is a proposed multi-billion year decay, but as far as I know this is still theoretical.) Trying to explain what is happening beyond the event horizon seems to me nothing but conjecture. It certainly fails the "empirical" requirement of scientific investigation.
We can extrapolate based on physical laws we observe outside of such entities. But to say, for a pertinent example, that the core of a black hole is a singularity vs. a new highly compact structure seems no more than conjecture. It might simplify equations to just treat the whole thing as a singularity, but this holds for any celestial body, and we know the simplification to be incorrect in everything but a black hole.
This may be a strawman, I'm sure you are talking about atomic structure, and how it behaves in high gravity situations. But here the reasoning holds true likewise. If the force that holds a neutron star from collapsing is passed, then either there is no further force to maintain the mass's structure or there is. But which is the case is, again, mere conjecture. We can't go into black holes, and we can't simulate the forces that create them.
So why do we make statements about their interior at all? Shouldn't we just stick to what we can know and investigate, such as how they form and how they interact with the universe once formed? Anything more is no more scientific than theology.
So this is a very interesting teory and certainly seems congruent to how [I understand] science to describe black holes. The difference is in the metaphor.
Culture seems to affiliate the concepts of 'entering' and black hole. After all, how can no matter 'escape' and the black 'hole' not become more massive? We think in terms of 'enter' or 'escape' oh, and there is also 'event'.
So this new gravastar metaphor seems less of these but is closer to concepts of 'barrier' and 'imprenatrable'. One could think that the 'other matter' that forms the 'surface' of the gravastar might be 'incompatible' with our own.
So if there might be such opposite forces at work containing a whole universe of energy wholly within a protective outter shell, what happens if/when the Gravastar 'pops'?
not if it's an event loop....
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I say a 'black hole' is any object with an event horizon no matter what strange undetectable theory we are using to describe what is inside that horizon.
I for one find this hilarious....
I'm totally fascinated by this stuff and read up on it constantly, however, the one thing that stings in the back of my mind is that it will be FOREVER until any of these theories are proven.
Yes, the theories make sense, but until concrete evidence is shown that proves it, it remains just that: a theory.
Black holes, Gravistars, strings.. these infinitely large (and small) items of the universe.. could they EVER be proven?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I am Gravastar! Beware I live! Run! Run! Run!
I am Gravastar! I hunger! Run, Coward!
Run! Run! Run!
You know... that mid-80s flick where the kids make a spaceship. It kind of reminds me of that funky really hard sphere that River Phoenix made using his Apple IIc.
It is not a closed system, so it looses energy from blackbody radiation.
Also, a BCE you have if all particles are in their groundstate and build a homogenous waveform. For atoms, you need really low thermal energy to archive this ( lower than 500nK or so). But what if there are some strange(not the strange, but others) quarks that only exist in such enviroments and the energy is just enough to create them in their groundstate?
There are tons of possibilies in strange enviroments. Here on earth we would all be happy to have a superconductor working at room temperature (300K), but in every neutron star there is a supercunduction shell with temps >10^6K. Just because the high pressure enables the rest of the protons to build cooper pairs....
Also, normal physical laws _may_ not be appliable in really strange situations. Many theories about quantum graviatations contain higher order terms that are neglectable everywhere but such situation,ect.
Btw, why does a "" before a number break text input if posting as plain old text? (ok, it isnt displayed, i mean a "smaller" sign)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Hypocrates said the universe is shaped like a pentacondodecaeder.
Modern scientists believe that when you move out of one side of the universe you come in at the other and that the overall shape of this structure is more or less an endless set of mirrored pentacondodecaeders.
People should check out the 'old' knowlege for interessting theories and insights, they are very much the same than those today. And might even offer deeper insights in where to look more closely. Rudolf Steiner (the founder of 'Anthroposohpy' - think "sophisticated semi-mystic goetheanisim"), for instance said, that physical laws change across distances in the physical universe, very much as gravity decreases when moving away from an object (planet) and other gravities 'take over'. Curiously enough, Steiner didn't have high end telescopes to _watch_ things at the edge of the universe moving faster than light - as we can do today. Neither did Hypocrates have the devices to measure the universe.
Makes you think how far of from true insight modern materialistic sciences are...
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Science has nothing to do with your beliefs? anything not directy obseravble is faith, which is 99% of science, even that which is directly observable can and has been wrong. Every Unix box neeeds a root account and every reality needs a God
Something I've never understood is why there are X-ray jets blasting from black holes? How are the Xrays emissions not subject to massive gravity? Black Holes swallow 'everything' they say so how do the x-rays escape?
WURD!!
From the article...
...
;)
Such excruciating bends cause the warping of both space and time, or space-time, as the theorists put it. Gravastars would be no less forgiving of what we traditionally call reality.
Inside a gravastar, space-time would be "totally warped," the researchers say. Further, the inner space would exert an outward force, which would enhance the durability of the bubble.
Yet even before they've figured this out, Mottola and Mazur have taken their extreme idea to a mentally dizzying new level: The say our entire universe may be the interior of a giant gravastar.
So the evidence for this is that reality is totally warped. Some paper.
IBID
Regardless of whether black holes exist, and regardless of whether gravastars exist, the black hole entropy problem still needs to be solved in theory, because theory admits black hole solutions, and needs to be able to account for the thermodynamics of any solution. Theorists don't study black hole entropy because it's astrophysically relevant or measured in expeirments that need to be accounted for; they study it because they want to understand all mathematical aspects of the theory, aspects which are present whether or not they are realized in nature. So gravastars do absolutely nothing to resolve "troubling issues" with black hole theory.
Besides, I wouldn't say that physicists have largely failed to account for the huge entropy of black holes. Circa 1995, both string theorists and loop quantum gravity researchers were able to take a large step towards deriving the Hawking-Bekenstein entropy formula.
Oh wait... that's Sinistar.
they stopped seriously believing in singularities several years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
they are the same thing, the only problem i see is scientists can not put it in a laboratory and study it, that is why there is so much speculation...
Gravistar = Blackhole - whatever- it sucks up everything (including light & space-time)
It seems to me that this theory is a very complex way of explaining away a very simple theory. I'll reserve judgement though until we can get some hard data from the near vicinity of a black hole/gravastar.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Man's drive to define and explain things like black holes is like our desire to save the Panda, an animal whose numbers are dwindling because they apparently haven't quite perfected mating yet and will only eat one kind of plant, from extinction when 99% of all the species that have ever existed are extinct today.
We feel a need to preserve and understand the world as it is now, even though there may be little evidence of our ever having existed 100 million years from now.
Until we can fly out there and observe one of these things we'll probably never know quite what they are. Not to say that we should stop looking, you never know what we might find out there.....
News for nerds ? I don't think so.
I think this is a dupe actually, although I only got one hit (this story) when I searched for it.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
Damn. I just had that thought myself.
Something interesting is afoot.
First, the article calls entropy "information", then it calls entropy "states". I think I'm going to stick with entropy being called "general disorder", as taught in basic thermo.
Then, the article refers to the Bose-Einstein Condensate, saying, "everything reaches a single state, called a quantum state." Now, in quantum objects (wells, lines, and dots), aren't all states quantized?
Finally, the article states that light cannot escape a black hole, but energy can. Well, which one is it?
On a side note, I believe it was Stephen Hawking who suggested that due to tunnelling phenomena, a black hole can eject light. When this occurs, the probability of ejection increases. Provided that the black hole consumes less matter than the matter-like waves it's releasing, it could reduce in mass until it no longer exists.
Well, given your Physicistnicityness... and my ignorance of the matter... I bow to your superior intellect. And I, for one, welcome... er... nevermind.
While every revolutionary theroy may come from somebody regarded as a crackpot, ALL the crackpot theories come from crackpots, too.
And I suspect the ratio is something more like 10000 to 1 for the "real crackpot" to "misunderstood revolutionary" ratio.
So remember-- while the occasional nutty theory turns out to be the new revolution, the truth of the matter is that most nutty theories are just nutty theories. Even if this is the ONLY way we get revolutionary theories, it doesn't change the fact that most of the time, the crackpots are crackpots. Give it time to sort itself out. If the theory proves viable, it will be shown over the next few decades.
Read those abstracts found on the harvard search engine. Pretty interesting stuff, even from a layman's perspective:
A new, static, spherically symmetric solution to Einstein's equations is described, that presents a very different alternative from classical black holes for the endpoint of gravitational collapse. The solution is characterized by an interior de Sitter region (p= -rho) of gravitational vacuum condensate with an exterior Schwarzschild geometry of arbitrary total mass M. These are separated by a very thin shell with a microscopic but finite proper thickness of ultracold matter with the eq. of state p= rho, replacing both the Schwarzschild and de Sitter classical horizons. These extreme eqs. of state arise naturally as the allowed phases in the effective theory of quantum gravity, and the classical event horizon is replaced by a phase boundary in the quantum theory. The new solution has no singularities, no event horizons, and a globally defined timelike Killing field. Its entropy is maximized under small fluctuations and is given by the standard hydrodynamic entropy of the thin shell, which is of order M, instead of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy formula (which is of order M^2). Hence unlike black holes, the new solution is thermodynamically stable and suffers from no information paradox. The formation of such a cold (1 i K) gravitational condensate stellar remnant very likely would require a violent collapse process with an explosive output of energy. The formation and excitation of such remnants could provide more efficient central engines than classical black holes for some very high energy sources observed in the universe."
As a theory it sure beats dark matter.
- Uh, our calculations are off. We can't see why, but it affects gravity.
- So, like, if we put in some more stuff, that like maybe is invisible?
- Hey, yeah! And we'll call it dark stuff, or matter, yeah!
- Good one, now pass the dutchie.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
That's a rip off of the claims of Archimedes Plutonium. As usual, people in real life, like Archimedes Plutonium, are a lot funnier than satire.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Is anyone else disturbed by all that talk of tieing down dollies and banging dollies.
Just to calm you down, it dolly rented with a Uhaul truck.
Anm
This confusing concept is only further obfuscated by shockingly poor science writing. For example:
"Black holes were conceived during World War 1 by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild, who while serving in the war was scratching solutions to Einstein's theories...Einstein first thought the idea was nuts."
Wrong, black holes were first conceived by Laplace back in 1798. Moreover, no one thought it was nuts - it was a natural consequence of orbit theory coupled with a finite speed of light.
Science is a type of belief system. Man I hate the dumbasses in the world that forget this. Why would science not be a belief system. What makes it special nothing. And don't say because I can observe it but you cann't really say that truthfully. Science is a expanding/shrinking/evolving/devolving complex belief system. No different than Christanity, Muslim, Sheeaboo, Me day beliefs. It is just you quatigy and qualify diffenetly than them and sometimes similar to them. You are right on your statement "whether or not you believe something is unrelated to whether or not it is true" This is one reason science is a belief system. Man with people in power saying that science is not a belief system I believe that most to all science would come to a halt becasue it would have to be based on "facts" and if I rememeber correctly us humans cannot even agree on "facts" And all a fact is a bleief that meets certian requirments and these requirments are not even the same and are forever changing
...part of the joke.
Isn't the plot of the movie Men In Black (1||2) about a universe inside a marble sized jewel, which is the source of great power?
And then at the end, as the camera zooms out past our solar system and beyond, we're just another marble in some alien kid's marble collection?
Made me think a bit..
Where did the writers of the film get these ideas?
-- Robi
...there is a theoretical construct, then you make predictions on what the observed effects will be. If you've got a theory that can predict everything we observe, great. If you can predict something we haven't observed *yet*, you'll be decleared a genius. Even if you can't prove the underlying model, most people will then accept it as fact.
You may not observe a single superstring, but if you can explain the four fundamental powers of nature through it, that'll do. While we might not directly observe the nature of the black hole, how world it e.g. effect the bleeding back into normal space (as predicted by Hawking and a real observed effect)?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Science is a type of belief system. Man I hate the dumbasses in the world that forget this. Why would science not be a belief system. What makes it special nothing.
Actually, the scientific method is almost the opposite to belief. Belief is about accepting something as true. Science is about proving things false beyond reasonable doubt. A theory isn't scientific if it cannot be proved wrong.
> Not wanting to start any (literal) holy wars here, but the reason that Evolution is tagged as a theory is because the evidence does not provide conclusive proof. Other scientific precepts are tagged as Laws because there is consistent proof that states that this concept is always the case.
Atomic theory? Quantum theory? Theory of relativity?
Theories are models that explain some aspect of the universe. Laws are observed regularities in the way the universe operates, e.g. law of conservation of matter, first law of thermodynamics, etc.
The distinction has nothing to do with proofs, because the empirical sciences don't deal in proofs. Both laws and theories are empirical results.
> Evolution and Creation are both tagged as theories.
Creation is not a theory. Theories are the result of the application of science, but creationism is simply the mantra of biblical literalists.
> Just remember, science cannot and does not prove or disprove the existence of God.
No one with a clue says it does. But science does show that lots of the beliefs of biblical literalism are wrong.
> If it did, there wouldn't be a debate.
Sure there would. Geologists showed us 200 years ago that there never has been a global flood, but the Jehovah's Witnesses reopened the debate in the 20th Century, despite the massive evidence against their position.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Do you seriously doubt the existence of an infinite God when confronted with the silliness these "great minds" babble about?
Theism would gain much more respect if it didn't rely so heavily on non sequiturs for its supporting arguments.
Personally, I have more respect for someone who says "I believe it because that's what I was taught as a kid" than for someone who says "I believe it because of $BADARGUMENT".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Any alive pictures?
Less is more !
From our frame of reference, it would take an infinite amount of time for an event horizon to form in any event, so there ain't no such animal as a black hole. We might have stars that are at various stages of collapse but from our and every other frame of reference actually outside the collapsing star itself, no potential black hole has actually reached become one, yet.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
...is that if it is a true point singularity, I'm not able to grasp what form it has.
If you imagine it as matter, no matter how hard you squeeze something together, what started on the left side will be on the left side, and the right side on the right side. Squeeze it together so you have molecules touching, atoms touching, atom core touching, but there's still left and right. But in a single point, they occupy the same space, and not some delta-epsilon argument about an infinitely small space (where you could still imagine lefts and rights), but a single point. You just cant imagine them as masses squeezed together.
On the other hand, the other dominant form I've learned is that of a wave. Waves can interfere, so it would be something like a laser with (an infinite number of) waves adding up to form the singularity. But it's impossible for a wave to exist in a point. In order to be a wave, it requires some dimension to exist along. But a point has none.
So what is a singularity? Is it some third form of energy, or does it actually make sense based on the duality theory we learned at school?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
except that by no means was clinton a fiscal-conservative. His policies were severely hampered by the election of a republican house majority 2 years into his presidency.
Not fiscally conservative? He was the first US president in a damn long time to create a budget with a surplus (which the Republicans undermined by asking for more spending, BTW). He was the last one, too. Thank you Bush I hope the 500billion dollar deficit and 5 trillion dollar debt crush al-qaeda like they did the USSR! :P
Sounds like the neutron star of SF lore. Where enough matter accumulates to crush down to sub-atomic particles, enough gravity to hold it all together, like a huge neutron, but not enough that sucks light in.
At least that was known space.
I guess Steven Hawking has to cancel that Playboy subscription.
(if you don't get it, move along. There is something to "get" and your mod points are needed elsewhere. Thank you.)
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
the Bose-Einstein-Timex Condensate
I have also studied the black-hole physics and I know of the equation that a black-hole requires an infinite time to form. This equation is not "broken" and is a boundary condition upon the local-time equation from the particle view-point. The particle may view itself as being able to pass the event-horizon, but its time clock is slowing down and coming to a stop, so its view is irrelevant.
The GRAVASTAR theory is at least consistent with your general relativity equations. GRAVASTAR is simpler because it does not require negative-time, naked singularities, or any other breaking of the accepted laws of physics.
Of couse what you have to realize is, if this copy of you in future time has already done what you've been meaning to do, and so you don't do it because it's already been done, but if you don't do it, than that copy of you in the future didn't do it after all, but was watching Cartoon Network instead. So then it didn't get done at all. But if it didn't get done, then you might have realized earlier and done it, in which case it would have been done, in which case you wouldn't do it because it's been done and... AUGH!!! *head explodes*
That would be *cool*
someone watching you fall into said hole (from the outside) would see you move slower and slower as you approached the event horizon and would observe your clock to be running "slow". At the instant you hit the event horizon, you would actually appear to "freeze", with no further updates (since you are now inside the horizon and light can not cross the boundary in the outward direction).
Check me on this:
From the frame of reference of an observer outside the hole, you are actually now inside the event horizon (with the light from your fall BEFORE you crossed it just taking its time spiraling out, creating a mirage).
He does not compute that you are actually not yet there, but still falling in with your clock slowed way down by time dialation. (And thus he doesn't compute that you never get there during the life of the universe, so in principle you might be rescued in a million years or so when AAA has developed a space towcraft that is up to the job.)
And despite the radical differences in the observer and observed's frames of reference, the question still has meaning.
Right?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The part about us being inside a gravastar sounds like the galactic energy barrier from episode 2 in Star Trek.
Does that make Roddenberry an official sci-fi prognosticator?
Regards, BubbaJonBoy
on the subject can be found in the New Scientist journal or...here:
http://www.sciforums.com/t5376/scd6aa1f3497a9a8949 43c2c19febdb24/thread.html
You can also possibly view the Mazur and Mottola submission (preprint) at:
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/grqc/0109035
A google search on gravistars turns up several sources that are perhaps better than the space.com readers digest article.
Now people, get a hold of yourselves. Most, if not ALL, of you are fully unqualified to poo-poo the idea just as you are unqualified to critique black hole "science". It is downright stupid to poo-poo the idea and hold the classic black hole idea as sacrosanct. No one. NO ONE has seen a black hole. They are ENTIRELY ghosts of the imagination INFERRED from observations that are wholly in accordance with the idea of gravistars OR black holes.
Claiming that the idea of gravistars requires too much "hand waving" ignores the fact (stone cold fact, that is) that the idea of a black hole itself requires an incredible amount of hand waving and eye covering to get past its very real problems.
The jury is still out on black holes. If another idea accounts for the same observations while at the same time avoiding the many problems that black holes create...well, it would end up being a better theory outright. The gravistar deserves a real chance to germinate and grow on its merits and math and must not be tossed out the door on the principal that it violates the holy black hole doctrine.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I'm a firm believer in an "infinite hierarchy of universes" hypothesis (turtles all the way down) insofar as it is extremely possible that This Is The Way It Is. I find myself getting irritated when seemingly rational/intelligent people dismiss such a theory (or variants thereof) as stoner philosophy, i.e. Dude what if we're toejam on a big giant guy pass the bong etc etc. This is just a valid hypothesis as any, and I argue that it is equally, if not more elegant than many of the current Theories of Everything.
I read about the theory of Gravastars in 1999, these ideas were started at Oxford quite a while ago along with the silly parallel universes theory. Physics news sure takes long to hit slashdot.
In fact, its not like someone just COMES up with an idea, and the next day the news carries the story. These ideas are started as among many theoretical possibilities, and various scientists elevate it until the people reading scientific journals consider it important enough to be fodder for the news. Nothing is completely uncertain, and like the parallel universes, you can expect the Gravastar ideas to quitely and gradually die down along the years.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I doubt that most black-hole enthusiasts actually look at, or know the actual theory, it requires tensor math. Black-holes are a popular FAD, the theory has serious problems, and I am ticked off at the discovers that say "I don't what else could be that massive" as proof that they found one.
The equation for the time it takes for a particle to pass the event-horizon goes to infinite time as the event-horizon is approached. Some enthusiasts claim that this equation must be broken because the local-time viewpoint of the particle does not show the infinity, so they ignore it. My observation is that the local-time
equation is purposely constructed to not show such things. It purposely ignores the fact that local-time for the particle is slowing down and coming to a stop as the event-horizon is approached. The first equation still holds as a boundary condition on the local-time equation.
The upshot of this is that a mass that is contracting creates a bubble of time-dilation around itself. The closer it comes to the black-hole criticality, the more time slows and stops it. It can never actually reach black-hole density, and the event-horizon can never actually form.
I call this the theory of the Nearly-Black Hole.
It is consistent with the GRAVASTAR theory.
From any distance away it is just a massive object and nobody can prove otherwise. All the good effects of a black-hole can only be observed if you get within the event horizon. There are many explanations for what a massive object could be and it is not acceptable to claim to have discovered a black-hole just because you can not think of anything else that could be that massive.
The GRAVASTAR theory is consistent with this analysis and does not break the laws of physics the way that black-hole theory does.
The dense matter surround is just how highly time-dilated matter would behave. Additional force does not have any effect, it cannot move closer to the center of mass because time just slows more.
Most scientists do not take the black-hole theory as physical reality. We have discussions among ourselves, but the flashy black-hole theorists get on the news. It is about time (sic) that an alternate theory like GRAVASTAR has gotten some notice.
So close to the mythical "acronym only" post, but then you had to go and talk about the abstracts...
What if our universe is simply matter consumed by a black hole? I wonder if that could be possible. I.e. the big bang as we know it was something that collapsed and started violently sucking in a whole lot of matter. That would obviously mean that black holes in our universe would contain more or less large universes as well.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Maybe Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick were onto something with The Sentinel (aka 2001 a Space Odyssey)?
Emil has been working on this for years, and he's presented it at numerous conferences over the past year or so, including one I attended in Santa Fe over the summer. Check out this article, published Jan. 22, 2002 as well.
That's a first... An AC posts a link to goatse, and he's modded "Funny" and not "Troll" or "Flamebait".
Maybe the intense gravity of a nearby black hole are distorting the mod's senses? Or is the world about to end?!
*Runs away*
Learn something new.
is it me, or does that just sound like a new sci-fi series on the scifi channel?
Oh is that the joke? How obscure...
Anyway I think being homosexual is against evolution (Or if your a christian who believes homosexuals are going to hell, then devine evolution.) and therefore against genetics, so it seems impossible for a person to be born gay. Of course, it can be argued gays are a result of over population and are increasing in number to perserve the rest of humanity from a severe lack of resources. The problem with this is that places where homosexuality is most abundant is places where there are relatively small population density (America and Europe) as opposed to high population areas where there is an actual threat of food shortage. (India, China, ect.)
Did you know that America pays farmers to dumps huge amounts of food to perserve sane food prices? Yup. Just dumps it away, your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen. Now I'm going off into a tangent, but still, it's amazing how much money are government spends to keep Farmer Bob from losing his job.
It seems that whenever a country (America, Ancient Greece and Rome, Most of Europe, Japan) gets a hold of absurd luxuries that the population seems to start leaning from the straight. Right now it's not that bad, (I'd be amazed to here it if America had a whole 1% gay populous.) but it's really high on global standards. This isn't to say it's a bad thing, time will tell, but we know what happened to Greece and Rome.
"Am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Or a bowling ball dreaming I am a plate of sashimi?"    
Just one question then. If the inside of the gravastar IS the outside of the gravastar, then there is only ONE side. Whatever contained INSIDE the gravastar actually IS the same as that OUTSIDE of the gravastar. So, the universe contained inside the gravastar is the universe outside the gravastar. Given that there are finite number of gravastars within the universe and the universe outside these gravastars are the same, each of the gravastar has the SAME universe. Thus, we can conclude that there is only ONE universe, is it not?
What you have described is similar to Neitzsche's Eternal Reoccurance.
"While these objects may abound in the universe, they also say that our entire universe may reside within a giant gravastar." If this were true, then our Sun would need to be at the center of the gravastar if we were to have unhindered orbit around it. Should our solar system be closer to the edge of the gravastar our orbit around the sun would be altered by the pull of the center of the gravastar, pulling it in a more elliptical orbit.
I couldn't think of a sig.
Absolutely, just where IS the beer review?
...oh, wait...
I'd like to participate!
damn!
never mind.
It's kind of like the old "we could all just be a speck on a giant's toenail" thing, right? was this new or just scientifically backed up?
They'll find the finished version of HL2 in one of these Gravastars?
Prepare the ship... for LUDICROUS speed!
The answers to the plot holes in the matrix... so that's where they went
I thinks its already been done.
Isn't that how the time travelling is performed in Timeline?
Not that I've seen the film, I read the book a couple of years ago.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
Everybody knows the world rests upon the four elephants, who in turn are on a giant turtle swimming through intersteller space to its mating grounds.
"The universe is on Orion's belt."
but as you look at smaller and smaller particles the same may very well happen. you find more and more things, as things get smaller, and smaller. allready we are finding the limits as to *what we can measure*...what's really keeping there, a billion billion times smaller than anything we can measure, a group of physics laws that allow for tiny, tiny life to exist, and what's then keeping it from existing practically everywhere? or at least every foot or so. and what of a billion billion times smaller than that? i'm pretty sure our physics isn't even beginning to touch on that stuff, and unless you try to deduce some *one true element*(which i think will inevidibly be able to be broken apart)... you are going to have an infinite regress smaller
and why not larger, too? a sphere with center earth and radius a billion times what we observed has certian qualities, namelessly, mass, center of gravity, etc. mabye it has more qualities, and really, why not? what about 10^10000 times bigger sphere? we have no idea out there and there is nothing keeping us from being some part of a fractal everything happens multiple times everywhere in every possible configuration, so long as it is within the laws of physics,(or mabye not?)? as for time,
and why shouldn't you watch television all day?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I thought it was from mercury fumes, boiling it or something...
... sorry I can't remember the source.
I recall reading that he actually ingested the stuff
Not unusual for his time -- people took mercury for various reasons, e.g. as a remedy for syphilis.
Archaeologists have tried to locate latrines dug by the Lewis & Clarke expedition -- so many members of the expedition were taking mercury for their syphilis, chances are the mercury can still be found in the now-lost latrines.
-kgj
-kgj
atoms grow old
go to these black hole things and die
turn in to energie blablabla
atom heaven, it's like the bestest place in the universe!
...since they were uncomfortable using the 'obscene' term "black hole" :-)
Hmm...I see to remember timeliness being one of the eight factors that makes a good news story. This would have been an excellent article to report, had it been posted on 23 APR 02! Just FYI.
-tvh2k
I doubt that our entire universe "exists within a gravistar." Some of this smacks of ancient efforts to explain the heavens, going back thousands of years. Anyone have some examples? Mayan, Egyptian, Greek (no, too advanced) American Indian? These ideas were acceptable then, as now, because of their grandeur and simplicity, all-in-one. One could float this out amongst the population, and everyone would be happy that an explanation was finally set in stone, for all to enjoy, worship and know.
I read this article (I thought at same site) last year. Look at the date. April 2002. Sorry, guys, old news :S.
Xhentil Do'ana
The book Pushing Gravity: New Perspectives on Le Sage's Theory of Gravitation consists of a number of speculative papers on the underlying cause of gravity, but in a "pushing" mode that lends itself to theorizing gravity particles (gravitons, although in a more 'concrete' sense than many theorists espouse). The papers are pretty fascinating, all arriving at near-Newtonian/Einsteinian equations, but predicting certain testable aberrations (e.g. changes with distance that might suit the rotation rates of galaxies without having to postulate large amounts of dark matter in the arms).
The proposed mechanisms by the various authors vary, but a couple of general points of agreement emerge:
One topic that gets discussed is that there may come a density and thickness of matter which absorbs practically all incoming gravitons.
This may put a limit on how dense a star can get, as regardless of how much matter is in the star, there will come a point where the innards get more and more shielded from graviton interaction.
Wouldn't be exactly like the gravastar, but one could imagine that the densest part of such a star wouldn't be in the center; it would be between a high-pressure, graviton-shielded inside, and a high-density, graviton-compacted outside.
It's an interesting possibility, anyhow :)
(*They do get into interesting questions like "where does the energy from the gravitons go?", and a couple tackle the question, "How do gravitons get regenerated?" - with the presumption that gravity isn't "running down" in the universe)
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
> Science is a type of belief system. [...] No different than Christanity, Muslim, Sheeaboo, Me day beliefs.
Actually, science differs from all those because it relies on a built-in system of sanity checks. That's the essence of the so-called "scientific method". It's also why science is self-correcting, unlike belief systems, which are self-propagating. In science you change the conclusions to fit the facts; in belief systems you change the facts to fit the belief.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
rifter: 'create a budget with a surplus' Whoa, back in the pants...the surplus was mainly yet-unevaporated equities overinvestment. No political party affiliation necessary, save 'In Greenspan We Trust'. In the wake of the dot-collapse we're noticing how offshoring industry and jobs clearly also helps our country in the long run. Lots more politicians to thank here. Long live the Hindus. So do migrant (south of border) workers here (U.S) siphoning resources help slip our collective throats. Spanglish is way more layed back than eubonics (sp?), s'all good. Nada. Daddy Warbucks/ Big Brother just says 'smile into the camera'. This main farticle only reminded me about Pinto tripping that the whole universe was in his fingertip, in Animal House. - JGC in Seattle
Gamma ray bursts could be
a) a weapon of truly mass destruction (capable of sterilizing a large portion of a galaxy) independently invented time and time again by civilizations all over the universe, or
b) accidents that happen when a civilization experiments with extreme high-energy supercolliders
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Does this mean the idea of time travelling through wormholes is completely wrong? Wormholes were the best chance at time travel and now... :(
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
That means that the Black hole in the other universe had enough matter sucked in to build our entire universe. And the big bang that presumably created that universe comes from one that is vastly bigger than ours. So where do you stop? This infinite(?) Russian Dolls thing might run into some extra-universal sort of a planck limit. Or maybe not. Any infinite thing leads to some rather weird philosophical problems and paradoxes.
:)
For instance, if our universe is infinite then, by probablility, there must be someplace in the universe that contains an exact copy of this one except that you are not reading slashdot now. And infinitely many of those in all subtle variations. In other words, in an infinite universe anything that CAN happen WILL happen somewhere, statistically. That sorts of put a damper on any speculation on the meaning of life.
There was a very nice article in SciAm (and reprinted in Popular Mechanics) about this recently. It was even on the web, might still be.
Infinity leads to weird issues as Cantor and Russel and Frege discovered at the end of the 19th century, and this goes for physics as well as mathematics. Actually, our field of computer science came to quite some extent from a attempt to put mathematics on a more secure foundation after it was shaken by the infitnity paradoxes, so this is not necessarily bad
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
I was just giving the guy credit for at least having some semblance of a defensible theory. If he was just throwing around the idea of "an infinite god" because he couldn't think of anything cogent to say, then there's no point in even discussing his silly ideas. As for what anybody believes, this just points out your thorough misunderstanding of what science is all about. Obviously, individual scientists may have beliefs, but the process known as science has nothing to do with belief. The HYPOTHESIS presented in the article is just that, an hypothesis. It is not "believed" by anyone, not even the authors of the hypothesis. They are simply throwing out a suggested explanation for some of the inconsistencies of the theory of black holes. It is then up to them and others to determine whether this hypothesis is consistent and in line with everything else that is known. This does not include infinite gods or the belief systems of folks who can't conceive of any other explanation of the existence of reality than some deus ex machine from which things came to be.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
>In science you change the conclusions to fit the >facts; in belief systems you change the facts to >fit the belief.
That may hold in some cases, but not all. If you study enough religions, you will find that some , ( like Islam ) do not allow for "changing" or other manipulation of the facts, and in fact encourage the scientific method as part of their dogma. Example: ( again Islam ) where believers are encouraged to explore creation and discover how everything works.
You may have written this in a hurry, but I wanted to chime in and comment on this part of you post to make sure it was clear that the blanket statement concerning beliefs doesn't hold in all cases.
I can't afford a sig!
Actually, infinity does not mean "Everything", it means "countless things". For example, I can have an infinite line, but that does not mean that the line crosses every conceivable point on the paper. In fact, with an infinite line, there are infintely many more points that the line did not cross than there are points that it did cross.
Engineering and the Ultimate
The insults and ideological rantings from over-excited individuals is why scientists who do not take the black-hole theory as "Reality" talk among themselves.
I recognize your replies as the knee-jerk repeating of the arm-waving explanations seen in books touting black-holes. All this arm-waving will not change the fact that the external-time equation is the important one to external observers like ourselves. It remains as a boundary condition limiting the scope of application of the other equation. You have not advanced any arguement as to why the local-time equation should escape the bounding of it time variable. This is not a case where relativity denies there being a common reference frame, the particle in clearly in a gravity well with its time-dilation effects and all observers can see this and should take it into account.
I you only rely upon the statements made in black-hole touting books you hardly have a chance to notice how loose the math is. You actually have to do the math yourself.
A boundary condition is a limitation of one of the free variables, that is imposed by one equation upon the usage of that variable in another equation describing the same event from a different viewpoint. In this case the external viewpoint equation has time going to infinity at the event-horizon, and the particle not advancing past that radius. The local-time equation cannot violate that boundary condition just because it is based upon a different viewpoint. What exactly makes its viewpoint so privileged?
I have a perfect right to advance a theory, and
to give it a name (The Nearly-Black Hole Theory).
You claim to be a physist; a scientist would
tolerate the scientific process more and the alternative ideas that it introduces.
In any discussion group I can find only 1 in 6 who would try to defend the black-hole theory as actual reality. The rest are not ready to commit themselves to accepting black-holes as proven reality.
Those who believe in them, apparently do so on their faith upon what is only a mathematical exercise, which depends upon the choosen mathematical model, and that as of yet has not been supported by any physical observation of an event-horizon.
There are alternative mathematical models, as any physist should know.
Please do not rant at me anymore stuff that you have read in a book somewhere.
ya gotta have elephunts in there somewhere dude
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers