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Black Holes No More -- Introducing the Gravastar

Posted by Cliff on from the yet-another-cosmic-theory dept.

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".

6 of 670 comments (clear)

  1. ah.... by holzp · · Score: 5, Funny

    the /dev/null of the universe!

    1. Re:ah.... by Boing · · Score: 5, Funny
      In the spirit of operating system universe metaphors:

      In the beginning, God created the universe, and saw that it was good. And God created Man, and Man developed Windows 3.1. Angered, God sent a UDP packet flood filled with His wrath to destroy the sins of man.

      Time went on, and once again mankind became wicked and corrupt. Arrogantly, a tower was built of such size and breadth that it was said that it would reach the Gates of heaven, and it was named the tower of Win32. God punished the wickedness of man by releasing a plague of worms o'er the land, and caused the tribes of men to be unable to interoperate. The tribe of Noob called their language Me98. The tribe of Sadmin called their language Entie2000, or Ekspee in certain regions.

      And time went on in that manner for some time. But yet again, mankind became frought with sin, and God sent a savior, whom he named Linus. But the descendents of the tribe of Redmond had Linus berated under the rule of Pontius PHB.

      And God spake, "fsck this", and made Linux the True System of the Universe. And he didst pipe all sinners into /dev/null, and he didst give those of kind spirit very high "nice" priorities.

      We must look to the day when all zombie processes will rise from their slumber, and the monitors will go black, and the high-bandwidth pipes will run red as blood, and all directories in /home will be judged as fit, or...

      DELETED!

    2. Re:ah.... by hoggoth · · Score: 5, Funny

      > That's how I do my backups. /dev/null is surprisingly fast to backup and use /dev/rand to restore. Plus I never have to change tapes or even compress the backups...

      I was wondering what is this /dev/rand you were speaking about, so I took a look (cat /dev/rand) and was surprised to find the complete works of Shakespeare stored in a device on my system. Linux never ceases to amaze me.
      However, when I tried to view it again all I got was gibberish. Please tell me how to view the complete works of Shakespeare through /dev/rand again.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  2. Re:Stoner philosophy by Scrameustache · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Dude... what if, like... our whole universe... is just one tiny atom... in the toenail of some giant dude?"

    "Woah, dude."

    Man, you should write scripts for the Matrix!

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  3. Oh great! by qazamotto · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Re:It's turtles all the way down! by Odin's+Raven · · Score: 5, Funny
    "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?

    The last thing that gets sucked into the gravastar is the gravastar itself, which results in the formation of what scientists call a kleinstar, a four-dimensional construct where the inside is the outside (and vice versa). This neatly avoids any issues arising from the concept of having the universe contained within something that is itself within the universe, by moving the whole discussion into the realm of mathematical topology -- which nobody understands, but which we're all too embarassed to admit.

    Remember to stock up on Klein bottles now, so you'll have something to drink out of once the kleinstar forms. ;-)

    --
    A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.