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Black Holes 'Do Not Exist,' Contends Physicist
SpaceAdmiral writes "Nature reports that, according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, 'It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist.' George Chapline argues that the collapse of massive stars is more likely to lead to dark energy stars. These dark energy stars behave somewhat like a black hole outside of the surface, but the negative gravity inside could cause matter to 'bounce back out again.'"
I've been fooled by Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock all these years. DOH!
Here is his actual article (PDF).
Perhaps stars really do collapse and that energy forms a new star composed entirely of "dark matter". It just seems a bit odd. Didn't LANL or BNL create a black hole for a few seconds, several times? Are they denying their findings or simply restructuring them?
shop.envescent.com - Computer hardware and more.
I never know if this is one of those messages that you never hear about again, or if it's one of those that you will remeber reading in 20 years, because it meant so much...
If this is totally true, i will mean a paradigm shift, a new way of thinking..but I still wouldn't want to be near a collapsing star..
Is dark energy "negative" energy? If so, if one could find a way how to get dark energy, the alcubierre drive could become a reality in the far future? I know that it need heaps of negative energy, but afaik someone corrected the calculations, resulting in much less energy consumption.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
And I guess you are going to tell me that fairies don't exist next, right? Wake up and smell the coffee, my friend.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Theres always someone who has a diferent theory.
On the other hand though...
Tell someone there are a million stars in the sky and they'll believe you...
Tell them paint is wet and...
http://www.sandstorming.com
I contend that ass holes don't exist!
Oh yeah? Proof by contradiction; you.
You know MC Hawking isn't going to stand for this shit.
Apparently they look something like this
In other news, donuts almost certainly don't exist. Instead it is much more likely that there exists circular pieces of cooked dough with a hole in the centre.
This idea that "singularities" don't really exist has been around for a few years now. The idea is that a very small bubble forms that is unable to compress into a singularity because of the "dark energy" concept of reverse-gravity. However, the new theories that "dark energy" really doesn't exist, and that the expansion of the universe can be explained by the negative higgs field + spacetime ripples of the early inflation of the universe run contrary to this "no black hole" concept.
Someone you trust is one of us.
FACT: while my girlfriend was working at starbucks, every one of her male coworkers was gay.
-mkb
Crackpottery would be saying something is true and then saying everything must conform to that. Science doesn't work like that. You have a bunch of data, and you make a theory that best fits the evidence. Or you make a theory that makes some prediction. That theory remains valid until some piece of data is uncovered that does not fit in with the theory, at which point the theory is modified.
Right now, black holes are what seem to fit observations and theory. If we get more data (perhaps what this article is referring to) that does not conform, then the theory will change with it.
Thats not crackpottery, thats the way its supposed to work. There is no such thing as a 'final' theory. Its a process.
The odd thing is... it will be quite impossible to prove or disprove this either way for... quite a long time.
At least until a space cruise ship christened the "Titanic" gets too close to that blackish.. hole-ish thing while taking a shortcut, in about a thousand years.
I tend to agree. There are several theories that look quite... um, far-fetched. But they are the best thing we have right now for describing the universe. However, experimental and theoretical physics really seem to be a mess. For instance, to explain the structure in the universe, one introduces an inflation in the early eras of the universe. Why this happened is totally unclear. It almost looks like a desperate try to introduce something just to make the results look right. One can rightly claim that the theory could be wrong. Feel free to do so. But then you have to introduce a *new* theory, and it has to pass Occam's Razor. But, considering the extremely bizarre nature of current "serious" theories, I wonder how one can laugh at stuff like cold fusion etc. It seems a little bit ignorant to me, especially since the very topic of cold fusion hasn't been either proven or disproven yet, just like string theory, quantum gravity etc. etc.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
What did they do?: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/1 7/1541230&from=rss
>Linux is not user-friendly.
It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
I mean , I have never felt "confortable" with the theory of black holes, it seems somewhat anthemic to true science, kind of like phlogiston
Before, I had the chance of getting sucked through a blackhole and spit out into a sister universe in some array of energy and mass, but, now I get bounced back in the form of Positron? Sweet. Then I acquire the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, and destruction of the Decepticons will be for sure! But seriously, I think this guy just has a vendetta against Rush for writing a song about Cygnus X-1.
Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion
Ah, but I at least one theory exists that says dark energy isn't really needed.
Not there's anything wrong with having different theories, we'll let observational data sort it out later. Could a physicist around here explain how these proposed dark energy stars could explain the expansion of the universe if they behave exactly like black holes outside the event horizon?
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
The researcher is claiming that his theory accounts for both dark matter and dark energy, as well as some observations like x-ray bursts from the cores of active galaxies.
Conventional theory doesn't tie dark matter to dark energy at all. If the popularizations hadn't used the word dark in both cases, the two concepts would easily be completely unrelated.
Several candidates for dark matter are very conventional forms of matter, such as neutrinos or even plain old neutronium, which don't need an exotic explanation. Others involve particles we have produced in accelerators or theorize on the basis of data we have obtained ever since the 1940's.
Dark Energy, o.t.o.h., is something very different. The evidence for it is all very recent, and the theories proposed are all well outside the standard model for Cosmology.
Thinking we even need a single theory to explain both only makes sense if you can first disprove the more conventional explanations for dark matter.
Who is John Cabal?
Preach it brother! And add to that list time dialation, length dialation, non simultaneity, spontaneous quantum particle creation, particle smearing, the particle-wave duality, 2-slit experiments, splitting atoms, bowling balls and feathers falling at the same speeds, and the earth being round. Crackpottery, all.
Geez, just because you don't understand it doesn't make it wrong. Weirder stuff has already been proven.
The ______ Agenda
If the event horizon is a function of gravity, shouldn't it be easy to escape a black hole using a magetic drive? Last I checked magnatism was orders of magnitude stronger than gravity. This means there are 2 event horizons, one for gravity and the other for magnetism. It should be possible to escape a black hole up to the point of the magnetic event horizon. (I assume the black hole generates a magnetic field. If not then, using mag drives should allow one to navigate freely.)
Just a thought...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Uhm, and how do i travel through time without black holes? Explain this!
You going to tell me that Terra isn't flat? That the humours don't control disease? That there are no dragons off the edge of the map? Puh-leeze.
This is why I make it a point to never listen to scientists. They change their minds too often. You'd think women would dominate science, considering their natural talents in that area.
http://xkcd.com/386/
The earth sucks. QED
He says that electron-positron anihilation could account for the radiation observed at the center of the galaxy. The radiation produced when an electron collides with a positron is of a very specific wavelength - I think someone would have noticed if the radiation at the centre of the galaxy was at that wavelength, rather than a distribution of wavelengths in the way you would expect from a very hot object (superheated plasma in this case).
Well when I first saw this I was sceptical, but on further reflection I wondered - perhaps he isn't wrong. The world reacted with shock when Hubble provided evidence that the galaxies were moving away from each other, meaning the universe was expanding, and similarly the world was shocked when Hawking showed that matter "must" be leaving the other side of a black hole. Perhaps we will soon find that this scientist is correct in saying that black "holes" do not really exist.
George Chapline just called. Because he feared being on your dreadful 'quack' list, he retracted his theory.
Who modded this insightful? Probably someone who's never been to a conference...
Take a look at the header - this was submitted to a conference, *not* a full peer-reviewed journal. Many conferences (I know for sure most IEEE conferences are like this) limit paper submissions to 4 pages. URSI (Union Radio-Scientifique Internationale - they're just like IEEE Antennas and Propigation Society, with mostly the same members and co-host their conference) papers are even limited to 1 page for their conference. *Conference* papers really more discussion points than full blown "proofs". I'd suspect he'd follow this up with an "official" paper in one of their peer-reviewed journals.
That's what they wanted you to think :P
or that's what she told you, when you caught her in bed with one of them. Wake up and smell the coffee my friend
Nothing costs nothing
Murky words, misspelled
Dark matter stars shed no light
Are we enlightened?
Maybe this would add further weight to Hawking's proof of the black hole information paradox. If the anti gravity bounced 'stuff' back, perhaps Hawking's equations are simply predicting this? Or maybe I'm talking crap.
One thing that is wrong with black holes vis a vie quantum mechanics...
Such a silly mistake from a Real Scientist(tm). Vis-a-vis, perhaps?
Tiller's Rule: NEVER use a word that you've only heard and never read. You WILL look like a fool.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
So the matter is repelled at the horizon when matter falls apart, thus the black hole cannot swallow the mass of the collapsing star? How does he get a horizon then firsthand? Without a collapse he cannot have this effect. When there is a horizon and he is right with his claims, this would only mean once formed a black hole would not grow. However, the existence of Sgr A* already proofs this is wrong, because there are no stars with 4 10^6 solar masses to form it in a collapse. It needs to be grown out of accreted material (which he claims is impossible). He also doesn't explain how the negative energy can collapse (and where it comes from). So he replaces one problem with another one.
Yes indeed, black is out. Grey is the new black. So, I suspect he's actually proposing grey holes? Or is it all grey matter?
I suppose you could have an electric version of a black hole
Not likely, and even if so, not for very long. What would hold this enormous amount of like-charged particles together? (Note: the electromagnetic force is way stronger than gravity.) But even if you had the electric equivalent of a black hole, it wouldn't last very long, because it would only attract oppositely charged particles, and they would reduce the net charge on the "hole".
Put another way, charge aggregation is a negative feedback loop, whereas mass aggregation is a positive feedback loop.
The University of Colorado's non-science-major course on Black Holes, ASTR 2030 (which I'm headed to in about 5 minutes), shows portions of Disney's "The Black Hole", citing it as "How Not To Make A Movie About Black Holes". A survey of "potential villians" at the beginning of class led to a near unanimous first response of "the composer".
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
I contend that ass holes don't exist!
Would this be a situation where one can link to goatex and have it actually be Informative?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Einstein's work explaining the photoelectric effect formed a foundation of quantum electrodynamics, from which spawned quantum mechanics. He opposed Bohr's estimate of what quantum mechanics meant to science (that reality at the quantum level can be explained only by probabilities, not by strictly measured and predictable outcomes), but his belief was not that quantum mechanics was wrong. He instead believed that there was another set of rules underlying quantum mechanics that would allow for predictability at the quantum level.
Naked.
Layperson doesn't understand the cutting edge of physics and math. So they must be bozos.
I can forgive you that you might not be up on the latest theories flying around the theoretical physics community. Really, I can.
But what kind of idiot are you that you don't understand the basic process of science??? Were you raised in the bible belt, and homeschooled on creationism??? Did you sleep through grade school science class???
Scientists put forward theories. Lots of them. Many are wrong. Those get disproven. The correct ones win, and then can get replaced by theories that are even closer to the truth.
On the cutting edge of knowlege, it's a normal and necessary part of the process to see many theories bouncing about at the same time. The point is that even the wrong ideas help us get closer to the right one.
Please blame this on Monday. Cause if you can't, you might have to face the fact that you're not just a layperson, but a really dumb one.
Whenever, over the ages, science seems to get too complicated, the usual answer is that it has gone off in a tangent. Most of the best theories have been elegantly simple at explaining our observations. These "discoveries" when proposed were considered revolutionary ideas. Later, when they were developed they usually were over-complicated by trying to explain everything. That's when a revolution in simplification happened and the process began from nearly scratch. Think of what happened to Keplerians' formulas and Newton's idea of gravity. They are still used today, even though they are wrong, and have been supplanted by Einstein's Theory of Gravity, because the models of Newton & Kepler are very accurate. Better yet: look at the models offered by geo-centric solar system projections. Here is one really nice animation: http://catholicoutlook.com/images/movingsolar7.gif
The idea is that once it gets too complicated all of the evolutionary ideas that get developed are probably causing more harm to the original thesis. Although the original work did a great job of explaining a certain observation when new data was added the theory had to expanded to a level of undue complexity to have weight. Then a competing and revolutionary idea was developed, seemed to match the data, and the process began anew.
I guess it's getting time for a powerful new theory. One that will get ruined in the future, since we really know so little.
Four pages is all it should take to briefly introduce a new theory, which is what George is doing.
p.s. George Chapline is very a bright fella with a history of suggesting contrarian theories. At least one of those theories has led to a entire branch of nuclear physics.
...is that the Professor who had the bet with Hawking over Black Holes has to give his year's subscription to Penthouse back.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
We know of at least one black hole whose existence has been repeatedly verified by unsuspecting eyes: Goatse.
"The first thing to realize about black holes, [yourruinreverse] says, is that they are not black.\nIt is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, holes either, but it is easiest if you don't try to realize that until a little later, after you've realized that everything you've realized up to that moment is not true."
[Adapted from Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless]
JeR
I guess this new article combined with an older article: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/2 4/2242219&from=rss
Proves that physics is still very theoretical. Then again, I always felt that dark energy, and possibly dark matter will inevitably be proved to be about as real as the "Aether" theories. Like Cheech and Chong said in the 70's; If it looks like dog shit, smells like dog shit, and tastes like dog shit......... We always try to explain things by saying something unobservable is the factor causing the observations we can make. My uneducated guess is we will find that neither of these are necessary, and someone will be able to fill the holes.
Let's not forget that the reason why we use math to describe these phenomena is because the real world is based on mathematics. For example, there is an 'event horizon' at 1, where multiplying a number by >1 makes it larger but by <1 makes it smaller. Maybe dark matter can be described in some equation as <1 whereas 'light' matter is >1 (so dark matter interacting with light matter would diminish it). Or maybe the event horizon of a black hole is like 1 and the center is 0.
In any case these concepts (x<1<y, 0, etc) have manifestations in the real world that should not be forgetten... that's why string theory smells so wrong. Basically {0} can't be explained by the equations so they pretend it is a vector {0,n}... only then n could be zero making a zero-vector {0,0} so they add more dimensions until they are out of concepts. Doesn't sound like a winner to me.
You are caught up in semantics and circular reasoning here.
Fundamental != Simple
Fundamental, in this context (fundamental laws of the universe) just means the foundation or base. Just because you can't break them down more doesn't mean it is simple, or humans can understand it, or laypeople can understand it.
If there is one unified theory of everything, it would be the most fundamental one, from which everything derives, but it could be mathematically and conceptually very complex indeed.
Theories predicting more are often more complex. For example, Newton's laws of motion are quite simple to understand, and the maths is simple. However, they are limited in scope. Relativity covers more, is more "fundamental" to understanding how the universe works, but is much more complex.
If I understand Newton's Laws (and there limitations) but not GR and SR, I'm clearly not as clueless as someong who doesn't know them. Nobody knows a general theory of everything, yet some people are much more clued up on science than others.
Complex theories don't mean the people involved don't understand. They often just mean as best we understand it, parts of reality are pretty damn complex. The real test is if these theories offer predictive abilities. If experimentation hold up the theory it is hard to dismiss the originators as "clueless".
If you work in a specialised area of science then you think in those specialise terms all the time. You don't need to translate it into something simple because you (and your peers) know exactly what you are talking about, and any simplification would loose details.
To take something complex, turn it into something relatively simple and loose as little as possible as a different and rare skill. This is why scientific geniuses and good science TV presenters tend not to overlap much. One comes up with complex theories, another can explain complex theories to the lay person. Doesn't mean the first doesn't know what they are talking about.
It may irk you that some very smart people know and understand stuff you don't, that doesn't mean it should be dismissed.
You seem to be a very skeptical person, or perhaps you have not looked very far, In 1971, experiments were carried out using four caesium beam atomic clocks (The Hafele-Keating Experiment). Two of the atomic clocks were put on commercial jets and flown in opposite directions around the world. The predicted time dilation matched up to the difference in the atomic clocks.
I find it rather unlikely that this is a coincidence. What are the chances that two pairs of atomic clocks would fail, and fail by exactly the same amount as theory predicts. Pretty slim.
Of course, this was an experiment done on the macroscopic scale. In particle accelerators, time dilation directly affects the half-life of particles such a muons. Thousands of experiments have confirmed that the half-life of particles is affected by velocity in the exact way that Einstein predicted. Again, this is very hard to chalk down to coincidence.
Furthermore, experiments with the speed of light show that the speed of light is constant. Albert Michelson and Edward Morley tested the speed of light parallel to the Earth's velocity, and perpendicular to it; there was no difference in the results. From this we can conclude that either the experiment, and all the hundreds similar experiments performed after, were fundamentally flawed in precisely the same way (a stretch of the imagination). That the earth does not move around the sun. Or that the speed of light is independant of one's velocity. Indirectly, if these experiements are correct, this proves time dilation.
How? Consider a man on a spaceship travelling at high speeds. Upon the floor of his spaceship is a laser, a light sensor, both connected to a very accurate stopwatch. Upon the ceiling is a mirror. When the man presses a button, the laser beam is fired up at the mirror, and the stopwatch starts timing. The laser beam will bounce off the mirror, hit the light sensor, and the stopwatch will stop. Thus, the man will now know the time it takes for a laser beam to cover the distance between the laser beam, the mirror, and the light sensor.
With me so far? The problem comes when an observer upon the earth watches the spaceship zip past. To the man inside, the laser beam heads straight up and down, taking a purely vertical path. To the observer on earth, the spaceship moves horizontally whilst the experiment takes place, so to the observer, the laser-beam takes a longer, diagonal path. Because light is a constant speed, to the observer, the light beam travels at the same speed for both the observer and the man in the spacecraft. However, for the observer, the light beam travels a further distance than for the man in the spaceship, and therefore takes a longer time. So to the observer, the whole event takes a longer time than it does for the man inside the spaceship. That's time dilation.
And it has nothing to do with the type of clock. We've measured clocks in zero-G moving and not moving, or, at least, moving much slower. They're different. What's more, they're different in a way that's identical to what was predicted 90 years ago. The whole 'Yes, but it might be weird clocks' worked when it was one experiment. We've got thousands for satellites in orbit, and all of them demonstrate time dilation, at least all the ones that are accurate enough to measure it and can be allowed to let their clocks get out of sync.
And unless you have a better theory of why Mercury is rotating with 43 extra acrsecs a century, perhaps you better be quiet. For those of you who don't know, Mercury is suffering spacetime distortion from the sun. It's got slightly less time and slightly more space than we do, and thus our measurements of it are 'wrong'. If we measured it from Mercury it would be right and all the other planets would be in weird orbits.
I don't know where people get crazy ideas that all of physics is some absurd pie-in-the-sky shit. This isn't philosophy....if a scientific theory isn't disprovable, it's not a fucking scientific theory. Relativity is disprovable, and repeated experiments have demonstrated that it works reasonable well.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
An object does not have to reach escape velocity to escape a planet's gravitational pull.
;)
;)
You're partly right. You can NEVER escape a planet's gravitational pull. It just keeps pulling, no matter how far you go.
Escape velocity is the inital speed needed for a ballistic object to ensure that the gravitational pull of the planet will never be able to bring it to a complete stop, relative to the planet. As you move away from the planet, the gravitational force weakens. If you can move away faster than the force can slow you down, then the gravity of the planet can never stop you. That's the escape velocity.
However, for a rocket (or other powered device) to escape a planet's gravitational pull, as the GP said, all it has to do is provide enough vertical thrust to provide a positive acceleration. That acceleration does not have to accelerate it to the escape velocity - in fact, you could adjust it to compensate for the falling gravitational pull and so maintain a constant velocity of whatever you want, and (if you have sufficient power/fuel) you'll still escape.
In theory, you're partly correct here. If you could overcome gravity to provide a 1 foot per second squared upward accelleration, then yeah, you'd get to outer space. Eventually. It'd take one hell of a lot of fuel though, because you're only barely overcoming gravity. It's not actually *possible* because no ship exists that can do that and also have enough fuel to do it.
Any acceleration larger than gravity will get you there eventually if you assume enough fuel. And as gravity drops off due to distance, eventually you'll be travelling faster than escape velocity for the given height you happen to be at. And then you're free.
That doesn't work for a black hole because all of that is based on Newtonian mechanics, which do not apply in the large gravitational fields close to the event horizon. There, you must use General Relativity, which is counter to our everyday common sense view of the world (precisely because on our scales, it's irrelevant). I don't know enough about GR to demonstrate why this is, however.
The main reason is similar to the above: You don't have enough fuel. And not just because the technology doesn't exist, but because inside the event horizon, the acceleration due to gravity is so high that even light itself isn't moving fast enough to go "up". No amount of acceleration will let you make any forward progress at all, because you cannot possibly give it enough speed to exceed the speed of light. So you can't even go up at 1 foot per second, you can only go down.
To put it another way, inside the event horizon, space is bent in such a way that moving away from the singularity is no longer an available option.
Outside the event horizon, the normal, simple, equations still apply, more or less. The gravity is high, but the concept is the same. With a higher gravity comes a higher escape velocity, that's all. Also time dilation, but that's rather irrelevent to this discussion.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You mean they told you that they loved you, but it turned out they were just using you for sex?
...
More or less. I guess I should have figured it out for myself
-- Kirk kept shouting, "Oh Janice, oh Janice!"
-- Spock only did it every seven years.
-kgj
-kgj
I guess you didn't read what I said. Failed theories aren't total garbage. It's the attempt and process of progress. It's the midpoint of the discussion, before they reach the end conclusion. It can be just as important to learn why a theory doesn't work, as finding the "right" theory the first time around.
There is no "Garbage" as you claim. Often more is learned from disproving theories than in thinking up the theory in the first place. There are many ways of approaching truth, and getting the "correct" theory is only one of them.
The mistake people make is taking every cutting-edge theory like it was gospel about the "NEW WAY THE UNIVERSE WORKS". Most if it is just interesting but unproved theory, nothing more. What is there to be jaded about? I really don't think you understand the process...
E
Oh brother. I didn't even get past the first page of his paper without running into physics errors. He claims that "quantum mechanics requires a universal time". This is nonsense; quantum field theory on curved spacetime -- and, in particular, on non-stationary spacetimes which do not admit any preferred "universal time coordinate" -- is a well-developed field and is quite rigorous (as far as QFT goes); it is a proof-by-example that QM without a "universal time" does work. However, you have to accept that certain procedures of ordinary QM won't remain useful; e.g., you don't tend to work with Schroedinger equations, since, as the author does correctly point out, the Schroedinger equation posits an absolute time (and a flat space). But the Schroedinger equation isn't fundamental to quantum mechanics and is not one of the postulates of QM (heck, it's not even relativistic). You can construct canonical Hamiltonian formulations of QFT without ever referring to a Schroedinger equation.
Actually, I just continued to read more of his paper, and it seems that almost his whole argument is predicated on this false claim that "synchronous time" is incompatible with quantum theory.
His "simple thought experiment" to demonstrate why it is "wrong to assume classical GR is always correct on macroscopic length scales" does no such thing: he gives an example of a condensed matter system which is a black hole analogue (has the qualitative kinematics of an event horizon). This is also well-known, but doesn't prove that condensed matter systems can mimic the full dynamics of general relativity. Indeed, nobody has succeeded in that task (don't have a good review article, but look at the references in this paper by Visser). And even if it did prove that condensed matter systems can externally act like black holes, that doesn't prove that GR is wrong on macroscopic length scales, either.
I didn't even bother to really study the dark energy bit after these preceding flaws, but beyond that, the paper is filled with crackpot warning signs: grandiose claims (simultaneous resolution of the question of black holes, singularities, the black hole information loss paradox, dark matter, and dark energy); claims that historians will one day vindicate his obvious correctness; etc.
In short: read with an extremely large grain of salt.
I'd like to hear what S. Hawking has to say about this one.
might be just the thing needed to warp space in such a way to create a worm hole. Before now, we never thought that could be possible. It opens up possibilities to such things as time travel, and space travel through the wormhole.
That is, if this theory is true.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The problem with black holes is that they are, by definition, singularities. Unadulterated GR says that matter becomes infinitely dense, that the event horizon is infinitely sharp, etc.
This isn't very satisfactory, and we've known for a long time that something interesting must happen to smooth out these infinities at the Planck scale (something to the tune of 10^-33 cm). In this limited sense, we've known all along that "strict" black holes don't exist: that is, the pure, mathematical singularities that GR predicts must be smoothed out by quantum effects at very short scales.
In keeping with the sloppy thinking that makes physics the Queen of the Sciences (IAAP, as it happens) we've decided that those Planck-scale effects don't really count, and implicitly modified our concept of "Black Hole" to accomodate them.
What this guy is playing with is the idea that something interesting happens on much larger scales. In this case, although there is still something like an event horizon, it is no longer a singularity in the space-time co-ordinates of distant observers, but rather a phase transition in the quantum-mechanical vaccuum. He is proposing a macroscopic quantum mechanism for smoothing out the singularity.
This is a nice move for two reasons: the study of quantum critical behavior has a variety of analogues such as superfluids that can be studied in the lab; and there are physical phenomena that he predicts which may explain a variety of otherwise problematic observations. These are: high-energy positrons from the centre of our galaxy (where there is a 10^6 solar mass dense object); gamma-ray bursts; cosmological dark matter.
Overall, this is a nice, plausible, interesting approach to a serious problem.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
"Like it or not, people expect science to be exact and correct even though it often isn't."
;)
You are right. That is what religion is for.
-
To a far-off observer, time seems to stand still here. A spacecraft falling into a black hole would seem, to someone watching it from afar, to be stuck forever at the event horizon...
This is not the common theory. It would NOT stand still as a normal image.
I think the image of the spacecraft would shift into red until it reaches frequency zero and is no longer detectable.
Don't get confused by the nature of Schwarzschild coordinates at the horizon. Light from the horizon never reaches an outside observer, and it's the rate at which light pulses leave a point (or are redshifted) that defines "time relative to an external observer". So by that mathematical definition, nothing ever reaches an event horizon (and you could argue that the horizon "never" forms). However, a more meaningful question is, what does an observer falling into the hole actually experience? And it's easy to show that such an observer does encounter an event horizon, and from which it cannot escape, even if an outside observer can't tell that this has happened. In that sense, black holes very much do exist. See also this FAQ.
In Ye Ol' Star Trek, you travel back in time.
In Voyager, you just get turned into a giant newt. Everything else made you travel through time though.
A giant newt... the evolution of man? That's not what we'd been told by Trelane, Q and the Traveler... Wesley didn't turn into no slimy giant newt... stupid Voyager.
You can't take the sky from me...
and that was the error.
-pyrrho
A couple of things. The reason that energy is not released when a virtual pair recombine is because that energy was already "borrowed" from the universe in order to create the pair. This is why they are called "virtual" -- they don't exist in a form that allows us to extract energy from them. The length of time a virtual pair can exist is controlled by the uncertainly principle and is thus inversely proportional to the energy of the pair:
/(2 pi)
o le-evaporation.html
Energy x Time = h
Theoretically, if you can break the laws of physics as your device does then an infinite amount of energy would become available. The limit should be set by some physical limitation of your device. If you want to know more about background fluctuations google around for "casimir effect".
The idea of your device only allowing one sort of matter to be created might be very unappealing to physicists because you are breaking all sorts of conservation laws that are dear to their hearts. A more appealing device might be some sort of a trap for anti-matter. Remember that current atomic bombs don't destroy atoms, they just convert neutrons and protons from one grouping to another. The energy released is the difference in binding energy of the groupings. You would get much more bang for you buck if you were able to achieve total annihilation using anti-matter. But alas, this idea seems worn and hackneyed. Although there might be some interesting ideas to explore in the trap itself that holds the anti-matter.
If you really want to harness the vacuum fluctuations then I suggest using some sort of sub-sub-atomic mirrors that harness the casimir effect. The mirrors exist for a VERY short period of time, but they are so flat and so perfectly reflecting that they slam together at high speed due to the casimir effect. The mirrors should probably be made up out of strings in some configuration that is not found in nature. If fact, you would probably want to use 'branes instead of strings. This idea is probably just as ridiculous as the first but the details can be swept under a larger and perhaps more appealing rug.
The rules for creating black holes is most simply expressed in terms of escape velocity. A black hole is achieved when the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light.
1/2 mv^2 = GMm/r
v^2 = 2GM/r
On earth the escape velocity is about 11 km/s. The speed of light is roughly 300,000 km/s. So something with the mass of the earth would need to be roughly (300,000/11)^2 times smaller than the earth to form a black hole, roughly 1 cm across.
For evaporation, the follow page contains the simple formulas it sounds like you are looking for:
http://www.alcyone.com/max/writing/essays/black-h
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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