Slashdot Mirror
Possible Hole in Black Holes
jd writes "Researchers have found what they believe may be a MECO (Magnetic, Eternally Collapsing Object) inside of a quasar. MECOs are rivals to black hole theory and involve plasmas that never reach the state of being a singularity. The most obvious differences between them are that MECOs have a magnetic field and do not have an event horizon. The problem lies in that the Universe cannot have both MECOs and black holes — it can only have one or the other. If this object truly is a MECO, then black holes do not exist. Anywhere. (Furthermore, this would require Professor Hawking to return a year's subscription to Private Eye and give Professor Thorne a year's subscription to Penthouse.) On the other hand, if this thing isn't a MECO, it's behaving very very oddly for a black hole."
Why can't the MECOs and the black holes just set aside their differences and peacefully coexist?
Seriously, if this thing really is an MECO then what are all of the things that we've thought were black holes?
IANA*
...both MECOs and Black Holes can exist, and it transpires that we actually know a LOT less than we thought we did
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
From the article:
"But Chris Reynolds of the University of Maryland, in Baltimore, US, says the evidence for a MECO inside this quasar is not convincing."
Apparently the experts are not conviced about this "interesting" observation but at slashdot the expert will come to a final conclusion. How many slashdot posters actualy are qualified to talk about these subjects?
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Cosmology isn't my field but the data here is incredibly vague. I'm not sure this deserves more than a raised eyebrow and an "Okay...now come up with something a little less tenuous". Interpretation of data is an art in itself and can be wildly skewed by the observer's own opinions - show mw that this hasn't happened here.
Ok, when we have, like, numerous observations of black holes (which, granted, have only been 'seen' indirectly, but which follow the predictions quite good and at least in one instance, have observed it directly enough to rule out anything else then a black hole) and just one observation of a MECO - especially when scientist themselves say it's not totally convincing - then logic dictates that it's more likely the black-hole theory is correct.
;-).
Until further obervations is being done and it is being confirmed it's truelly a MECO (or other MECOs are observed), then we really can't get say anything beyond wild speculation (which is what slashdot is very good at
Most probably, it will turn out to be not a true MECO, but rather an odd variant of a black hole.
If it DOES turn out to be a MECO, then, as theory predicts, there can't be any black holes - so then all our past obsrvations must have been wrong or misinterpreted. And if it turns out we have MECO's AND blak holes...well, then something very, very, very wrong must be going on with our current understanding of the universe and all the theories thusfar.
Which, actually, would be a fantastic thing to science, contrary to what some might believe.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Lets not forget that there is another alternative to one or the other theory being right, and that this alternative is far more likely, almost certain in fact.
The option is that neither of these theories are correct or rather neither is entirely correct. Both may still be partially true, and probably both are to a certain extent.
Newton was right on with his theories, yet they were proven to be incorrect, and they are still the first thing a physics student learns today. I find the idea of "if phenomina A exists then phenomina B, that we have also have some evidence for, cannot exist" because when you get right down to it we don't understand our universe we perceive it.
Hawkins conceded the bet that black holes did NOT exist and gave the Penthouse subscription, so this could force him to reclaim that and claim his prize.
Hawkins called the bet an insurance policy so he would not be empty handed if black holes did not exist after all...
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
I wouldn't worry to much about this. As the article clearly states all observations were made with an optical telecope. They saw this mysterious "hole" in the center and made the assumption that there was nothing there. It could be full of hot gas but you wouldn't be able to detect it with a visible light telescope becasue the gas itself would not not emit any light. This is kind of like the monty python sketch where it was agreeded that a duck is made out of wood becasue it floats.
I'll point out one problem with this that no one else has already, it is in New Scientist. That alone makes it probable pseudoscience. These guys have made a career out of taking one valid data point and building the rest of the line as they see fit. If this is believable, we will see mention in journals in the near future.
I believe the tidal effects would reduce a planet into a debris ring.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Even if black holes *do* exist, how do you explain Madonna?
The problem that the grandparent pointed out is very real. While we need to assume that "the state of current knowledge" is sound and trustworthy to do any engineering it is fatal to make that assumption in science.
I had a friend who made a minor discovery while in undergrad, simply because he didn't fudge his data in a lab assignment. He got graded down for it, and decided to redo the experiment. When he got the same results, he started asking around and found out that quite a few of his classmates had also gotten the results he had, but written it off to "experimental error" since it didn't match the predicted outcome. He took this back to the professor, and challenged him to actually do the assignment himself. They wound up publishing a joint paper on it, but to me the most interesting realization was that, for all the years that assignment had been given, nobody else had caught the error in the accepted theory.
By all means, if you have to bet on the outcome of any particular situation, go with the current state of knowledge. But if you're asked if our current knowledge is correct in its entirety, bet heavily that it is not. And if observation doesn't match the theory, don't lock yourself into the assumption that the data must be wrong because the theory couldn't possible be.
--MarkusQ
I've been wondering about that for some number of years now - but the fact that cosmologists have generally accepted the existence of singularities as all but proven fact and have even had many observations which supported this belief has always prevented me from thinking too hard about it (after all, why pit my amateur understanding of cosmology and relativity against that of experts?).
If this assertion proves to be tenable, what effect will it have on collateral theories in cosmology (for example, estimates on the total mass of the Universe, which in turn affects our understanding of whether or not space is curved and if so, positively or negatively)? Much of our current understanding of the cosmos is based directly on the correctness of the Theory of Relativity, but this finding (if confirmed) would appear to falsify at least some of relativity's conclusions. Does this tenative finding square with string theory? How much of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity will need to be updated to accomodate these findings?
Then again, the New Scientist isn't exactly the most unimpeachable scientific news source. Perhaps I won't trash Al's most famous (and best supported) theory just yet.
Nothing to see here. Move along.