Slashdot Mirror
Physicist Claims Black Holes Mathematically Don't Exist
Koreantoast writes: Black holes, the stellar phenomena that continue to capture the imagination of scientists and science fiction authors, may not actually exist. According to a paper published by physics professor Laura Mersini-Houghton at the University of North Carolina and Mathematics Professor Harald Pfeiffer of the University of Toronto, as a collapsing star emits Hawking radiation, it also sheds mass at a rate that suggests it no longer has the density necessary to become a black hole — the singularity and event horizon never form. While the arXiv paper with the exact solution has not yet been peer reviewed, the preceding paper by Mersini-Houghton with the approximate solutions was published in Physics Letters B.
"I'm still not over the shock," said Mersini-Houghton. "We've been studying this problem for a more than 50 years and this solution gives us a lot to think about... Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories – Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum mechanics – for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony."
"I'm still not over the shock," said Mersini-Houghton. "We've been studying this problem for a more than 50 years and this solution gives us a lot to think about... Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories – Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum mechanics – for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony."
So, what are those big honking things seeing?
Is this a case where something has been mathematically proven to not exist after it's been observationally confirmed?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Better that than "worm"holes into the goatse universe.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of CGI Artists for science documentaries suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
She's not saying the things are not "very very dense" rather just that they never collapse further than the state that gravity can overcome the speed of light. I believe she's saying a black hole's mass would be "evenly" (or not) spread out over the volume encompassed by the event horizon, rather than in a singularity.
Perhaps you're observing phenomenon that appear to be Black Holes but are really gravstars or other normal stellar phenomena that don't require exotic and contradictory explanation and you don't realize it.
After all, just because you learned something growing up as a child doesn't mean it's true.
You are after all doing remote observation on objects that are 100's to billions of light years away.
No, you indirectly observe what are supposed to be black holes, or better yet, you directly observe instrument readouts that you interpret as indicating the existence of black holes. If this paper is correct, perhaps a different interpretation is in order, and exciting science can be done.
Microscopic invisible critters living on magnets shoot out invisible rubber band tethered harpoons at anything metal they see nearby. These beings are known as Magtonians. They feed on metal, but since they're microscopic you'll never actually see the damage. You can prove this by holding a magnet in your fingers and getting it close the metal, you can feel the rubber bands stretch and snap as you move the magnet close to metal and pulling it away. Some of the Magtonians can shoot their harpoons further than the others, that's why the pull increases as you get the two objects nearer to one another. More Magtonians successfully launch and attach the closer the magnet gets to metal.
There's another interesting fact about Magtonians. The males live on one side of the magnet, and the females on the other. However when the two are separated the females stay on one side and the males on the other. They're horny little bastards. This is why the pull of the harpoons are stronger when you use two magnets instead of just metal as both genders are launching their harpoons towards the others land.
Magtonians are not gay however and don't like the introduction of other Magtonians of their own sex into their group. When you try to introduce two male sided Magnets to one another or two female sided magnets to one another instead of harpoons they will try to keep themselves apart by extending poles pushing the two magnets apart. This is where the term "polarity" comes from. These crafty Magtonians are even fairly good at flipping the opposing magnet over with their harpoons and poles. Try it, try setting one disk magnet on top of the other with same sex sides facing, they will usually flip in mid air pole induced flip then quickly harpoon together.
Rubbing a magnet on a piece of metal will cause some of the Magtonians to fall off off and take up new residence on their food source, thus creating a new home for them and turning what was once a simple piece of metal into a new magnet.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I don't think we can just assume something is fact because it fits with what we know right now. Modern physics was built on quashing the assumptions that infinities and infinitesimals exist. We cannot go arbitrarily fast, and we cannot chop things up infinitesimally small, or measure to an arbitrary accuracy. These ideas were built in to classical mechanics as deeply as black holes.
To be clear I am not saying that black holes do not exist and what we observe and call black holes are not black holes. Just that when we are dealing with artifacts of mathematical models, time could identify them more as artifacts of the model rather than the most useful representation of the observable universe.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The headline-- black holes don't exist-- is at odds with the actual article.
The article doesn't say the mathematicians said that black holes don't exist: it says they showed black holes aren't formed by the collapse of massive stars. Black holes such as the ones at the nuclei of galaxies may very well be formed by other processes.
--even if it were true that black holes don't exist, by the way, it doesn't solve the problem of the incompatibility of general relativity with quantum mechanics. At best it would solve the black hole information paradox; but since it still incorporates Hawking radiation in the solution, it doesn't even solve that.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
But I believe this paper isn't disproving that. I think its saying all of that mass doesn't go to a point of infinite density, due to other known phenomena that keep it from happening.