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Five-Dimensional Black Hole Could 'Break' General Relativity (sciencealert.com)
The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London, have successfully simulated a black hole shaped like a very thin ring, which gives rise to a series of 'bulges' connected by strings that become thinner over time. Ring-shaped black holes were 'discovered' by theoretical physicists in 2002, but this is the first time that their dynamics have been successfully simulated using supercomputers. Should this type of black hole form, it would lead to the appearance of a 'naked singularity', which would cause the equations behind general relativity to break down. "If naked singularities exist, general relativity breaks down," said co-author Saran Tunyasuvunakool, also a PhD student from DAMTP. "And if general relativity breaks down, it would throw everything upside down, because it would no longer have any predictive power -- it could no longer be considered as a standalone theory to explain the universe."
I wonder where the rubbish claims about predictive power came from. General Relativity has already made many predictions, subsequently verified. Those won't suddenly vanish.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
By the same token, Newton's law of gravitation has clearly lost ALL predictive power, since it breaks down in the relativistic realm. So feel free not to get out of the way next time there's an anvil falling toward your head.
If this is a situation General Relativity's rules can't work in, it doesn't mean GR is "broken" or that any of the predictions you can make with it magically stop working all of a sudden. GR doesn't work at extremely tiny scale where quantum mechanics applies; we don't say that it's broken, we just say that GR isn't applicable in that situation while we look for a theory that ties both together.
It's like, GR didn't "break" Newtonian physics either. You can still use Newtonian physics to do engineering calculations for most stuff here on Earth and it works fine. You just can't use it when you're talking about speeds approaching lightspeed or extremely large masses, or if you need more precision.
All theroies are just approximations of reality. New scientific discoveries just refine the theories. It doesn't mean you toss the old ones out altogether and it certainly doesn't mean that the old predictive rules somehow stop working in the old scenarios.
So, using a model that doesn't fit general relativity, they created a simulation that doesn't match the model of general relativity. My model to break general relativity says intermediate vector bosons have a mass of 5 megagrams, and the speed of light is 16 megameters per hour. Unless there are multiple real world observations that conclude a ring shaped black hole is existent, they are simulating a fantasy universe, and should expand their model to show it is consistent with other observed physical traits of the known universe.
This is hardly a shocker, since general relativity and quantum mechanics have not been successfully unified, and since general relativity simply cannot work at the quantum level as it is.
Are we really hubristic enough to think we will ever have a theory that predicts and explains everything with 100% accuracy at all levels?
We invented a God who created the universe and pretended he looked like us. Yes, we have more than enough hubris.