Black Holes ‘Do Not Exist’
Despite what science fiction writers and Stephen Hawking tell us, black holes ‘do not exist’, according to the current Nature.
Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist. 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. George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. “It’s a near certainty that black holes don’t exist,” he claims.
Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point. But Einstein didn’t believe in black holes, Chapline argues. “Unfortunately”, he adds, “he couldn’t articulate why.” At the root of the problem is the other revolutionary theory of twentieth-century physics, which Einstein also helped to formulate: quantum mechanics.
Interesting.
Update: Yes, today is April 1st. But the article is dated yesterday.
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About James Joyner
An article like this on April 1st? Hmm…
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What Black Hole?
Via Outside The Beltway This article from Nature explains some new (and not-so-new) thinking. Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore Na…
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Don’t tell me, I’ve seen black hos….
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Well, I should have checked out the date. Even so it’s a pretty startling claim.
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Today’s blog roundup
Links marked with an asterisk (*) are ones I found particularly good. Sandy Burger pleads guilty, well, sort of: La…
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Today’s blog roundup
Links marked with an asterisk (*) are ones I found particularly good. Sandy Burger pleads guilty, well, sort of: La…
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Re: Ralf Goergens
No. Hawkins is trying to prove by disproving. Afterall, his life work is on Black Hole. If he can conclusively not disprove the existance of Black Hole, then they exist.
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