Posted on 03/09/2006 8:34:42 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
very interesting stuff!
ping
I though Hawking said black HOES . . .
DOH!
Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
-- Francisco d'Anconia
That's how science advances. After the Michelson-Morley experiments, Einstein questioned long-accepted premises about the universal constancy of time and the Euclidean geometry of space, resulting in the theories of special and general relativity.
-ccm
It sounds to me that they're not actually *replacing* the idea of black holes with something else that's not a black hole, what they're really saying is that the physics of black holes might be different than previously thought, especially "inside" the black hole.
His second statement isn't quite fair -- as shown by his first statement, people *have* questioned the contradictions, but there's not much you can do about them until you manage to come up with a good way to resolve them. And often it can take a long time for the right "aha!" insight to arrive.
It sounds to me that they're not actually *replacing* the idea of black holes with something else that's not a black hole, what they're really saying is that the physics of black holes might be different than previously thought, especially "inside" the black hole.
Well, as the passage you quoted states, at the heart of a black hole (should such there be) there's a spacetime singularity. That would not be the case for the Chapline dark energy star, inside of which there is vacuum but no singularity. Also, the event horizon of a black hole isn't made of any sort of 'stuff', while the quantum critical shell of a Chapline star would be. These are significant differences and would likely be enough to force a name change, don't you think?
And it is becomer "gianter"!!
mer = ming
"Because information about the matter is lost forever, this conflicts with the laws of quantum mechanics, which state that information can never disappear from the universe."
Holey moley... Where in the heck did this guy study astrophysics? He needs to get a refund on his education. The matter isn't lost. It still exists in the universe. It is simply sucked down to the bottom of a gravity well (black hole) and in fact creates that very same gravity well. If there was no matter tucked away inside of a black hole, it wouldn't have such a strong gravity well.
"Because information about the matter is lost forever, this conflicts with the laws of quantum mechanics, which state that information can never disappear from the universe."Holey moley... Where in the heck did this guy study astrophysics? He needs to get a refund on his education. The matter isn't lost. It still exists in the universe.
Ummm, the writer says that information about the matter is lost, not the matter itself.
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Three cosmic enemas? We don't allow that kinky stuff on FR! Callimg all Moderators!
The team's calculations show that the vacuum energy inside the shell has a powerful anti-gravity effect, just like the dark energy that appears to be causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Chapline has dubbed the objects produced this way "dark energy stars".
Sweet. Now question is begged, where did all OUR vacuum energy come from? Bye bye multiverse. (Specualtion on my part.)
As for this stuff, I'm not expert enough to critique it, but my physics sense isn't getting the warm fuzzies. A black hole is a dead-simple geometric effect that pops out of General Relativity. It's really difficult to avoid having them, in fact. And while it's true that quantum mechanics isn't exactly comfortable with them, there's no way we'll know the correct reconciliation until we have a theory of quantum gravity in hand. Without that theory, I don't see how these gentlemen could have stumbled across the correct explanation.
And since they say that if we could study one close-up, the difference between a black hole and a "dark energy star" would be very subtle, I think I'm better off sticking with the simple, well-studied model instead of this abstruse one. (That's not to say they're wrong; just that their idea doesn't seem useful right now.)
Ah, the little-known Hawkins Theory of Pimpin'.
Yes, I take your point (follow the link to Motl's amusing critique of Chapline's work). I do think, though, that there's something to be said for encouraging a variety of approaches to fundamental questions. Just on principle.
This is very interesting stuff. I do like how someone is trying to incorporate quantum mechanics into the description of black holes. That is a very important, and fundamental, description. Perhaps this is an small, incremental step to reconcilling quantum mechanics with relativity. I suppose it won't be a clear reconcilliation until we can probe events at the Plack scale and maybe, detect and deduce any quantum nature of space. Personally, I am more comfortable with this explanation than envoking a singularity and not fully accounting for quantum properties of matter. Anyone know if the Large Hadreon Collider will be able to probe events in these energy scales? I thought I heard it could create mini black holes. If so, there is room for experiments in this area.
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