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No black holes after all?
World Science ^ | Aug. 11, 2006 | World Science staff

Posted on 08/22/2006 12:32:31 PM PDT by NonLinear

One of the brightest and furthest known objects in the universe might not be a black hole as traditionally believed, but rather an exotic new type of object, a new study suggests. (snip)

(Excerpt) Read more at world-science.net ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: astrophysics; blackhole; oops; relativity; science; sorry; wewerewrong; wrongagain
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To: NonLinear

the time-honored concept of the black hole?

I remember being staggered by the headlines
in the '60's when Astronomers officially
conferred the name Black Hole on these
cosmic entities. Prior to that, there were
a FEW astronomers who had theories about
them...but NO general agreement, let alone
time-honored concept. And the term BlacK
Hole had hardly even made it to the College
text books prior to Stanley Kubrick's @001:
A Space Odyssey.

http://flux.aps.org/meetings/YR04/APR04/baps/abs/S630.html




21 posted on 08/22/2006 1:10:39 PM PDT by Grendel9
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To: Mind-numbed Robot

I can think of two black holes that exist....Henry Waxman's nostrils!!


22 posted on 08/22/2006 1:11:45 PM PDT by YaYa123
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To: chuckles
The evo's change that theory almost daily also.

Uh, yes. This is the way science works. A theory is proposed based on observations, and the theory changes as new evidence is discovered. That people would point to this as a weakness of evolutionary theory is incredibly funny to me.

This paradigm makes a lot more sense to me than having a previously-written guide to the way everything must be and then trying to shoehorn all new discoveries into said guide.
23 posted on 08/22/2006 1:14:39 PM PDT by Stone Mountain
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To: Mind-numbed Robot
Darn! Another theory shot in the butt. What can one believe? If there are no black holes is there dark matter, anti-matter, worm holes, strings, .... ???? Is the speed of light a constant?? Is Elvis gone?

We think we have answers to all but the last one...

CA....

24 posted on 08/22/2006 1:15:50 PM PDT by Chances Are (Whew! It seems I've once again found that silly grin!)
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To: Moral Hazard

Very good.


25 posted on 08/22/2006 1:15:58 PM PDT by Young Scholar
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To: NonLinear
a surprising property: it gradually crams itself into a smaller space forever

Surprising except when the MSM manages to put most of its energy into one trivial story or non-story such as the pencilneck mental case found in Thailand.

26 posted on 08/22/2006 1:17:55 PM PDT by RightWhale (Repeal the law of the excluded middle)
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To: Physicist
But a black hole in an accretion disc can’t have its own magnetic field, Schild added. This is because normally, a spinning object can be magnetic only if it carries an electric charge. A black hole can’t sustain such charge, because any charged hole will immediately suck in enough oppositely-charged material to cancel out its own charge.

I didn't buy that line either. Where does all this oppositely charged matter originate that drops in to cancel the charge? I was unaware that vast clouds of charged particles surrounded black holes, waiting to cancel out any accumulated surface charges....
27 posted on 08/22/2006 1:32:06 PM PDT by NonLinear (He's dead, Jim)
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To: HEY4QDEMS
Ah, so that's the reason Bonnie Hammer is cancelling Stargate SG1. No more worm holes.

What's next? More wrestling? Perhaps "Who wants to be in charge of SciFi Channel programming?

How about remakes of Captain Planet, featuring Algor fending off a MECO?

I know, "Who wants to enter a MECO and try to get out?"

28 posted on 08/22/2006 1:34:03 PM PDT by Calvin Locke
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To: Calvin Locke
Ah, so that's the reason Bonnie Hammer is cancelling Stargate SG1. No more worm holes.

Go ahead be sarcastic, but I had some real cool travel plans and now they're all screwed up. Damn you Mitro!!
29 posted on 08/22/2006 1:37:26 PM PDT by HEY4QDEMS (Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.)
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To: Moral Hazard; fso301

I am uncertain of my position...and my velocity.

As an aside, I do, however have a cat (who is not in a box with an isotope, but since I've not seen him all day, his state may be indeterminate, nonetheless).


30 posted on 08/22/2006 1:38:37 PM PDT by NonLinear (He's dead, Jim)
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To: NonLinear
Instead, the researchers are picturing a body with a definite size, and a surprising property: it gradually crams itself into a smaller space...

Hillary squeezing into her pantsuit?
31 posted on 08/22/2006 1:46:06 PM PDT by reagan_fanatic (Get off my lawn!)
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To: HEY4QDEMS
...but I had some real cool travel plans

The roaming gnome can't help?

What I'm trying to get a handle on is that they seem to be saying is that magnetism is stronger than
gravity in the article.

32 posted on 08/22/2006 1:50:13 PM PDT by Calvin Locke
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To: NonLinear

"but since I've not seen him all day, his state may be indeterminate, nonetheless"

I've always figured that a cat is quite capable of observing whether he is alive or not.


33 posted on 08/22/2006 1:50:28 PM PDT by Moral Hazard (The "missing links" in evolution are nothing compared to the extraneous links in intelligent design.)
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To: Moral Hazard
>I've always figured that a cat is quite capable of observing whether he is alive

Bah. That is nothing
compared to what dogs can do.
Sheldrake studies dogs!


34 posted on 08/22/2006 1:54:09 PM PDT by theFIRMbss (Sorry!)
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To: Mind-numbed Robot
You mean to tell me that "theories" are not true reality? Well what about evolution? Those are real, right? (sarcasm)
35 posted on 08/22/2006 1:56:28 PM PDT by fish hawk (Terror : in a cave in Afghanistan. Treason: in a cave-in , in the Democratic Party)
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To: Calvin Locke
magnetism is stronger than gravity

It is. About a brazillion times stronger, one of the cosmological mysteries. A quart jar of electrons would act on an electron 4000 miles away about the same strength as the gravity of the entire earth.

36 posted on 08/22/2006 1:58:31 PM PDT by RightWhale (Repeal the law of the excluded middle)
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To: Mind-numbed Robot

I saw this on some forum (maybe FR) a few years ago:

A friend suggests the following little pair of experiments for anybody wishing to better comprehend the present state of astronomical knowledge:

Get onto the Google search engine and type in "Astronomers surprised".
The resulting list goes on, and on, and on.................... and on. It's good for us to keep aware of how surprised they always are.

Then go into Google again and type "Astronomers confident" This will also produce a magnificently long listing of how absolutely confident they are about their knowledge. Strange how many times they are "surprised" and yet they maintain such absolute "confidence". I wonder what the surprise/confident ratio is. Both lists seem infinitely long....


37 posted on 08/22/2006 1:59:50 PM PDT by poindexters brother
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To: Question_Assumptions
Simply logic suggests that matter never actually reaches the event horizon but is forever falling toward it, more slowly (to an outside observer or the rest of the universe) as it gets closer ot the event horizon.

You're not taking into account that as the mass of the black hole increases, the event horizon "moves outward" and overtakes the infalling matter. [Geek alert: the event horizon isn't actually a thing and it doesn't actually move. It just represents the distance at which you lose sight of stuff as it goes around the bend in the curved spacetime.] And because the Schwarzschild radius is proportional to the mass of the object (as opposed to the cube root of the mass, as is the case with the Earth), the radius grows much faster than you might think, so that the density of the black hole decreases as the square of the radius as the object grows.

Matter outside of the event horizon may be denser than the current black-hole density, so that a new event horizon will form outside of it. In the scenario you painted, with an influx of matter creeping, Achilles-like (from your point of view), towards the event horizon, this will eventually have to happen. The mass of the stuff piling up will bend the space around it. The tortoise will step backwards.

38 posted on 08/22/2006 2:09:34 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: Question_Assumptions

Of course. Time slows down inside a black hole (or a MECO).

Ask any HeeChee if you have any doubts.


39 posted on 08/22/2006 2:51:55 PM PDT by samtheman
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To: SJSAMPLE
I wish they'd stop discovering things that I don't understand.

Time for me to again demand of the powers that be that PI be officially defined as "a bit more than 3."

Mark

40 posted on 08/22/2006 4:06:57 PM PDT by MarkL (When Kaylee says "No power in the `verse can stop me," it's cute. When River says it, it's scary!)
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