Posted on 06/20/2007 4:12:14 PM PDT by LibWhacker
"Nothing there," is what Case Western Reserve University physicists concluded about black holes after spending a year working on complex formulas to calculate the formation of new black holes. In nearly 13 printed pages with a host of calculations, the research may solve the information loss paradox that has perplexed physicists for the past 40 years.
Case physicists Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence M. Krauss report in the article, "Observation of Incipient Black Holes and the Information Loss Problem,” that has been accepted for publication by Physical Review D.
"It's complicated and very complex," noted the researchers, regarding both the general problem and their particular approach to try to solve it.
The question that the physicists set out to solve is: what happens once something collapses into a black hole" If all information about the collapsing matter is lost, it defies the laws of quantum physics. Yet, in current thinking, once the matter goes over the event horizon and forms a black hole, all information about it is lost.
"If you define the black hole as some place where you can lose objects, then there is no such thing because the black hole evaporates before anything is seen to fall in," said Vachaspati.
The masses on the edge of the incipient black hole continue to appear into infinity that they are collapsing but never fall over inside what is known as the event horizon, the region from which there is no return, according to the researchers.
By starting out with something that was nonsingular and then collapsing that matter, they were determined to see if an event horizon formed, signaling the creation of a black hole.
The mass shrinks in size, but it never gets to collapse inside an event horizon due to evidence of pre-Hawking radiation, a non-thermal radiation that allows information of the nature of what is collapsing to be recovered far from the collapsing mass.
"Non-thermal radiation can carry information in it unlike thermal radiation. This means that an outside observer watching some object collapse receives non-thermal radiation back and may be able to reconstruct all the information in the initial object and so the information never gets lost," they said.
According to the researchers, if black holes exist, information formed in the initial state would disappear in the black hole through a burst of thermal radiation that carries no information about the initial state.
Using the functional Schrodinger formalism, the researchers suggest that information about the energy from radiation is long evaporated before an event horizon forms.
"An outside observer will never lose an object down a black hole," said Stojkovic. "If you are sitting outside and throwing something into the black hole, it will never pass over but will stay outside the event horizon even if one considers the effects of quantum mechanics. In fact, since in quantum mechanics the observer plays an important role in measurement, the question of formation of an event horizon is much more subtle to consider."
The physicists are quick to assure astronomers and astrophysicists that what is observed in gravity pulling masses together still holds true, but what is controversial about the new finding is that "from an external viewer's point it takes an infinite amount of time to form an event horizon and that the clock for the objects falling into the black hole appears to slow down to zero," said Krauss, director of Case's Center for Education and Research in Cosmology.
He continued "this is one of the factors that led us to rethink this problem, and we hope our proposal at the very least will stimulate a broader reconsideration of these issues."
If black holes exist in the universe, the astrophysicists speculate they were formed only at the beginning of time.
Source: Case Western Reserve University
I’m afraid I’m gonna need to see those 13 pages of calculations before I can comment further on this article.
I understand this stuff much better after a few beers.
Say it isn’t so. Now what will we use as an excuse when we lose something?
The event horizon would have to be made of socks, pencils, and keys.
Bunny... pancake...
this arguement doesn’t hold. Sandy Burglar has proven that black holes exist!!
One has to wonder what the perception of a person who is falling into a black hole would be...is the warp in space/time so severe that the person falling in would perceive an ever increasing acceleration and compression until unity with the core mass is achieved...but that it appears to take "forever" to an outside observer?
If we have anyone interested in astronomy here, the following is a VERY interesting link.
Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida has put up a very interesting page
on their site. It begins as a view of the Milky Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of
10 million light years and then zooms
in towards Earth in powers of ten. 10 million, to one million, to 100,000 light
years and then it finally reaches a large Oak tree. If ever there was a witness to
the glory of creation (and perspective), they have captured it for our viewing
pleasure!
Once you click on the site, the software does all the work. Sit back and try to
imagine how perfect our universe is! Amazing!
Click on the link below to view this.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html
Uh... oh... according to the underlying research behind these findings, this appears to be ample proof that Algore not only does not currently exist, but never existed in the first place.
Was there a beginning in time? What happened in the eons upon eons before then?
“If black holes exist in the universe, the astrophysicists speculate they were formed only at the beginning of time.”
What?
I thought a star of certain mass, particularly one with a binary companion from which to draw further mass, would form a black hole on collapse.
Are they saying that time dilation actually prevents a black hole from forming over the life of the universe, hence there can be none?
It’s spaghettification, I tell ya! Spaghettification!
If you'll do the first 7, I'll handle the last 7.
Oops!!
"If black holes exist in the universe...."
And if I read this correctly, they are saying black holes cannot be created, but maybe some exist from the beginning of the universe. Those are big maybes and certainly raise the question what are all the black holes scientists think exist, if it turns out they aren't black holes?
You got a deel!
Funny how we can imagine time having no end, but it’s difficult to imagine it never having had a beginning.
Yep, that's what I'm getting out of it. The classic black hole with all its familiar properties, which froms a collapsing star, simply cannot exist, because everything freezes at the event horizon. Nothing "disappears" from our universe. At least from the outsider's point of view.
PFL
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