Three cosmic enigmas, one audacious answer [bye-bye to black holes?]

New Scientist ^ | March 9, 2006 | Zeeya Merali

[phantomworker]

the objects that till now have been thought of as black holes could in fact be dead stars that form as a result of an obscure quantum phenomenon.

Hasn't this been a theory for a long time? I once saw a video of black holes forming at a UC Berkeley physics colloquium. Most fascinating phenomenon!

[snarks_when_bored]

There's a list of purposes of the LHC in this Wikipedia article: Large Hadron Collider.

BTW, the Planck scale is far out of reach. The LHC is going to be colliding protons, mostly, and their radius is about 10^-13 cm. The Planck scale is of the order of 10^-33 cm, 20 orders of magnitude smaller.

[kanawa]

Nice Bosons!

[Interesting Times]

Ping.

[Physicist]

Motl makes many more cogent points than I could have. I suppose it comes of reading the paper and understanding it. <g>

I love the "Kyoto Count-up" feature on his page. Very enlightening. "Every day, we buy -0.000005 Celsius degrees for one half of the LHC collider."

[Quark2005]

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.

From what I read, the idea says that the thin shell of material forms just outside of where the event horizon would be. (This idea, which replaces black holes with objects called gravastars, was formulated by Mazur/Mottola some time around 2002.) If this phenomenon is true, it prevents a black hole from forming, but just barely. The surrounding space-time would still apparently behave just like a black hole outside the event horizon (but there would be stronger ejected matter jets & x-ray emission than in a standard black hole).

I have to honestly say that I don't understand how this would solve the dark matter problem any more than saying it is tucked away into black holes, though. (Primordial black holes would have to evaporate into observable photons by Hawking radiation, whereas these entities don't, I'm guessing...)

Some older links on the matter:

Los Alamos researcher says 'black holes' aren't holes at all

Thick-Skinned Gravastars Vie to Replace Black Holes, in Theory

Is black hole theory full of hot air? (Typically misleading title courtesy of CNN)

Great article, snarks - always fun to discuss true controversies in science.

[longshadow]

Every week, New Scientist announces some breakthrough that overturns all of physics.

While the UnDiscovery Institute's motto is "Teach the controversy"; the motto of the New Scientist seems to be "Preach the controversy"....

In the meanwhile, I'll just drop this article in my Ipcress File for safe keeping.....

[Constantine XIII]

that's because historians are pretty dumb when it comes to physics. :P

[Constantine XIII]

Sure, the information is lost, too. Black holes are considered to be in a state of maximum entropy. They can even screw around with the baryon number of the universe.

They're mean that way. :)

[razorback-bert]

So we will have wormhole warp drives in a few years?

[snarks_when_bored]

"In the meanwhile, I'll just drop this article in my Ipcress File for safe keeping....."

As Robin Leach might say: "My palms are bleeding and I don't know why!"

(Palms...Palmer...heh heh...)

[snarks_when_bored]

Thanks...and thanks for the links...

[snarks_when_bored]

So we will have wormhole warp drives in a few years?

I'll go out on a limb here and say...'Nope!'.

[American_Centurion]

"It's like we are living inside a giant dark energy star," Chapline says. There is, of course, no explanation yet for how a universe-sized star could come into being.

Which could also explain why there seems to be a possiblity for multiple universes. Multiple giant (universe sized) dark energy stars, residing in yet another universe.

Well that's one way I imagine it could be. I'm not quantum physicist, but I did stay at a Holiday......

[Netheron]

Hydrinos, sure... right... yeah... okey-dokey....

Wow, this is like debating Ludwig Plutonium from the old Usenet threads.

Oh Great and Knowledgeable one...

Wouldst thou grace us mere mortals with the Schrodinger equations describing the orbitals of these 'hydrinos' so we can work out the binding energies and lifetimes for ourselves? Perhaps you could just give us a list of the constiuent particles of a 'hydrino', just for laughs.

Or do I have to send Dr. Mills a $10,000 contribution first?

[TChris]

There is, of course, no explanation yet for how a universe-sized star could come into being.

How about the concept that it has always been? Why must every observed thing have a beginning and an end?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Of course, you will avoid the problems that beset Dr Radcliffe. (And his hapless bodyguard.)

[PatrickHenry]

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.

The article says:

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".

Though this anti-gravity effect might be expected to blow the star's shell apart, calculations by Francisco Lobo of the University of Lisbon in Portugal have shown that stable dark energy stars can exist for a number of different models of vacuum energy. What's more, these stable stars would have shells that lie near the region where a black hole's event horizon would form ...

Presumably (I'm operating with very little info) this anti-gravity effect would prevent the singularity which is supposed to be at the center of black holes. Otherwise, they'd be similar objects, except for the subtle effects at the horizon, which might be observable.

[Virginia-American]

Ludwig Plutonium

Is this another name for Archimedes Plutonium?

[Netheron]

Its his earlier one. He was Ludwig in his early posts before he changed it to Archimedes.