The term “black hole” refers to regions in space formed when a star dies and collapses under the pressure of its own gravity to a single point in space called a singularity.
The gravitational forces on a specific singularity are so intense that even
The term “black hole” refers to regions in space formed when a star dies and collapses under the pressure of its own gravity to a single point in space called a singularity.
The gravitational forces on a specific singularity are so intense that even the light cannot escape them, and that is why they are called ‘black holes’.
Up to now, we have heard a lot of theories about what is going on in a black hole, even the ones claiming that these mysterious space objects might contain entire universes. We have heard that time slows down inside black holes due to the effects of relativity, and we have heard of proof of their existence, mostly based on the matter that swirls around them having been pulled by their gravity.
All that is now thrown away as theoretical physicist Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina has published her research, which says that black holes do not exist because it is mathematically impossible for a black hole to even form!
A solution for the black hole information loss paradox?
The research was greeted with due skepticism by her peers, and, in her own words, her findings are difficult to swallow. Her research proposes a potential resolution of the “black hole information loss paradox”.
It results from a conflict between Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which suggests that physical information can disappear in a black hole forever, and quantum mechanics, which states that no “information” can ever be permanently lost in the universe since it is encoded in its wave function until the time that this function collapses.
If this indeed is so, then Drs. Houghton and her colleague Dr. Harald Pfeiffer, who is a relativity expert at the University of Toronto, have achieved a holy grail of physics, which is the unification of the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics, something that scientists have been trying to do for decades.
According to their publication, a collapsing star sheds mass and stops collapsing at a certain radius from its center, and then the core explodes.
The theory is based on the Hawking Radiation discovery of 1974 and essentially points out that when the star collapses, it produces tremendous amounts of Hawking Radiation, which results in the loss of mass. At the time that a singularity is supposed to be created, there simply isn’t enough mass left of the star to form it.
The remaining matter rebounds outward through an ordinary explosion. Furthermore, the scientists claim that through their explanation, a lot of theories about the strange and almost incomprehensible properties of a black hole can be simply eliminated.
If their hypothesis is correct, theories that have been put forth as to the origin of our universe will have to be revised. As expected, Drs. Houghton’s paper has been met with disbelief from a number of her peers.
Dr. Max Tegmark, who is a cosmologist and a physics professor at MIT, states that he is not convinced.
As per his words, seeing numerical calculations is great, but when the result differs from published, proven, and accepted findings, then there must be a number of incorrect assumptions. Before anyone can prove that black holes do not exist, they must first offer a valid and plausible explanation for all the observational evidence.
Dr. David Garfinkle, who is an expert on singularities and gravitational fields and teaches physics at Oakland University, called the research “interesting”, but went on to say that there is not enough knowledge about singularities to correctly identify if the hypothesis is correct or not.
Even if it is so, it is a long way from saying that black holes do not exist, as there is a multitude of astronomical proofs that objects behaving like black holes, as per Einstein’s theories, do exist.
Stephen Hawking’s new theory claims that black holes do not exist
The argument becomes even more complicated as Stephen Hawking (no need to introduce him), has stipulated in an online paper he published that black holes indeed do not exist. According to the prominent physicist’s new theory, black holes are probably not what he considered them to be in his previous theory 40 years ago.
Being one of the “fathers” of the modern theory of black holes, Hawking now comes to challenge some key aspects of his own theory, which are considered almost “doctrines” of contemporary physics. In essence, he claims that there are no black holes, at least as they are imagined by the scientists so far.
They are, in fact, “grey holes”, as he calls them. In this paper, he claims that the idea of an event horizon, which captures even the light, is flawed. The British scientist argues that this boundary of a black hole does not exist because it is incompatible with quantum theory.
Instead, Hawking suggests a concept of an “apparent horizon“, or a surface along which the light is not blocked forever from ‘escaping’ out of the black hole. What happens is that light rays during their attempt to rush away from the singularity’s core, are stuck on a treadmill and eventually shrink, emitting radiation.
According to the “Nature“, Hawking calls for a redefinition of the concept of the black hole, above all, the abolition of the term “event horizon”, which is an invisible boundary that supposedly surrounds each black hole in the universe and prevents light fro