Black Holes No More -- Introducing the Gravastar 670
Mark Eymer observes: "From the Space.com article: 'Emil Mottola of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Pawel Mazur of the University of South Carolina suggest that instead of a star collapsing into a pinpoint of space with virtually infinite gravity, its matter is transformed into a spherical void surrounded by "an extremely durable form of matter never before experienced on Earth."' While these objects may abound in the universe, they also say that our entire universe may reside within a giant gravastar." This new theory attempts to fill holes in the currently accepted concept of the "black hole".
Recursivity (Score:0, Insightful)
If this appear to be true, I then guess we could find universes in atomic particles.
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone's gotta take chances, and just because they don't have a long dignified history of work doesn't mean their words are invalid from the get-go.
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Onion reported a similar thing some years ago. (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone luckily stashed a PDF [gats-inc.com] of this (Copyright 1999 The Onion).
There you go.
Re:ah.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no problems believing that.
Re:I am confused by the article (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I suspect that what we're looking at is the conservation of information--the indestructable info-quantum.
Re:Bad News for Hawking? (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who works on black hole astrophysics (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually these explanations are far more complex physically than a black hole, so until I see a compelling, scientifically verifiably alternative to the theory of black holes I'll apply the principal of Occams Razor. I.e. The simplest answer is most likely the correct one. Theories that are 30 times more complex than black holes but are not measurably different I'll continue to ignore.
I have a similar theory ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's in process.... (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as this theory is concerned, I have some doubts but I am willing to hear them through. As for Black Holes, I have some long standing concerns which have never been sufficiently answered. The inner workings of a Black Hole, like time before the Big Bang, is currently unknowable. They are still only theories and should be labeled 'under consideration'.
But don't take my word for it. Believe anything you want to believe. Doesn't make it so or you smart or this new theory stupid.
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know several idiots with college degrees.
The same skills that make one a brilliant theorist, artisan, thinker, etc. are not necessarily the ones that help you complete a degree program.
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:5, Insightful)
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- Carl Sagan
Re:Just like string theory (Score:2, Insightful)
If not, then how do you know that one theory or the other can't be proven, or atleast supported, by mathematics? Perhaps through investigating these, scientists could find that point-like black holes are in fact mathematically impossible.
Science is to the point where we think about lots of things that can't be observed. You're right that if something can't be observed, then it doesn't directly matter to us. But thinking about such things can benefit us by leading us to more accurate models of the universe, and to conclusions which can be observed and useful.
Re:The "other side of" the same gravistar. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference here is that Einstein and Newton both were faced with observations that contradicted the best theories at the time. Now there's a good starting point for a new theory. As for gravastars, there's no need to find an alternative for black holes until we have observations that contradict our present theories about them. So far, there are none -- the points about entropy remain moot, as they can be explained in precisely the same way in black hole theory as with gravastars: behind a black hole there very well could be another world.
This leads to the corollary that this world is the nether side of some black hole -- which is equivalent to what the gravastar researchers conclude within their framework. The problem for the gravastar theory is the infamous Occam's Razor. Their theory is more complicated than the black hole theory it is trying to replace, and unnecessarily so because it does not bring about any new explanations. Just a word play on the old stuff, basically.
Sure, it's fun to play the game of 'what if', and little harm can come of it, and there's always a possibility that one ends up with something that is actually better than the best existing theory. It's good for raising research funds. As a method for advancing knowledge it's no better than filling a room with typewriters and monkeys.
Gravastars don't resolve "troubling issues" (Score:1, Insightful)
Regardless of whether black holes exist, and regardless of whether gravastars exist, the black hole entropy problem still needs to be solved in theory, because theory admits black hole solutions, and needs to be able to account for the thermodynamics of any solution. Theorists don't study black hole entropy because it's astrophysically relevant or measured in expeirments that need to be accounted for; they study it because they want to understand all mathematical aspects of the theory, aspects which are present whether or not they are realized in nature. So gravastars do absolutely nothing to resolve "troubling issues" with black hole theory.
Besides, I wouldn't say that physicists have largely failed to account for the huge entropy of black holes. Circa 1995, both string theorists and loop quantum gravity researchers were able to take a large step towards deriving the Hawking-Bekenstein entropy formula.
Occam's Razor (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:where is the peer review? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, research into conecpts that turn out to be wrong or seemingly useless can be valid and useful, provided the hypothesis is founded in some modicum of real scientific observation. Even if the hypothesis turns out to be bunk, the observation is still valid, and the question is still valid. Therefore, the reserach that was done simply demonstrated what was incorrect. We can apply some of the lessons learned during that misguided research to what comes later on. We now know what doesn't adequately explain what is observed.
There's a quote from Edison, something along the lines of "Trying to create a lightbulb, there were not 100 failures. I found 100 ways to make a nonfunctioning lightbulb."
Re:Newton Ate Mercury (Score:2, Insightful)
Another typical example when a true statement is considered as funny by people unaware of its truthfulness.