"Burning Walls" May Stop Black Hole Formation 100
KentuckyFC writes "Black holes are thought to form when a star greater than 4 times the mass of the Sun explodes in a supernova and then collapses. The force of this collapse is so great that no known force can stop it. In less massive stars, the collapse cannot overcome so-called neutron degeneracy, the force that stops neutrons from being squashed together. Now a Russian physicist says another effect may be involved. He points out that quantum chromodynamics predicts that when neutrons are squashed together, matter undergoes a phase transition into "subhadronic" matter. This is very different from ordinary matter. In subhadronic form, space is essentially empty. So the phase change creates a sudden reduction in pressure, forcing any ordinary matter in the star to implode into this new vacuum. The result is a massive increase in temperature of this matter that creates a "burning wall" within the supernova. And it is this burning wall that stops the formation of a black hole, not just the degeneracy pressure of neutrons. This should lead to much greater energies inside a supernova than had been thought possible until now. And that's important because it could explain the formation of high energy gamma ray bursts that have long puzzled astrophysicists."
Burning walls... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, but after reading the title of the article, all I can think about is all that spicy food I ate last night...
Re:Burning walls... Don't worry, it'll be on-topic (Score:1)
When one of those black holes comes burning thru space right thru Uranus so put the Earth in great heat... "Sex Is Zero" will timely and more...
Re:Burning walls... (Score:5, Funny)
They're talking interstellar, and you can't see past Uranus.
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He's still looking for Klingons ... (Score:1)
But what they're saying that the new Star Trek movie had it backwards? That Walls of Fire stop Black Holes, not the other way around? Wow.
I knew J.J. Abrams was good, but to hit you with a twist ending AFTER you've already left the theater is incredible.
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I love this kind of story (Score:5, Insightful)
I never like when scientists can't explain a major aspect of something like a black hole. They have models/predictions etc., but there are these little pieces that are missing.
Then someone comes along with an elegant solution that fits perfectly into the existing theory/model/design and suddenly all these unexplained pieces make perfect sense.
That is what science is about. Revelation based on fact, not faith. At the end of the day I think it's a lot more rewarding, although a lot harder to come by.
Re:I love this kind of story (Score:4, Informative)
Facts... like unexplained Gamma Ray Bursts?
I mean, this is more of synthesis of existing observations rather than *new* observations, but it's still science.
It's taking unexplained observations and incorporating those observations into better theories that fit the data. I'm not an astrophysicist, and this still seems like it's just an hypothesis, but I guess I don't see where the problem is.
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You might ask Einstein or Hawking about that. They sort of disagree with you. They seem to always be offended by any part of a theory that appears inelegant to them.
Now I'll grant that this *ISN'T* proof, it's just something that seems to be an unreasonably effective way of looking for where the truth should lie, and what evidence should support it.
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Well Einstein was offended by the hackiness of Quantum Mechanics to the point where he thought it must be incorrect. However, he was wrong.
As far as I can tell there's no reason the universe has to abide by rules that we consider elegant. In the fact elegant seems to be a subjective thing.
Then again maybe there's a much more elegant theory will be discovered that can explain all the results General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics do and more and will be simpler than each of them.
I don't know. And neither d
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Sounds like faith to me... Where's the observation of facts in the above?
You don't observe facts, you observe phenomena.
Faith requires neither facts, nor observation. You just say something like "Hey, it runs on turtle oil, because the Big Man said it does" and let that stand on its own merit.
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And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
Re:I love this kind of story (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with faith per se, except when it interferes with observable reality. But it's not faith because it's recognized as one of many possibilities and has a probability attached to it.
What you're seeing is that this possibility is the most probable, which is why it is favored over the other myriad of possibilities. But when some new data comes along, this idea may be strengthened or weakened, and it may eventually lose its favored status to another possibility. Sometimes, but relatively rarely, a possibility is so probable that it becomes generally irrefutable (but the minutae are usually still in the works), in which case, it becomes theorem a.k.a. fact.
Of course, even facts can be changed with new data. "Refined" is probably the correct term. Facts don't get turned upside down, but they may get marginalized, or slotted into a larger, more general fact, or pieces may be replaced with better ideas. For example, gravity being the 4th fundamental force is a fact, but the mechanism behind gravity isn't understood. So some data may come along to explain gravity, or to turn gravity into one of the other 3 fundamental forces, or to make gravity only a small part of a much larger 4th fundamental force. But since no such data exists as of now, gravity remains as it is.
That is science.
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In other words, he just put forth a possible explanation without any hard data to back it up. People have done the same in the past, only to have the observations go against their hypotheses. Building a hypothesis is only half the battle; you still need to gather evidence to support it.
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one usually forms a hypothesis to fit data, not the other way around
But either way, the second step is always apply for a grant [besse.at]!
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You mean unlike the dark matter/energy theory, that was created, because the data did not form the hypothesis, but the hypothesis must!!!1!1one(
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Damn. Please ignore what went trough of my comment, and imagine it would have looked like this:
You mean unlike the dark matter/energy theory, that was created, because the data did not fit the hypothesis, but the hypothesis must!!!1!1one be true?
Thank you for your cooperation. And have a nice day. ;)
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Well, the alternatives to dark matter/energy suck. Either there's more matter and energy out in the universe than we can observe directly, or gravity doesn't work the same on large scales as it does on small scales. Dark energy is hypothesized because we have not observed anything to account for the accelerating expansion of the universe.
The theories of dark matter and dark energy require the fewest assumptions, and best explain the observed phenomena, so it's they're working theories du jour. We don't like
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He wasn't criticizing dark matter theory any more than you just did.
He was pointing out that the statement "hypothesis are usually created to fit the data, not the other way around" was utter non-sense. Ideally, that's true, but we end up with observations that should not exist based on everything else we observe, it's a thorn in the side and it needs an explanation. Thus what are essentially still just hypothesis get called theories because a) observations necessary have so far been impossible and b) the
Re:I love this kind of story (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was an undergrad, I worked on CASA, the Chicago Air Shower Array. It was a big array of detectors in the Utah desert, designed to identify point souces of ultra-high energy gamma ray bursts and get more information about the showers of particles they create when they hit the atmosphere.
It's nice to see a model that could conceivably give an idea of how gamma ray bursts happen. In 1988-89, there really weren't any very good candidates. The problem was interesting enough to get James Cronin, who had won a Nobel Prize with Val Fitch for their discovery of a certain kind of symmetry violation in particle physics, interested in experimental astrophysics. He was one of the principal scientists on the project. And he even did some manual labor, like helping with wrapping detectors. I remember him eating the lunch he had brought from home and talking to me about the health benefits of garlic as we worked on preparing detectors one day.
Each box had four detectors in it, each detector made of a piece of scintillator with a big photomultiplier attached, all wrapped in black to make it light-tight. In addition to an identifying number, the grad students gave each box a name. Some were named for blues musicians, for example. At some point, the undergrads working on the project started expressing creativity by using made-up names to sign the detectors we had prepared and tested. To this day I wonder if Cronin ever saw the one I had signed as "Cronan the Barbarian."
"Experimental Astrophysics"? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's where you set off a bunch of supernova with different intitial conditions and compare the results with theory?
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However, I have a lot of speculation on any theory especially those about space where we have yet to really explore and travel, where someone assumes a few laws about existence of such an anomaly, and therefor think themselves experts
on the subject. I tend to think it is a work in progress until we can provide 100% proof that wood floats in water, or ice melts into water, etc....we have no proof of anything concerning black holes, because we don't even have one near us to view and analyze......!
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Not surprising you think it's "a work in progress", that is what it is supposed to be. Proof is for axiomatic systems. Science offers a way to make usefull predictions of the future with various degrees of certainty, that certainty never reaches 100% as it does in maths (and dare I say religion).
Sure you can demonstrate a piece of wood floats but that is not "100% proof
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That is what science is about. Revelation based on fact, not faith.
But you realize that faith is not an inherently religious concept. You have faith that science will explain things like the "Big Bang" and the "cause" of gravity. In fact, you have faith that science is a useful tool in the first place. What if all of our observations are based on a lie perpetrated by an all-powerful trickster (see Descartes)? Or perhaps reality is merely a series of shadows projected on a cave wall in front of a captive audience (see Plato). Attempting to set science above religious d
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Many scientific revalations were based on faith, the assumptions a scientist makes when creating their theory. Unlike blind-faith commonly associated with religion, science allows those faith based assumptions to be tested. Ptolemy created a scientifically valid geo-centric model of the solar system, in that it could accurately predict the motion of
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wowsa ! (Score:1)
How can these hypotheses be checked?
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If we ever found a way to accelerate neutrons, that might work. Trouble is, neutrons have no charge, and our colliders need a charge to grab on to. We have neutron sources, in the form of fissioning elements, but there's no way to get those neutrons to go around in a circle. So the usual trick of slamming particles into each other at near-lightspeed isn't possible. I suspect that testing this particular idea won't be possible until we understand so much about particle physics that we don't even need to
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If we ever found a way to accelerate neutrons, that might work.
Attach them to some protons and fling the combined nuclei. How bout a 1:1 ratio, good ole deuterium.
Shouldn't it be possible to see this effect in n-n collisions, much as quark effects were discovered?
If colliding deuterium ions into bulk deuterium doesn't work, fling the accelerated ions at a target just right to break off the proton and let the neutron fling onwards into a "bucket of neutrons" from a source or a reactor. Reaction rate will be pretty slow, but if you got all day to let it run, thats OK?
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Re:wowsa ! (Score:5, Funny)
Show all work. Write legibly in #2 pencil or blue or black permanent ink. Do not write on test booklet. Do not start until signaled to do so by your proctor. Destruction of the earth will result in automatic failure. You will have three (3) hours.
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Ideally, you'd also ensure it had a negative energy density. Then, when it supernovas, you will flood the universe with exotic matter and wormholes.
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Quantum chromodynamics, "subhadronic" matter,. .... , I think you got me lost there ;-)
You must be new here.
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Quantum chromodynamics, "subhadronic" matter,. .... , I think you got me lost there ;-)
How can these hypotheses be checked?
I just checked. There's so such thing as "subhadronic" matter. Wikipedia gives me a "page not found".
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One would assume subhadronic matter == things smaller than hadrons == quarks and leptons
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QCD Phases (Score:4, Informative)
Supernovae (Score:2, Informative)
"Black holes are thought to form when a star greater than 4 times the mass of the Sun explodes in a supernova and then collapses. "
If a star is greater than _8_ solar masses you get a supernova.
Re:Spoiler! (Score:4, Informative)
Reading comprehension FAIL: exactly the opposite is true. Our star will NOT supernova and form a black hole because our sun is EXACTLY one solar mass (being the star that scale is based on) which is less than eight solar masses.
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So we won't get anything... :(
That's even sadder
Re:Spoiler! (Score:4, Funny)
And that PROVES the existence of God. I mean, what is the chance that OUR sun is EXACTLY one solar mass? There must be hundreds of suns in the universe and we got the ONLY exact one because WE are Gods CHOSEN.
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Sorry, but by the time our sun has passed through it's red giant phase it will be considerably LESS than one solar mass.
(I've always wondered at what point in a stars life they count it's weight for that phrase. Possibly they're uncertain enough about the exact value that it doesn't matter, but I think the sun is expected to shed something approximating 1/4 of it's mass during the red giant phase, so that's a lot of uncertainty.
OTOH, I'm definitely NOT a astrophysicist, and I might be off in how much mass
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Only works for really big stars... (Score:2)
Re:Only works for really big stars... (Score:5, Funny)
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Must have been a Star Trek watcher (Score:2, Funny)
The phrase that stuck out for me was, 'a phase transition into "subhadronic" matter'. While I certainly recognize the need for new vocabulary when a new model/theory/phenomenon is described or discovered, this particular phrase, "subhadronic matter", gives me Star Trek Voyager flashbacks.
"Captain, the Borg are pulling us in!"
"Lt. Torres, can you reroute the power to the deflection array dish, and invert the signal to send out a subhadronic matter stream? That should disrupt the tractor beam long enough for
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voyyyyyyyaaaagggerr (in a khaaaaaan voice)
Both? (Score:1, Funny)
So now the sky, and the walls are burning?
Scientific method to the rescue (Score:1)
Great! Let's use the scientific method to test this hypothesis. Oh wait, nevermind.
Sorry, but it's hard not to be cynical about astrophysics. Dark matter sounds like something invented by a writer for a Japanese cartoon series, and the scientific explanation sounds about as likely to be true.
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For some reason that I don't understand it's not supposed to be baryonic matter. I.e., no protons. This rules out the Dyson spheres.
Sorry. I'd really like that explanation to work.
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The SF explanation : all the missing matter is made of Dyson spheres...
For some reason that I don't understand it's not supposed to be baryonic matter. I.e., no protons. This rules out the Dyson spheres.
All of the data from our observations is based on the assumption that what we are seeing is not being influenced by an intelligence.
And you have to admit, if a Dyson sphere could be designed engineered and built, there would probably have to be a little bit of intelligence behind it!
Yea I know, but it makes for some wonderful sci-fi story lines :D
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Sorry, but it's hard not to be cynical about astrophysics. Dark matter sounds like something invented by a writer for Sailor Moon the Japanese cartoon series, and the scientific explanation sounds about as likely to be true.
Fixed it for you...
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Dark matter sounds like something invented by a writer for a Japanese cartoon series, and the scientific explanation sounds about as likely to be true.
Would you prefer they call it "Here-Be-Dragons Matter"?
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Great! Let's use the scientific method to test this hypothesis. Oh wait, nevermind.
Sorry, but if you don't understand how to test these hypotheses using the scientific method, you clearly don't understand science well enough to have a clue. What you really mean is, it's hard not to be cynical when you don't have a clue and can't be bothered to get one.
IT Security admin's rejoice! (Score:2, Funny)
They can rest easy knowing that their Fire-Wall, will protect them from a Black Hole too...not just outside intruders!
observational tests? (Score:5, Informative)
There are a lot of very difficult theoretical problems involved in trying to describe the structure of neutron stars. The classic picture of a star made of nothing but neutrons is probably not quite right, and is possibly qualitatively wrong in important ways. There's supposed to be an upper limit on the mass of a neutron star, and the theoretical uncertainties get greater as you get closer to this mass limit. E.g., it's possible that you get quark stars. We just don't know, because we don't know the behavior of the strong and weak nuclear forces with sufficient precision to be able to extrapolate to these extreme conditions.
Given all that uncertainty, which has existed for many decades, it's not at all surprising to me that there's a corresponding uncertainty about the conditions under which a neutron star is or isn't unstable with respect to collapse into a black hole. The paper [arxiv.org], which is linked to from the end of the Technology Review article, is pretty heavy going. My field is nuclear physics, not relativistic astrophysics, and I had a hard time understanding it. The author's English is also pretty hard to understand, so it's hard to tell exactly what he's saying his conclusions are. But if you look at the end, he seems to be suggesting that black holes actually do not form.
I wonder to what extent existing observations constrain this idea. For instance, we know that the Sagittarius A* object at the center of our galaxy has a mass of at least 3.7 million solar masses and a radius of less than 6.25 light-hours. It would be interesting to know what he proposes this object is, if he says it's not a black hole.
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Sagittarius A* object at the center of our galaxy has a mass of at least 3.7 million solar masses
What the author is refering to is stellar mass black holes, ie. black holes that form from core collapse in star. The Supermassive black holes such as the one in our galaxy are a different beast entirely.