----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2005 10:08 AM Subject: Re: Black holes 'do not exist'
> > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Robert Seeberger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> > Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2005 9:54 AM > Subject: Re: Black holes 'do not exist' > > >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Julia Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> >> Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 11:37 PM >> Subject: Re: Black holes 'do not exist' >> >> >> > Robert G. Seeberger wrote: >> >> http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050328/pf/050328-8_pf.html >> >> >> >> Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think >> >> astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a >> >> physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in >> >> California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and >> >> indeed >> >> cannot exist. >> > >> > Thank you for posting this. I came across it a couple of days >> > ago >> >> It wasn't Amy Harlib by any chance? >> >> >and meant to post something, so as to ask those better versed in >> >physics what they had to say about it. >> > >> > Anyone? :) >> > >> HA!!!! >> Those cowards have been asked twice to comment but have retreated >> to >> the safety of politics threads. <G> >> > Well, the reasonable information on the statement is quite limited, > but I'm > guessing that this is a theory that will not be validated in the > future. > Some things in nature are misleading. We do have a theory of > relativistic > QM, and it is functioning quite well. We have not reconciled our > theory of > gravity (general relativity) and QM, and that is an area that a > number of > theorists are working in. > > Scientific American had an earlier article on this. While, alas, > they > count as a professional physics publication no more than Nature, > they did > give perspectives of a non-proponent: > > <quote> > For now, these ideas are barely more than scribbles on the back of > an > envelope, and critics have myriad complaints about their > plausibility. For > example, how exactly would matter or spacetime change state during > the > collapse of a star? Physicist Scott A. Hughes of the Massachusetts > Institute of Technology says, "I don't see how something like a > massive > star--an object made out of normal fluid, with fairly simple density > and > pressure relations--can make a transition into something with as > bizarre a > structure as a gravastar." Mainstream theories of quantum gravity > are far > better developed. String theory, for one, appears to explain away > the > paradoxes of black holes without abandoning either event horizons or > relativity. > <end quote> > > So, the odds are against this being validated. But, if we do see > gravity > waves, we could look for unique types of gravity waves predicted by > this > theory. > It didn't seem to me that Event horizons were so much abandoned as redefined and re-explained. The important question for me is still how time is regarded in QM and GR. If the author of the paper is making an incorrect statement, why would it be reported in Nature without qualification? If time is regarded differently in QM and GR, then what is the current thinking on this discrepancy? I have a hard time imagining that time operates differently on macro, meso, or quantum scales. (Yes, that is strictly a lack of knowledge on my part and I know it, but I am intensely curious as to whether this is a question that is being explored actively or if it is a problem that some hope will disappear as other lines of research progress.) It seems to me that something this basic cannot simply be glossed over without introducing questions about the validity of a good deal of work done on GR and QM to date. I also have a hard time believing it is being glossed over. I would expect this to be something physicists agonize over. xponent Questions Upon Questions Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
