Something new under the sun

[sol invictus]

Because I know the difference between a mathematical construct and something that actually exists.

And how did you acquire this amazing knowledge? Prayer?

The same conceptual issue you had understanding that field lines do not actually exist, they are mathematical tools to represent the process occuring, not the actual process itself. The same for points, or singularities, they have never been observed and are useful mathematical tools only.

Zeuzzz, has the irony of the this situation ever occurred to you? You're typing those words on a keyboard attached to a computer, right? And you're seeing little letters appear on a screen? Do you have ANY idea why it works? What causes those little letters? Did you know that in our best theory - and it's an INCREDIBLY good one, far more accurate than any other we've ever had - the particles responsible for all of that are POINTS? And that's the theory we used to make that computer - and it works?

A point has no volume, area or length, making it a zero dimensional object.

Yes, that's the definition of a point. Well done.

I mainly just dont like the idea of black holes, something that you can't see or detect, how can you disprove something you cant directly detect?

It's been obvious all along that when you say an idea is right or wrong, it's because you, Zeuzzz, either like or don't like it. Thanks for confirming that.

It's not particularly difficult to detect black holes. In fact it would be extremely difficult not to detect one if it were nearby. You might still manage it, though (at least for a while...).

What is a 'point' made of then? how do you test for it?

You measure the energy or momentum or charge or chromodynamic color it carries.

There's a beautiful irony here - it's gravity, and specifically the existence of black holes, that tells us our quantum field theories (which are theories of point particles) need to be modified...

 

[Zeuzzz]

It's not particularly difficult to detect black holes. In fact it would be extremely difficult not to detect one if it were nearby. You might still manage it, though (at least for a while...).

What you mean is you detect the effects that you think are caused by a black hole, large attractional forces, gamma rays and other EM waves, etc, the actual black hole remins as illusive as ever.

You measure the energy or momentum or charge or chromodynamic color it carries.

For a particle, yes, for a black hole, you cant.

There's a beautiful irony here - it's gravity, and specifically the existence of black holes, that tells us our quantum field theories (which are theories of point particles) need to be modified...

Theories of point particles are a far way away from what is claimed about the point-mass of a black hole. This paper by Stephen J. Crothers outlines what i mean. His other publications are worth looking at aswell.

 

[sol invictus]

What you mean is you detect the effects that you think are caused by a black hole, large attractional forces, gamma rays and other EM waves, etc, the actual black hole remins as illusive as ever.

And how do we detect electrons? Protons? The air? Sound waves? The chair you're sitting in? That's right - by their effect on other things.

[sarcasm]But the actual chair remains as illusive [sic] as ever.[/sarcasm]

For a particle, yes, for a black hole, you cant.

Of course you can. You can quite easily measure its mass, charge, and angular momentum - just like for a particle. But since you don't know any GR, you don't know about that, so you just make wrong statements and pretend you know what you're talking about.

Theories of point particles are a far way away from what is claimed about the point-mass of a black hole. This paper by Stephen J. Crothers outlines what i mean. His other publications are worth looking at aswell.

Ah, physics crackpots...

I think when psychiatrists invent a drug which cures this particular form of mental illness I'll be a little sad. A bit of color will have gone out of the world.

On the other hand I'll spend less time arguing with fools, so there's an upside.

 

[Dancing David]

I presume that we are referring to a filamentary plasmoid? and why they do not collapse?

Plasmas display filamentary structures everywhere, from microscopic to galactic size. This structure derives from the fact that plasma, because of its free electrons, is a good conductor of electricity, far exceeding the conducting properties of metals such as copper or gold. Wherever charged particles flow in a neutralizing medium, such as free electrons in a background of ions, the charged particle flow or current produces a ring of magnetic field around the current, pinching the current into filamentary strands of conducting currents.





I would think the charge on the plasmoid could play a role in determining the maximum compression it can sustain, although this alone would certainly not stop the initiation of the collapse, it would put a limit on the ultimate size. If the gravitational force is compressing the plasma to a certain size, as this happens the repulsive force of the similar charges inside the plasma will increase with time, until the compressive force of gravity equals the repulsive force of the ions, leading to a state of equilibrium. The charge on the resulting object will be the same as the net charge previously on the diffuse cloud, but in a much denser state, with the like ions packed closely together. And voila! a gravity ionized star.


Speculations aside, I think that the main forces stopping gravitational collapse in large filamentary structures are the forces that arrise from plasma, and the E and B fields produced by the flow of particles. There are also many secondary effects that arrise from the EM fields, pinch effects (Bennett Pinch, Z-pinch, the force-free configuration, diocotron instability, CIV, etc) magnetic effects (Motion Induced Εlectric Fields, Faraday Disk Dynamo, Biot-Savart force, Faraday's Law, Unipolar inductors, etc) electrical effects (Birkeland currents, Thermoelectric Effect, Double layers, Magnetic Mirror Effect, Electrostatics, Particle Acceleration, etc) All these effects arrise from the EM fields when in certain conditions, and can have a considerable effect. I would say that the most important forces result from Double layers and Z-pinch effects, and also crucially important is the Biot-Savart force (sometimes just called Savart force), which can be worked out as a function of the spacing between helical current filaments, and usually produces rotational motion. I'm no Plasma Cosmologist, theres probably other forces and plasma based effects i have left out.

We were discussing the evidence for potential black holes, and in specific the potential for a black hole at the center of our galaxy, by using corrective optics and inrafred sensors maps can be made of the motion of stars at the center of our galaxy.

there are some motions that would indicate that there is a very massive object in a very small area at the center of our galaxy.

BAC suggested that a lerner plasmoid of 40,000 solar masses could be the critter.

Which begs the question of what prevents it's gravitational collapse and becoming a black hole.

 

[Dancing David]

Einstein never belived in black holes, and wrote two papers in which he argued against their existence. And now people have gone off using his theory to 'prove' that black holes must exist, even though the very person who invented GR did not believe they could exist.

"Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore." Quoted in P A Schilpp, Albert Einstein

For example, when a star collpases under its own gravity to a single point, the very concept of a point is a mathematical abstraction. In other words, a point is a purely mathematical object. No-one has ever observed a point, and no-one will, because nature does not make points.





The problem with some aspects of black holes as they are currently described comes from mathematicians treating mathematical objects as real physical things, and propose these things as fact before any sort of observational evidence for their existance is collected.

I am not sure that a space time foam meets the qualifications of a point, Bose-Einstein Condensate comes very close.


Does gravity bends light around the sun, as tested during a solar eclipse to 'prove' Einstein's theory?

Uncle Albert also believed in God, that does not make it so.

 

[BeAChooser]

Any kind of mass (solid, liquid, gas or plasma) weighing 400,000 solar masses packed into a 45 AU wide sphere is a black hole.

Where are you getting the 400,000 solar mass in 45 AU diameter sphere figure? What you linked doesn't seem to contain it and what I provided earlier only spoke of a 40,000 sun mass in a 2 AU diameter sphere.

 

[Reality Check]

Where are you getting the 400,000 solar mass in 45 AU diameter sphere figure? What you linked doesn't seem to contain it and what I provided earlier only spoke of a 40,000 sun mass in a 2 AU diameter sphere.

I misquoted your figure of 40,000 in a previous post. However I can not see the figure anywhere in the link . I can see "four million times more massive than the Sun" though.

 

[BeAChooser]

I misquoted your figure of 40,000 in a previous post. However I can not see the figure anywhere in the link .

12th paragraph.

 

[Reality Check]

I see it:

Another conclusion the scientists reached is that "the total mass of the black hole is very concentrated," according to Bower. The new VLBA observations provide, he said, the "most precise localization of the mass of a supermassive black hole ever." The precision of these observations allows the scientists to say that a mass of at least 40,000 Suns has to reside in a space corresponding to the size of the Earth's orbit. However, that figure represents only a lower limit on the mass. Most likely, the scientists believe, all the black hole's mass -- equal to four million Suns -- is concentrated well inside the area engulfed by the radio-emitting object.

This is a lower limit. It does not change the fact that any mass of more than 20 solar masses (look up the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit) will form a black hole. Any hypotheical electromagnetic forces will have to be enormous to stop a mass of 40,000 suns from forming a black hole (and explain the 3 billion sun M87 black hole)

 

[Zeuzzz]

Ah, physics crackpots...

I think when psychiatrists invent a drug which cures this particular form of mental illness I'll be a little sad. A bit of color will have gone out of the world.

On the other hand I'll spend less time arguing with fools, so there's an upside.

Translation; What I just read came into conflict with my personal beliefs, and instead of giving a rational explanation to dismiss it I will simply declare that the author is a crackpot

Of course you can. You can quite easily measure its mass, charge, and angular momentum - just like for a particle. But since you don't know any GR, you don't know about that, so you just make wrong statements and pretend you know what you're talking about.

theoretically, yes, you can measure those things. Do they prove that the thing being measured is a black hole? no.

http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2005/PP-01-10.PDF

In a previous paper I derived the general solution for the simple point-mass in a true Schwarzschild space. I extend that solution to the point-charge, the rotating pointmass, and the rotating point-charge, culminating in a single expression for the general solution for the point-mass in all its configurations when Λ = 0. The general exact solution is proved regular everywhere except at the arbitrary location of the source of the gravitational field. In no case does the black hole manifest. The conventional solutions giving rise to various black holes are shown to be inconsistent with General Relativity.

I can either believe Mr Crothers, a highly competant mathematician with numerous publications to his name (see On the Ramifications of the Schwarzschild Space-Time Metric for exmaple), or I can believe you, and you seem intent on attacking the messenger instead of the message, without ever stating why the message is wrong.

see also his work on the General Solution to Einstein’s Vacuum Field and Its Implications for Relativistic Degeneracy, which makes some good points about the lack of physical basis for some of the assumptions in black hole theory.

A serious misconception prevails that the so-called “Schwarzschild solution” is a solution for the vacuum field. Not only is this incorrect, it is not even Schwarzschild’s solution. The aforesaid solution was obtained by David Hilbert [1], a full year after Karl Schwarzschild [2] obtained his original solution. Moreover, Hilbert’s metric is a corruption of the solution first found by Johannes Droste [3], and subsequently by Hermann Weyl [4] by a different method. The orthodox concepts of gravitational collapse and the black hole owe their existence to a confusion as to the true nature of the r-parameter in the metric tensor for the gravitational field.

The error in the conventional analysis of Hilbert’s solution is twofold in that two tacit and invalid assumptions are made:
(a) r is a coordinate and radius (of some kind) in the gravitational field;
(b) The regions 0<r<α=2m and α<r<∞ are valid.

Contrary to the conventional analysis the nature and range or the r-parameter must be determined by rigorous mathematical means, not by mere assumption, tacit or otherwise. When the required mathematical rigour is applied it is revealed that r0 =α denotes a point, not a 2-sphere, and that 0<r<α is undefined on the Hilbert metric. The consequence of this is that gravitational collapse, if it occurs in Nature at all, cannot produce a relativistic black hole under any circumstances. Since the Michell-Laplace dark body is not a black hole either, there is no theoretical basis for it whatsoever. Furthermore, the conventional conception of gravitational collapse is demonstrably false [.....]

 

[sol invictus]

I can either believe Mr Crothers, a highly competant mathematician with numerous publications to his name (see On the Ramifications of the Schwarzschild Space-Time Metric for exmaple), or I can believe you, and you seem intent on attacking the messenger instead of the message, without ever stating why the message is wrong.

No, Zeuzzz.

You can either believe Mr. Crothers, or you can believe every book on general relativity, every professor in the world who knows the subject, every student that takes a course in it and solves the equations for themselves (which is really not hard at all in the case of a Schwarzschild black hole), and me.

Your choice.

 

[Zeuzzz]

You can either believe Mr. Crothers, or you can believe every book on general relativity, every professor in the world who knows the subject, every student that takes a course in it and solves the equations for themselves (which is really not hard at all in the case of a Schwarzschild black hole), and me.

You seem to jump to the instantaneous conclusion from Crothers work that all of known physics must be wrong and must be replaced. That would be both illogical and unreasonable, his problems with black holes are quite specific, and he has no quarms with other areas of physics that his work is based upon. It is one of the ploys of pseudoskepticism to assert offhandedly that the proposed explanation violates some law of physics without giving a reason why this is the case. To assert “all of known physics must be wrong” is not an adequate answer, and is definately not what Crothers work is implying.

Maybe a more suitable thing to do would be to actually read some of his material and post your opinion on where the fatal flaw in his work is?

 

[robinson]

What? Are you kidding? That would be like, like, effort and stuff. Far easier to wave the hands and dismiss everything as crackpots. Then you don't have to read anything. Or even think about stuff.

 

[sol invictus]

You seem to jump to the instantaneous conclusion from Crothers work that all of known physics must be wrong and must be replaced.

The historical record clearly demonstrates that the Black Hole has been conjured up by combination of
confusion, superstition and ineptitude, and is sustained by widespread suppression
of facts, both physical and theoretical. The following essay provides a brief but
accurate account of events, verifiable by reference to the original papers, by which the
scandalous manipulation of both scientific and public opinion is revealed.

<>

It has been recently proved that the black hole and the
expanding Universe are not predicted by General Relativity
at all [12, 13], in any circumstances.

He says black holes don't exist, and that every textbook and every expert is wrong.

He's a crackpot by definition. He's also wrong (and those aren't the same thing). And no, I'm not going to waste my time figuring out what he doesn't understand.

 

[Zeuzzz]

He says black holes don't exist, and that every textbook and every expert is wrong.

Correct. I note that the quote that you supply does not actually contain any information about his material, just what he has concluded from it. So taking it in that context, of course it will look like an unsubstanciated claim, but what you have failed to post his sound mathematical reasoning for this opinion.

What do you think would have happened if Einstein had just thought that because no textbook or expert had previously observed any relativistic effects, his whole idea of General Relativity was a crackpot idea?

Why is Crothers wrong then? or do you have no answer to that?

 

[Reality Check]

Correct. I note that the quote that you supply does not actually contain any information about his material, just what he has concluded from it. So taking it in that context, of course it will look like an unsubstanciated claim, but what you have failed to post his sound mathematical reasoning for this opinion.

What do you think would have happened if Einstein had just thought that because no textbook or expert had previously observed any relativistic effects, his whole idea of General Relativity was a crackpot idea?

Why is Crothers wrong then? or do you have no answer to that?

The major reason why Crothers is wrong is that black holes exist. GR is the best theory to explain their existence.

He does show some of the symptoms of a crackpot, including a well developed persecution complex (Google "Stephen J. Crothers expelled") and quoting his own papers as proof (the "[12, 13]" citations in the invictus post).

 

[sol invictus]

Correct. I note that the quote that you supply does not actually contain any information about his material, just what he has concluded from it. So taking it in that context, of course it will look like an unsubstanciated claim, but what you have failed to post his sound mathematical reasoning for this opinion.

There is not a single equation or mathematical symbol in the entire paper I quoted that from - just a bunch of probably wrong history.

Here's something you quoted:

The orthodox concepts of gravitational collapse and the black hole owe their existence to a confusion as to the true nature of the r-parameter in the metric tensor for the gravitational field.

The error in the conventional analysis of Hilbert’s solution is twofold in that two tacit and invalid assumptions are made:
(a) r is a coordinate and radius (of some kind) in the gravitational field;
(b) The regions 0<r<α=2m and α<r<∞ are valid.

Contrary to the conventional analysis the nature and range or the r-parameter must be determined by rigorous mathematical means, not by mere assumption, tacit or otherwise. When the required mathematical rigour is applied it is revealed that r0 =α denotes a point, not a 2-sphere, and that 0<r<α is undefined on the Hilbert metric.

This is gibberish from the start. r is a coordinate by definition - it's one of the four coordinates in the metric. Saying it's not is like saying it's not a letter. Furthermore it is a radius, at least outside the horizon, as you can check trivially. So (a) is not even wrong. (b) is again total nonsense - regions in a metric can't be valid or invalid. There might be a physical problem somewhere (like a singularity or a closed timelike curve) but then that's what needs to be shown. And there is no such problem in the region outside.

Then he says the horizon is a point rather than a two-sphere, which again is totally wrong.

What do you think would have happened if Einstein had just thought that because no textbook or expert had previously observed any relativistic effects, his whole idea of General Relativity was a crackpot idea?

You're comparing Crothers to Einstein?

GR was a crackpot idea, by my definition - but it was also right, because Einstein was a genius. That's the way it goes. Do you think Crothers is a genius?

 

[MattusMaximus]

What? Are you kidding? That would be like, like, effort and stuff. Far easier to wave the hands and dismiss everything as crackpots. Then you don't have to read anything. Or even think about stuff.

You mean like studying and actually understanding physics, as opposed to taking an "anti-establishment" attitude with your pet theory that couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper sack? I always like how so many physics-woos try to make themselves out to be the next Galileo; except they forget that Galileo actually had evidence to back up his claims. Funny how that works, eh?

Sorry, I'm just lurking now, as I no longer have any interest in interacting with these goofs...

 

[MattusMaximus]

The major reason why Crothers is wrong is that black holes exist. GR is the best theory to explain their existence.

He does show some of the symptoms of a crackpot, including a well developed persecution complex (Google "Stephen J. Crothers expelled") and quoting his own papers as proof (the "[12, 13]" citations in the invictus post).

 

[Zeuzzz]

Its not just Crothers, plenty of other scientsts have shown some of the tacit assumptions in black hole mathematics. You are so quick to conveniently brand anyone who questions the black hole as a crackpot. Unfortunately for you, that does not alter the facts. You must also include Schwarzschild himself as a crank since his paper invalidates the black hole outright, as does Brillouin's, and Droste's. You must also label Einstein a crackpot, because Einstein always rejected the idea of the black hole, claiming in his research papers and other writings that it is not physical, and that singularities in the field nullify the theory of General Relativity. He was convinced that nature had a way, not yet discovered by physicists, to protect us from what he considered an absurd implication of his theory.

It is also commonly held by experts, for example, Hawking and Ellis, Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, S. Chandrasekhar, that the Michell-Laplace dark body is a kind of black hole, or an anticipation of the black hole, and that black holes can be members of binary systems and that black holes can collide. These claims are patently false, and G. C. McVittie has made some conclusive arguments which invalidate these ridiculous claims, which can be seen here

Heres a few other publications, not by Crothers, but getting at the same thing

Black Holes: The Legacy of Hilbert's Error
Paper by Leonard S. Abrams which demonstrates the invalidity of the Hilbert solution and the black hole

The Total Space-Time for the Point Charge and its Consequences for Black Holes
Another paper by Abrams demonstrating the invalidity of the Reissner-Nordstrom black hole.

The Total Space-Time of a Point-Mass when λ ≠ 0, and its Consequences for the Lake-Roeder Black Hole
Yet another interesting paper by Abrams in which he also demonstrates the invalidity of the aforesaid black hole (but his arguments are incomplete).

On a paper by J. Smoller and B. Temple
A first-class demonstration by Nikias Stavroulakis (2002) that the black hole is universally inconsistent with General Relativity. The paper by Smoller and Temple shows that black holes never form in solutions of the Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations, but they do not treat of the black hole concept in general. Stavroulakis does.

On the Principles of General Relativity and the SΘ(4)-invariant Metrics
A very well argued paper showing that the standard manifold with boundary is inadmissible and that a gravitating body cannot collapse to a material point. Stavroulakis also discusses in detail the invalidity of the implicit transformations routinely employed by the orthodox relativists.

A Statical Smooth Extension of Schwarzschild's Metric
This is an early paper by Stavroulakis (1974) in which he disproves the black hole in general, by eliminating the manifold with boundary from all consideration, and obtains the metric for an extended spherically symmetric body.

Non-Euclidean Geometry and Gravitation
Another cogent paper by Stavroulakis. This paper was published in Progress in Physics.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/dec/22barc.htm

Black holes don't exist, says BARC scientist

A Bombay scientist has sought to disprove the existence of 'black holes' in the universe -- the concept that fascinated physicists for more than 200 years.

Dr Abhas Mitra, a senior scientist and an astrophysicst of Theoretical Physics Division of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay, claimed that he has disproved the concept of black holes, which are supposed to be objects so compact that from which even light can not escape.

Mitra has pointed out in his paper, 'Non-occurrence of trapped surfaces and black holes in spherical gravitational collapse' in the current issue of the journal 'Foundations of Physics Letters' that just removing the 'subtle errors' in the earlier work of famous physicists J R Oppenheimer and H Snyder had led to the 'rejection' of formation of black holes

And also many scientists that have read Crothers' work can find no errors with it, and most have written favorably about his work.

-Prof Evans. British and Commonwealth Civil List Scientist, Welsh Scientific Advisory Committee (WSAC)

Crothers has several distinguished supporters, such as Dunning-Davies, and I have not been able to find a logical flaw in Crothers’ arguments. Hawking and Penrose seem to be incorrect, there cannot be a singularity theorem. Hoyle denied Hawking and Penrose but the latter won the political battle. Hoyle won the day with logic. [...]

So it is obvious that there are no black holes, no Big Bang, no dark matter. Funding of these concepts must therefore cease, and be redirected to useful science. I am exceedingly careful not to repeat historical errors.

I can see why he's become hesitant to give money to these areas, lets face it, this has happened before in this area.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1626728.ece 2007

Big Bang at the atomic lab after scientists get their maths wrong

A £2 billion project to answer some of the biggest mysteries of the universe has been delayed by months after scientists building it made basic errors in their mathematical calculations.

And Jeremy Dunning-Davies has also read and approved Crothers work

Subject: “Exploding a Myth” by Jeremy Dunning-Davies
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 03:27:20 EDT

It might usefully be remarked that Einstein’s own paper of 1939 in the Annals of Mathematics itself casts doubt on the notion of a black hole. This seems to support the earlier work and this became apparent to some immediately Schwarzschild’s original paper was translated into English - for this the scientific community owes a debt of gratitude to Angelo Loinger. The big problem here, however, is the refusal toi engage in open discussion and it is, unfortunately, not only in this area of science that this unscientific behaviour occurs. It is for this reason that, drawing on my own experiences, I have written a book - ‘Exploding a Myth’ - which is due out shortly and discusses this very issue of conventional wisdom. The examples discussed are all from the field of Physics and include the Big Bang and Black Holes, especially the Thermodynamics of Black Holes. The treatment of stephen Crothers has been disgraceful but let it not be forgotten that others have suffered at the hands of the scientific mafia for years. Careers have been ruined, promotions stopped and all in the name of conventional wisdom. This concept is a totally unnecessary evil and, for the good of science as a whole, its influence must be reduced.

Stephen Crothers arguments concerning the Big Bang and Black Holes may not be the whole story but they are undoubtedly correct. That is probably why so many with deep vested interests attack him so vigorously, either directly or, more probably, through intermediaries.

- Jeremy Dunning-Davies.

So if his material (and others) is so drastically wrong and 'crackpot', why do so many established scientists seem to approve this work? Are they all crackpots too?