Black Holes or Anything Else? by C. Corda, D. Leiter, H. J. Mosquera Cuestra, S. Robertson, and R. E. Schild

Dear Sergey,

Actually, I do not understand how your theory can be consistent with Equivalence Principle if it has its own energy-momentum tensor. This is the key issue as Equivalence Principle is an observational constrain. I think that you should agree with me that a theory which violates observational constrains has to be ruled out.

Best wishes,

Ch.

Dear Christian, et al,

My condolences also on the passing of Dr. Leiter.

I just read, as best I could, your essay today. I must say that I'm a simple person with no qualifications in physics. However, I did find some of the basic points in your analysis to be complimentary to some of my purely conceptual thinking.

In particular, it seems obvious that no form of matter could be contained within a dimensionless singularity without invoking metaphysical solutions that allow some dimensional exportation while retaining mass effects locally (more later). As for ideas regarding supermassive material objects, as you discuss the densest confirmed objects are pulsars and neutron stars composed of primarily neutrons with perhaps a quark-gluon plasma core.

But as I understand (and you describe on the basis of theory), those objects seem to be limited to less than 2 Solar masses (by degeneracy pressure) while the orbital characteristics of stars in the proximity of the proposed Milky Way SMBH indicate a compact object with a total mass of >4 million Solar masses. It seems problematic to me that any even hypothetical form of exotic matter must have some finite constraint limiting its degeneracy pressure and resulting maximum density, preventing perhaps even the existence of any physical object of millions of Solar masses. I think you may address this in your essay, but I'm afraid I can't adequately comprehend.

I was intrigued by you brief mention of a recent proposal that "the true BHs should have M = 0," as this may relate to some of my thinking. Unfortunately I was unable to identify much less access the document. Actually, my thinking has been not that BHs effectively contain no mass but that perhaps BHs contain only potential mass-energy - separated from its co-configuration with dimensional matter.

My reasoning is that the extreme conditions imposed in particle accelerator experiments disintegrate massive particles, in effect dispersing not only their dimensional material but also whatever physically imparts the property of mass to particles. Gravitational theory describes its effect fundamentally as being proportionate to localized mass. If, in the extreme conditions of acceleration and density imposed upon matter accreted by a BH, with particle collisions or not, matter may be disintegrated, dissipating even its potential mass-energy. Whether manifested as an energy field or some short-lived exotic particles, perhaps the material residue is (however) ejected through the polar jets as observed while much if not all of the original material's potential mass-energy is retained within the BH, perhaps directly imparted as a gravitational field (curved spacetime). In this way, the internal gravitational effects may be physically directed to a single focal point - presenting the effect of a massive gravitational singularity.

Of course these are merely very loose speculations, but they might could explain the extremely energetic, relativistic expulsion of low mass particles and address the issue of potentially unphysical, exceedingly 'dense' masses. This idea, to me at least, does seem to be reasonably based on observed quantum effects under extreme conditions. In that sense this scenario might even provide a closer link between quantum theory and general relativity.

I'd very much appreciate and consideration you may be able to give to these ideas. I'm sorry to take up so much of your time with what may just be naive nonsense.

Sincerely, Jim

After studying about 250 essays in this contest, I realize now, how can I assess the level of each submitted work. Accordingly, I rated some essays, including yours.

Cood luck.

Sergey Fedosin

Dear Jim,

Thanks for your condolences on the passing of Darryl Leiter, for reading your Essay and for your interesting comments.

Concerning SMBH with a total mass of >4 million Solar masses, we propose 3 different alternatives with respect to ordinary black holes. The first two are the so-called Eternally Collapsing Objects (ECOs) and Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Objects (MECOs). MECOs are proposed like alternatives to black holes by Darryl Leiter, Stanley Robertson, and Rudy Schild. They are a variant of eternally collapsing objects or ECOs proposed by Abhas Mitra. In those objects the collapse must be slowed to a near halt by radiation pressure. A proposed observable difference between MECOs and black holes is that the MECO can produce its own magnetic field. An uncharged black hole cannot produce its own magnetic field, but its accretion disc can.

Together with Herman Mosquera Cuesta we proposed a third alternative to black holes, the Non-Linear Electrodynamics objects (NLED). We have shown that, by inserting a non linear electrodynamics term in the right hand side of the Einstein Field Equation, an exact non-singular solution of such an equation can be found for a collapsing body. Such a solution well matches with the external Schwarzschild solution.

Concerning the recent proposal that "the true BHs should have M = 0," you can find the paper by Mitra here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.4754.

I am also going to comment the ideas that you discussed in your comment, but, before making this, I prefer to read your Essay on the Galaxy Rotation Problem. I will put my comments in your Essay page.

Thanks again.

Best wishes,

Ch.

Dear Sergey,

Thanks for your rating. But it looks to have been a low rating. In fact, I have seen that our Essay went down from the 8th to the 10th position just before your message above.

Is this correct? In that case it should have been better that you did not rate our Essay.

Sincerely,

Ch.

Christian,

I suspect that the equation 3x^3 8c1a^2B^4x - a^2B^2x = 0 is reducible to the cubic equation having a pair of conjugate complex roots. I do not know what it means taking physically.

Dear Michael,

Actually, the correct equation in our Essay is 3x^3 -(B^2)x 8c1B^4=0.

The correspondent polynomial admits a minimum in x=B/(3)^1/2, a maximum in

x=-B/(3)^1/2 and it is positive for x=0. Hence, all the 3 solutions are real.

In any case, you put my attention on your Essay on the Wrong Mathematical Assumptions in Physics. I am going to read it nd I will bring back to you with my comments.

Cheers,

Ch.

Dear Christian,

Darryl Jay Leiter would be truly content to see the essay you wrote together.

This is a fine way to continue the cooperation even when a part of the group is no longer in our causal universe.

I read the essay, but you lost me with the equations, however the most important thought is clear to me, the essence of BH's is not yet clear to us and you together also doubt the "existence" of singulairities.

In "THE CONSCIOUSNESS CONNECTION" my perception is that singulairities cannot exist in our causal universe, because it is limited by the Planck length and time.

What you are posing about the event horizon is indeed a foundational question, this event horizon is an exact limit and when you don't accept singulairities there are also no exact borders , because the Planck length is the minimum length, after that there is no longer cause and effect.

I hope you will read/rate and comment my essay.

Wilhelmus

Dear Chris,

Thanks again for your kind consideration! I replied to your comment in my essay's blog, including some additional thoughts about the Bullet Cluster. I'll summarize below in case you don't get back to my page...

I understand (in principle) that general relativity is fundamentally more accurate than classical physics and at least more correctly and more completely describes the physical effects of gravitation. However, in my view, the fundamental issue with galaxy gravitational evaluations is not (when correctly applied) Newtonian physics, it is the expedient misapplication of even simpler methods of approximation by astronomers and others. There are several references to research in my 'Supplemental Info." and "Cited Works" sections (the latter correcting one erroneous URL) that more correctly represent galactic mass configurations using Newtonian dynamics and gravitation to successfully represent observed galaxy rotation. There is also a reference using general relativity - Fred Cooperstock also takes the view that the failing is inherent in Newtonian physics.

Sincerely, Jim

Dear Jim,

Thanks again for this interesting discussion.

I am going to read your full comment on general relativity, Newtonian theory and misapplication of methods of approximation by astronomers in your Essay page.

Cheers,

Ch.

Dear Chris,

Again I have a more complete reply on my essay's blog, but I'm not a physicist & can't do math - please consider:

James Q. Feng and C. F. Gallo. "Modeling the Newtonian dynamics for rotation curve analysis of thin-disk galaxies." Res. Astron. Astrophys. 11 (December 2011): 1429. doi:10.1088/1674-4527/11/12/005. arXiv:1104.3236v4.

Joanna Jalocha et al. "Is dark matter present in NGC4736? An iterative spectral method for finding mass distribution in spiral galaxies." Astrophysical Journal 679 (May 20 2008): 373-378. doi:10.1086/533511. arXiv:astro-ph/0611113v3.

Sincerely, Jim

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

:) interesting algorythm. I ask me if several variables are inserted in a pure deterministic way ?

In fact, it depends of what we want to analyze after all.It is the reason why the domains become essential, it is the same for the limits of calculations.

Regards

Dear Sergei,

Thanks for the clarification.

Cheers,

Ch.

Thanks Jim, I am going to read the papers that you cite.

Cheers,

Ch.

Dear Christian:

Did you get a chance to read my paper --" From Absurd to Elegant Universe" and provide any comments?

Thanks

Avtar Singh

Dear Dr. Corda, and colleagues,

My condolences for Dr. Leiter, whom I admire from previous fqxi essay contests. Your essay is very compelling, and one should not exclude the possibility that singularities and horizons don't actually exist. I think you are doing an important job by exploring this possibility. Being more intimidated by theorems of Penrose, Hawking, Christodoulou, and Klainerman, I took the complementary task to consider the singularities as inevitable, and see what happens. In my essay "Did God divide by zero?" I show that nothing that bad as expected, that black hole and big bang singularities not only are benign, but even introduce a metric dimensional reduction which may help at the quantization of gravity. So if the singularities will turn out to exist, I hope to provide a safety net with my approach. I would appreciate feedback to my essay, if you find time for this.

On the other hand, you may very well be right and nothing like singularities is admitted in reality. It may be possible that the strong equivalence principle be ensured by global consistency. I use global consistency in "Global and local aspects of causality" (independent of this contest's essay), to make quantum mechanics more reasonable and more compatible with general relativity.

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica

Dear Avtar,

I have just read,commented and rated your interesting Essay.

Cheers,

Ch.

Hi Cristi,

Thanks for condolances for Darryl. He was an excellent person and a great scientist.

I saw that you are, like us, one of the victims of the strange "rasing and dropping" of the Community Rating.

Concerning physics, I think that the theorems of Penrose, Hawking, Christodoulou, and Klainerman are a fantastic mathematical result, but not sacred cows. Physics of compact objects could be different.

OK, I am going to read your Essay and I will put my comments in your page.

Cheers,

Ch.