Black Holes Do Not Exist, claims Mersini-Houghton

This paper appears to be part of a growing body of work that shows the incompatibility of gravity with quantum action at black hole horizons. However, this particular paper seems to have a somewhat ad hoc radiation efficiency that somehow is just right to convert all collapsing matter into energy as Hawking radiation. They do not discuss the consequences of such an energy release, but complete mass to energy conversion for a collapsing black hole would be many orders of magnitude greater than observed for any supernova.

The take away message here is not that this particular approach is the be all and end all, it is rather that science is beginning to focus on the right question. The paper acknowledges the information and firewall paradoxes and here is a quote from the paper along with further citations of related recent work:

"The conclusions derived from both theories, the existence of black holes from Einstein's theory of gravity and the existence of Hawking radiation from the theory of quantum fields in curved spacetime, were soon found to be in high friction with one another, (see articles below for an interesting treatment)."

J. T. Firouzjaee and G. F. R. Ellis,arXiv:1408.0778 [gr-qc];"Cosmic Matter Flux May Turn Hawking Radiation Off," 2014.

G. F REllis, R. Goswami, A. I. M. Hamid and S. D. Maharaj, arXiv:1407.3577 [gr-qc] "Astrophysical Black Hole horizons in a cosmological context: Nature and possible consequences on Hawking Radiation," 2014

It is important to recognize that this nice paper shows a single flaw in GR gravity, but the paper does not show the solution, nor does it illuminate the other flaws in gravity action. Before you hop on this bus, you need to know if it is going where you want to go...

Steve,

"complete mass to energy conversion for a collapsing black hole would be many orders of magnitude greater than observed for any supernova."

True, but that's not how it works. Shown evident in astronomy AGN type outflows are the 'real' manifestation of loss from SMBH's in the same way as the jet from the Crab Nebula core torus is the stellar scale version. The energy of these grows gradually forming the ubiquitous 'lobes' (our is the so called 'Fermi bubble' ), peaks as a quasar jet and only dies out when all the disc matter has been 'consumed' (re-ionized).

The problem you envisage then doesn't need to exist in reality. Outflow energies have been calculated quite precisely, but have a wide temporal distribution linked to OAM and accretion rates.

I'm a little surprised by your comment; "Before you hop on this bus, you need to know if it is going where you want to go..." Surely that's not doing science properly and we should objectively watch where the evidence suggests it goes. How can we be honest if we decide what we 'want it to go'? Testing hypotheses is one thing, but isn't that rather more like 'cherry picking'!

Best wishes.

Thanks greatly Steve..

What I am seeing is a convergence of the Quantum and Classical arguments, regarding the non-formation of event horizons. I think perhaps the only physically realistic circumstance in which a purely Schwarzschild Black Hole entity is possible is as a final singularity - when it is the only object left, because everything else in the universe is being sucked into the horizon.

However; I find the papers cited in your comment above to be particularly interesting, in that the concept of the inner bound being purely timelike, with the outer shell being purely spacelike, resolves many paradoxes. I need to read those papers for detail, but other work beckons right now. I am happy that at least a few great minds are giving these issues the attention they deserve.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Everyone keep in mind the whole process.

While black holes are a mathematical projection of gravity to infinity and we are just now starting to accept that it is also a dynamic process of shedding radiation, it is not only just at the very core, but from the visible edge of galaxies, because, by definition, that's where we start seeing the light radiating out.

Then there is the question of where is this energy radiating out going to and is it the same general radiation pouring into and powering galaxies in the first place.

In which case, we could very likely find explanations for why the light of distant galaxies is redshifted and for that cosmic microwave background radiation, without all the baggage required to fix the Big Bang model.

Think of a cosmic convection cycle of expanding radiation and collapsing mass. Not only would this dichotomy explain the universal dynamic, but even down at the quantum level, it is order trying to pull everything in line and energy equally pushing everything out. Order is top down and energy is bottom up.

Regards,

John M

I think we will understand

It is confusing when you throw out a term like AGN, which are active galactic nuclei and are SMBH's from the quasar epoch a billion or so years ago. Our SMBH is not now an AGN nor are all SMBH's AGNs, right?

Supermassive stars form black holes in lieu of supernovas, not because of supernovas. Therefore black holes supposedly do not radiate much while they undergo core collapse at the end of their lives. Therefore, they would not be like AGN's or pulsars at all.

The crab nebula is a SN remnant from a very famous supernova of M

There is some kind of convergence coming that will finally give us quantum gravity and get rid of all of this patchwork of GR, but science will still have all of the valid observations of GR. Red shifts, Lorentz invariance, time and space dilation are all observations with which a quantum gravity will be consistent.

As far as a final singularity, I agree. The event horizon that lies just beyond the CMB, which is at 99.9998% of c, is the only event horizon in this universe. And it is obvious to me that that event horizon defines c as the collapse rate of the universe. It is so much fun having the answer to this puzzle...

Once science gets a quantum gravity, the SMBH event horizon will become something more like the nonradiating ground state of an atom. For quantum action, nonradiating ground states are well accepted and the same will be true for quantum gravity. This will mean that SMBH's will become more like boson stars, for which there is already a rich literature waiting.

I like this idea because it has the decay of the galaxy as the indicator of the universe, which is true. You do have good instincts. However, your expansion with energy and conversion back needs a little more work...and some numbers. I can't get the math to work.

Radiation is only a very tiny fraction of matter equivalent energy and there simply is not enough radiation to balance matter in the universe. If you tap into the dark matter and dark energy reserves of the Bank of Big Bang, the BBB, you end up with the big bang bank credit card and the big bang owns you. The big bang is much more likely than any other more fanciful desire of your own.

In other words, if you borrow mass from the BBB, they have your essences in their big pockets...

Steve,

I think gravity is not so much a property of mass, as a full spectrum effect of energy coalescing into mass. Quite simply, when we release energy from mass, whether structural order, chemical, atomic, quantum, etc, it naturally occupies more space and the resulting effect is pressure. So what would the opposite effect be? A vacuum. Much of the area supposedly occupied by dark energy, on the outer portions of galaxies, there is a lot of cosmic activity going on and the creation of of increasingly dense and complex mass seems to be the result. E=mc2, then M=E/c2.

Such a full spectrum composite effect would explain why it is so effectively described topologically.

As for dark energy, it is a patch to explain why the ratio of redshift drops off fairly rapidly over the furtherest out/first part of the expansion and then flattens out since. The assumption being that there has to be some natural expansion to explain this flatter, closer decline, not caused by the initial "Bang."

Now if we were to commit cosmological sacrilege and consider what would be observed if redshift was caused by a lensing effect, for one thing, we would be at the center, since we are at the center of our view of the universe, which would go to our previous discussion of why using relativity to explain this anthropocentric effect overlooks the fact that to be relativistic expansion, the clock rate would have to increase as well, in order to remain constant.

Another effect would be that it would compound on itself and thus go parabolic. Creating the impression that the further away the source, the faster it is receding. Which is exactly what we do see. It is not that redshift drops off, then flattens out since the Big Bang, but that it increases exponentially the further the source is and it is that upward curve in the rate that is being observed.

No, we and I don't have all the math and the details, but finding those details might be a far more productive and feasible endeavor than exploring for other universes.

We accept that gravity can be modeled as acceleration and call it the equivalence principle. Could there be an opposing equivalence principle, by which the expansion of light looks like recession of the source? The fact is that this is science and alternative view points should be open to examination, not simply dismissed because too many people think differently.

Regards,

John M

Steve,

Yes, it does seem as if the discussion is about the eye walls of hurricanes and what is happening inside them, with little attention being paid to the external forces going into creating this vortex.

Regards,

John M

Intriguing, John R!

Somehow I seem to understand what you are trying to articulate, but then I do not seem to be able to articulate it myself. There are many different ways to scale gravity to charge force. My favorite is the quotient of the radius of the hydrogen atom with the radius of the universe. That scaling, which Dirac pointed out, is about right and it is possible to build a cosmology around it.

The matter time complement is the ratio of the mass of the smallest particle to the mass of the universe. The smallest particle is a consequence of the Fourier transform of matter and time into amplitude and matter, a matter spectrum.

Another way to think about the scaling of forces is to represent gravity as charge force in a folded universe. As long as you can keep the phases aligned and coherent despite a 2e39 ratio is force, you have a chance to unify force. The real key is to use quantum action for gravity, because with quantum action, a lot of things will become clear.

The idea of a galaxy as a matter wave is very appealing. Matter waves are solutions to the Shrödinger equation and so show the kind of effects that we expect for quantum action.

Steve,

Quantum action is a bit ambiguous to me. Are we speaking of using the Planck Constant as the unit of measure ( which is conveniently tiny for particle and field work ), or do you refer to the standard modeling of 'exchange particles' and 'photons' doing the work of keeping non-local discrete particles in a cohesive nuclear and/or atomic structure.

Also, I'm am always baffled by what anybody means by 'charge'. Like inertia, we only have an operational rather than general definition. Negative or positive seem to me to relate as distinct properties which might be determinable within a light velocity magnitude of density range which we macroscopically recognize as electrical phenomenon, and be dependent on the quantity of energy being equal on either side of a neutral (neutron) equilibrium. 'Positive' might be the predominant side of deceleration, and 'negative' being the predominant characteristic on the accelerant side; hence the electrical separation of centers on atomic masses.

It's a matter of time. :)

Tom,

I was hoping you would find the line of equilibrium conjecture interesting, it does possibly make sense of the cosmological constant as being a scale transform. If black holes exist in any formulation, I would expect the density limit to be a magnitude of c^2 dot m. Like the center of a free rest mass; that is the 'why' of inertia in my modeling. :->

jrc

Steve and Tom,

OOOPS... got in a hurry.

For mass to exhibit inertia, some portion of the total quantity of energy must exist at a constant density as the greatest density in the proportion of;

I = E dot c^2, or m dot c^4. :| jrc

Zeeya,

Thanks for introducing this new thread. Before we talk of saying goodbye to ``Black Holes'', we must bear in mind that astronomers have evidences for the existence of hundreds of Massive Compact Objects (MCOs) which certainly cannot be COLD compact objects like Neutron Stars or White Dwarfs. There are estimates that the radii of such MCOs could be close to respective Schwarzschild radii, and thus such objects may be loosely called ``Black Hole Candidates'' (BHCs). Thus any claim like the one by Laura Mersini-Houghton that ``there cannot be any black holes'' should address on the likely nature of BHCs. And if the conclusion ``We find that the star stops collapsing at a finite radius larger than its horizon, turns around and its core explodes.'' were true, there would not have been any MCO or BHC. In turn, the conclusions of the present paper are bound to be atleast partly erroneous. Having going through the manuscript, I find it to be highly crude numerical treatment of the complex problem of ``gravitational collapse''. Any meaningful treatment of gravitational collapse must connect the interior solution with the exterior one (seen by the distant observer). But the authors are silent on the exterior solution, may be they are not even aware that the exterior spacetime is to be described by Vaidya metric!

The authors may not be aware that ``Hawking Radiation'' involves radiation from around the Event Horizon (EH) of a BH. And it is not at all about radiation from a collapsing star (which is not a BH). Thus the claim that ``Back-reaction of the Hawking radiation flux on a gravitationally collapsing star'' is preventing the formation of BH is patently self-contradictory. In reality, their paper does not involve any Hawking Radiation formula or any Quantum Gravity (QG) treatment! On the other hand, it involves some wishful & crude numerical treatment of classical general relativistic (GR) collapse. And the media headlines that these authors have ``Mathematically shown non-formation of black holes...'' are absolutely misleading and erroneous. I am making these statements even when I have reasons to believe that there are indeed no true BHs and the MCOs must be at the best quasi-BHs. In a next post I would try to qualify these facts.

Here is the opinion by William Unruh on the paper of Mersini-Houghton:

"The [paper] is nonsense," Unruh said in an email to IFLS. "Attempts like this to show that black holes never form have a very long history, and this is only the latest. They all misunderstand Hawking radiation, and assume that matter behaves in ways that are completely implausible."

According to Unruh, black holes don't emit enough Hawking radiation to shrink the mass of the black hole down to where Mersini-Houghton claims in a timely manner. Instead, "it would take 10^53 (1 followed by 53 zeros) times the age of the universe to evaporate," he explains.

"The standard behaviour by such people [who don't understand Hawking radiation] is to project that outgoing energy back closer and closer to the horizon of the black hole, where its energy density gets larger and larger," he continued. "Unfortunately explicit calculations of the energy density near the horizon show it is really, really small instead of being large... Those calculations were already done in the 1970s. To call bad speculation "has been proven mathematically" is, shall we say, and overstatement."

I think that the arguments by Abhas Mitra are very stronger than the ones by Mersini-Houghton.

Cheers,

Ch.

WHY THERE CANNOT BE ANY FINITE MASS ``Black Hole''

First recall, the gravitational mass appearing in the vacuum Schwarzschild solution appears as an `Integration Constant'' (IC) $$\alpha = 2 M$$ (G=c=1).

For an object with finite radius (Sun, Earth, Galaxy), this IC ($\alpha$) is obviously finite (and positive):

\begin{equation}

M = \int_0^{R_0} 4 \pi \rho R^2 dR

\end{equation}

But is there a guarantee that $\alpha$ would remain finite in case the body would contract to a ``Point Mass'', i.e., $R_0 \to 0$. BH paradigm is based on the HYPOTHESIS that this IC must be finite even when the upper limit of the integration would merge with the lower one ($R_0=0$). However, it was shown by me that this hypothesis was incorrect, i.e., the gravitational mass of a neutral ``Point Mass'', the source of BH solution is zero:

Ref. 1. A. Mitra, Journal ofhttp: Mathematical Physics, Volume 50, Issue 4, pp. 042502-042502-3 (2009): //arxiv.org/abs/0904.4754

Such a result was earlier inferred (not proved) by French mathematical relativist Luis Bel

Ref. 2. L. Bel, "Schwarzschild Singularity," Journal of Mathematical Physics, Vol. 10, No. 8, 1969 pp. 1501-1503. doi:10.1063/1.1664997

The abstract of the above paper is a one liner ``A new point of view is presented for which the Schwarzschild singularity becomes a real point singularity on which the sources of Schwarzschild's exterior solution are localized.''

The Sch singularity becomes a ``point singularity'' only when M=0 for a ``point particle'' and for the Schwarzschild BH.

WHY THIS RESULT IS INEVITABLE?

Suppose the point particle has a mass $M_0$. Then one would expect a Ricci Scalar ($\cal R}$ at $R=0$

\begin{equation}

{\cal R} (R=0) = - 4 \pi \delta{R=0} M_0/R^2

\end{equation}

where $\delta{R}$ is Dirac delta function. But the BH solution yields

$\cal R} =0$. These two results can be reconciled iff $M_0=0$.

There for massive ``Black Hole Candidates'' (or any thing else with finite gravitational mass) CANNOT be true BHs.

Therefore we could have bade farewell to BH paradigm in 2009. In another post I will analyze this result from the view point of GR collapse, no numerical hanky panky, but by generic or exact means.

Abhas,

In layman's language, the BHC is either radiating away the necessary mass, or has stabilized at a dense stage?

It seems these stellar versions of black hole candidates are quantitively and qualitatively different than those at the core of galaxies. Do these galaxy core black holes essentially seem to operate as a vortex, shooting the energy of whatever mass falls in, out the poles?

Regards,

John Merryman

Abhas,

After glancing at your 2009 paper and your statement here that: "Therefore massive ``Black Hole Candidates'' (or any thing else with finite gravitational mass) CANNOT be true BHs", if I interpret you correctly the end result of gravitational collapse is a singularity of Zero mass rather than one of infinite density?

That will be an interesting result if so. Earlier Hawking and Penrose1 had formulated 'singularity theorems' which are of cosmological importance, an initial singularity at the Big Bang and a final singularity at the Big Crunch. They hold on to the model that ALL singularities, including black holes must be massive. This has led to paradoxes and problems requiring solution, such as flatness problem for example, requiring inflation scenario for resolution.

I have been proposing the opposite, that initial singularities have zero mass. I was therefore interested to see that Black holes if they exist must be of zero mass as well. My model is that the initial singularity was of zero mass and the mass of the universe has been increasing with its radius. This solves many cosmological problems. I didn't much consider the gravitational collapse of a Big crunch, but it would also follow now that the end result would also be Nothing, a singularity of zero mass. Bye-bye to black holes in their current form!

Regards,

Akinbo

1. Hawking, S.W. and Penrose, R., (1970), The Singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology, Proc. Roy. Soc., A314, 529-48.