Black Holes Do Not Exist, claims Mersini-Houghton

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.

This Daily Beast article agrees with Unruh. (I don't like the overstated headline, though; good science has often resulted from unconventional models.)

And I agree with Christian. As much as we have invested in the study of gravitational collapse from the standpoint of classical gravity, it's a bit ambitious to jump in with quantum explanations that include ad hoc numerical parameters.

Even with the constraint of boundary conditions for continuous function calculations, we have a much more complete model of gravity in the classical picture. One can always add assumptions to any theory and come up with one's desired conclusions -- which in my opinion is a fundamental flaw of conventional quantum theory, that it begs interpretation.

Let's get back to first principles.

Akinbo,

A zero gravitational mass M=0 may still admit local energy density $\rho=\infty$. One may think that ``bare mass'' or positive contributions of mass due to $\rho$ is neutralized by the NEGATIVE self-gravitational energy. Infact this state M=0, R=0 corresponds to a spacetime curvature singularity where Kretschmann scalar $K=\infty$ . However this does not mean that such a singularity actually forms, this is so because the comoving proper time for formation of a zero mass BH is Infinite. So continued GR collapse can only asymptotically strives to achieve this elusive singular state. Hence, continued GR collapse must give rise to Eternally Collapsing Objects (ECOs) rather than BHs or true spacetime singularities. In practical terms, such a collapse must be halted by appropriate physical process to result in a quasi-static configurations which nonetheless must keep on radiating (at howsoever miniscule rate) to hopelessly arrive at the M=0 true BH state.

Regards

Abhas

Abhas,

While I cannot dispute your mathematical abilities (which is obvious), we may not agree entirely on your model. E = mc2, may not be correct, but if it is, then that equivalence suggests that where energy density is non-zero, we cannot talk of zero mass. Moreover, in the intensely dense and hot environment that must be present near singularities, matter cannot be stable, only radiation will.

Then concerning your remark, "However this does not mean that such a singularity actually forms, this is so because the comoving proper time for formation of a zero mass BH is Infinite. So continued GR collapse can only asymptotically strives to achieve this elusive singular state. Hence, continued GR collapse must give rise to Eternally Collapsing Objects (ECOs) rather than BHs or true spacetime singularities."

Again, another point of departure from my position. 'Proper-time' is the time taken for light to travel a 'proper-distance', according to GR language. Obviously, if light velocity is zero, 'Proper-time' will be infinite. To grasp my point, do you acknowledge that the proper-time in a vacuum as far as Sound is concerned is infinite? As far as Sound is concerned, 'vacuum' is a form of singularity. This illustrates that in a physics founded on the velocity of 'something', be it light or sound, the fact that that something takes an infinite time to travel within a physical entity, does not mean that collapsing or expansion from singularities will take an infinite time. Our existing and expanding universe bears this witness, and formation of vacuum in the laboratory does the same. Where space-time is non-existent, light cannot travel. And space-time according to the singularity theorems is 'non-existent' in cosmological singularities (I hope I am right?). In short, infinite proper-time does not mean that collapse is an eternal process and will take an infinite time.

If you have any comment or criticism of my model, would be glad to know.

Regards,

Akinbo

Akinbo, Abhas,

Could it be the singularity is essentially a pivot point, around which collapsing mass spins down to the point of radiating away all constituent energy. Such that as a form of vortex, what is inside the horizon is actually a vacuum, just as inside the eyewall of a hurricane it is quiet.

Regards,

John M

John, please read Unruh's statement that Christian quoted. The energy density near the black hole horizon is actually very small. Relevant to whether it is vanishingly small is the question of whether an event horizon exists at all.

Tom,

I see that, but I'm just trying to get confirmation. It has been my argument that the actual observations, as opposed to projections of features of those observations, could be explained as a form of cosmic convection cycle, with mass falling inward, balanced by energy radiating outward.

So if we are to the point of accepting that whatever falls into these gravitational vortices is being radiated out at an equal rate, that would be one side of the cycle completed, so the question, eventually, goes to the other side of the cycle; Does that light and other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum eventually reach various points that it too eventually coalesces back into mass? Obviously there are lots of examples where some of it does, but the same issue as here applies; Does all of it?

If we can show all the loose ends tie together and the cycle is complete, there is no need for those extra forces, dimensions, etc. to explain the loose ends.

Regards,

John M

Thinking about it John, it is worthy of consideration. Your analogy, with hurricanes is also apt. Sound travels at infinite proper-time inside the eyewall of a hurricane, so if space-time can be destroyed in a singularity, light would have infinite proper-time there as well.

In the words of Penrose, p.436, The Emperor's New Mind...

"Not just all matter becomes destroyed in this way, but EVEN the very space-time must find its end! Such an ultimate catastrophe is referred to as a space-time singularity... These are conclusions that follow from the classical equations of general relativity, in any circumstance when a black hole is formed..."

(more) "...initial space-time singularity which now represents the big bang, ...rather than representing the ultimate destruction of all matter and space-time, the singularity represents the creation of space-time and matter.."

What Pensose did not address is whether ALL the matter in the universe is created all at once or gradually over the course of the universe's evolution.

Regards,

Akinbo

Ps,

Yes, I understand the energy density by the edge of the black hole would be small, as this energy really starts radiating back out close to the start of the fusion process. Much of the energy being observed comes from processes going on far from the center. Discussion of black holes is like focusing on the eye of a hurricane and ignoring what goes on around it.

Akinbo,

The point I keep arguing about time is that since we experience it as a sequence of perceptions, we think of it as the point of the present moving along a vector of events and physics reduces this to static measures of duration in the spacetime model, but what is being measured is activity and that entails the creation and dissolution of these perceptions/events, such that it is they which go from potential, to actual, to residual, thus future to past. Meanwhile only the dynamic present is real.

So basically measures of duration are frequency, just as measures of temperature are amplitude.

Just as all space has a temperature, even if it is absolute zero, so to does this activity effect change, thus it also has the effect of time. So just as a complete absence of activity is a temperature of absolute zero, so to would it have zero change/time.

Now singularities have zero, or at least unmeasurable energy/activity, so they have zero time, but this is achieved by reducing the space to zero as well, as a dimensionless point.

Is a dimensionless point real, or is it a hypothetical conceptual convenience? Anything multiplied by zero is zero. So it seems what we would have is zero energy and zero space.

This avoids the problem for QM, that all space has energy, by reducing the area to zero, but how can anything be extracted from it?

Regards,

John M

"Discussion of black holes is like focusing on the eye of a hurricane and ignoring what goes on around it."

John, that's because the black hole, about which we know little, is much more interesting than the phenomena going on around it, about which we know a lot.

"Quantum action is a bit ambiguous to me."

Quantum action is simply the change in matter over time predicted by the Schrödinger equation, which states that the change or differential of matter in time is proportional to itself. Is that ambiguous?

The proportionality constant is the quotient of the binding energy as equivalent exchange mass associated with the action with the matter scaled Planck constant, h/c2, oh and the phase factor, -i. So the quantum action of matter is somehow 90 deg out of phase with matter itself. If you thought the Planck constant was small, the matter scaled Planck constant is 9e16 smaller still, ~1e-52 or so.

So the Planck scale in matter time is quite naturally very, very tiny. Whether you do action semiclassically or with exchange step operators is simply a matter of convenience. The -i phase factor is, by the Euler identity, simply the same pi/2 or 90 degree phase angle that shows up everywhere and represents the orthogonality of matter and time or Pythagoras.

Charge and spin and gravity are all properties of the same exchange of matter between objects. All objects exchange matter with the universe as an object, which is roughly what gravity force means. Certain objects like electrons and protons just exchange much larger amounts of matter with each other as phase coherent quanta and those large matter exchanges also result in particle spin. The phase of that exchange is what determines attraction or repulsion, which is more of an isospin, i.e., a combined charge and spin.

With a universe composed of such a large, albeit finite, number of very tiny particles, most practical predictions of action need some kind of renormalization. Analogous to the renormalizations of field theories, these finite renormalizations deal with effective infinities instead of infinite infinities.

It is true that there are some ad hoc assumptions in this paper...Since spacetime is grounded in a similar set of ad hoc assumptions, dark matter and dark energy and inflation, this paper therefore has lots of company.

To publish ad hoc criticisms of an unreviewed paper misses the whole point of this war of the worlds: gravity versus quantum. Let Unruh publish a paper with well stated criticisms and have that reviewed. The Daily Beast article seemed to identify the radiation rate with collapse as a rather specious assumption and I concur.

However, the paper did not include angular momentum or other types of radiation, just Hawking. And the paper did not address the large matter accretions that obviously do exist, but then again, this was just one calc from one dust cloud. It did not include any nuclear reactions, either.

I don't even mind that UNC did a press release for a paper that has not been peer reviewed. In fact, I prefer to see the paper before the reviewers whittle the speculation out as well as after. The orthodoxy of mainstream science should grant more leeway for speculation when it comes to the war of the worlds, because science is close to resolving this silly difference between gravity and charge. The trolls of orthodoxy seem to forget how much we do not yet understand about what we do not understand.

The peace plan for this war, though, will likely take some getting used to and will likely change all of the textbooks and require a whole new generation of science guys. Can't we all just get along?