• Cosmology

  • Black Holes Do Not Exist, claims Mersini-Houghton

The Abhas Mitra eternally collapsing object is a very interesting parallel to Mersini-Houghton's Hawking radiation ECO. In both papers, the dragon that is a black hole is made to eat his own tail by the underlying physics that defines the dragon.

Mitra argues that as the dragon accretes matter, particles of matter eventually get small enough to collapse due to their own self gravity. This limits the infall of matter to somewhat short of the event horizon and the particles are then trapped in eternal recycling loops. This explanation is pure GR and is a juxtaposition of the two diffeomorphic limits of GR; the event horizon and the Planck scale. That particle collapse precludes the formation of anything like a black hole and ends up recycling the accreted matter in an eternal recursion that is an ECO. The dragon is destined to eat his tail for eternity.

The accreting black hole of Mersini and Houghton shows that particles of accreted matter also get smaller and smaller, but before the Planck limit, particles radiate as matter/antimatter pairs by the well-accepted Hawking mechanism and that radiation likewise precludes formation of a black hole. They do not deal with the recycle issue, but presumably some of that radiation does recycle.

Thus we have two really nice examples, one GR and the other QM, showing the inconsistencies associated with the common idea of a black hole. Neither model deals with the angular momentum, which is a further complication that nevertheless is a very important consideration.

It is intriguing that the concept of a boson star is also an eternally recycled object. A boson star is pure energy as a QM concept or knot that seems to be able to exist under certain circumstances in our universe, but has never been observed. The synthesis of these ideas offers a potentially useful way to finally get GR and QM back together and talking to each other again. They have simply been apart too long.

    "So in what amounts to a base two system, not flipping the switch at all is equivalent to switching it on and off however many times."

    No.

    "What does this have to do with anything multiplied by zero is still zero?"

    It doesn't, because the statement is completely false, as you would know had you read the references I gave you.

    "I certainly am not making any claims to mathematical proficiency,"

    Yes you are.

    " ... but I still see space as the basis of geometry and topology, not a product of it."

    So what? That's totally irrelevant.

    "I really am not above being convinced otherwise, but you haven't yet managed to do it."

    You apparently are above being convinced otherwise, or you would not spurn the learning resources you are given.

    John,

    Jonathan Dickau, who in my opinion has as much talent for honing in on a subject as you have for driving it away, said in the beginning of this exchange: "Dr. Mitra's main thrust is that we cannot just ignore when various Math quantities go to infinity, and must examine the Physics there more carefully."

    Do you agree?

    Tom,

    I see you similar to Cauchy in that he lost all but one of his students. At least you lost me. While your stuff is easily understandable by means of e.g. http://physicsinsights.org/lagrange_1.html , I cannot see how it relates to my seriously meant claim that singularities in physics are mathematical artifacts of pebble-like numbers. Doesn't deliberate distraction indicate lacking arguments?

    Eckard

    Tom,

    It seems even the technology is conspiring against my education. For some reason that download came up blank.

    To give a brief observation of the title though, doesn't the speed of light limit how much information from the global context into the local event limit what can be known of the input, which limits the effectiveness of least action as an effective tool?

    Regards,

    John M

    Eckard,

    I'm not trying to win a contest. There are many methods of applied mathematics that aim for the same goal. You write, "I cannot see how it relates to my seriously meant claim that singularities in physics are mathematical artifacts of pebble-like numbers."

    You may be serious with your claim, yet it isn't true. A physical singularity is space collapsed to a point, which so far as we know is a physical impossibility; it certainly isn't analogous to a pebble. Cauchy, Dedekind, Weierstrass, Weyl, Brouwer -- were all essentially analysts who appreciated the value of the infinitely small, to help lead us to an understanding of the limits of the finitely large. Those limits are determined by boundary conditions -- the challenge to foundational physics is to replace arbitrarily chosen boundary conditions with a mathematically complete theory that generates its own boundaries. In quantum foundations, that leads to such discrete models as the many worlds hypothesis; in classical physics, it leads to analytical frameworks that accommodate continuous measurement functions.

    "Doesn't deliberate distraction indicate lacking arguments?"

    I suppose it does. My arguments have always been based on well known mathematics.

    Eckard,

    What is confusing to me is why you seem to see things as if it is common for others to see numbers as being the value only (pebble-like) rather than the accepted concept of 'place : value' being dependent on the dimensionless interval between places on the number line being a constant. We can illustrate a number line with a calibrated interval, but it's really as dimensionless as is a Euclidean point. I think John Merryman has difficulty with that composite concept of numbers, but that may arise from his experiencing a form of epilepsy. Maybe I'm just sloppy, but I really don't care how many angels dance on the head of a pin. I'm having enough challenge catching up with math that most here consider routine. :-) jrc

    Argh.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz7jLnWcxMs

    Yes, excellent Steve..

    This emphasizes the point I've made about Quantum-Classical convergence, in comments above. The two contenders will instead be seen as two sides of the same coin, but it may take a while. I think there is too much politics involved, however, so it required someone like Hawking to comment before certain evidences became admissible, but finally the logjam is broken and progress is occurring.

    Regards,

    Jonathan

    Tom,

    While I'm not conversant on the details, I don't have any issue with the general idea. There are infinite/endless feedback loops feeding through every event and they all interact. I find the classic paradigm to be reductionistically mechanistic. Remember I spend my life dealing with animals and this does seem intuitive to me. It just seems that modeling it within the framework of linear rationality creates its own conceptual feedback loops which legitimately take a lifetime to internalize.

    It is not that I seriously do not respect this commitment, but from the point of view of an outsider, there is seeming evidence of missteps along the way, leading to the various previously mentioned patches and extrapolations. We have certainly argued them repeatedly and I realize you are not going to give my side of the debate anymore consideration than if I were to declare the moon made of green cheese. So it does seem moot to continue.

    John C,

    I do have some appreciation of numbers as different categories of abstractions. A title of one of my essay entries was "Comparing Apples to Inches." Much of the conflict between Tom and I has to do with me not accepting spacetime as a physical reality, rather than just a mathematical model. I see measures of distance as measures of space as a real dimensionality, while measures of duration being of actions occurring within this spatial void. With the resulting relations similar to that between pressure or temperature and volume.

    I also have to say my limited interneting time is being consumed by trying to follow the increasing pace of world events. The temperature is rising.

    Regards,

    John M

    Tom,

    Of course you refer to well known mathematics. I am aware of questioning very basic tenets. When I asked for the very zero between IR and IR- I was not alone. Terhardt did also deal with related imperfections of theory. Professors of mathematics shrug their shoulders. David Joyce confirmed some interesting ideas in my essay 833. He gave me valuable tips in addition to literature in German language, e.g. by Detlev Spalt and by Oskar Becker. Figs. 3 and 4 of essay 1364 should be understandable even to experts like you.

    You mentioned Augustin Lois Cauchy, and Cauchy is even used as to describe a mathematical property. As Spalt revealed, Cauchy himself cautiously avoided how his view was interpreted. Among others who contributed to, supported or at least tolerated the relapse into the archaic pebble-like notion of number were Bolzano who wrote "Die Paradoxien des Unendlichen" and who coined the notion Menge (set), Dirichlet, Heine, Weierstrass. Even Abel might have played a role by blaming mathematics being putatively in a mess.

    A main argument of me is that mathematicians like Ebbinghaus admit difficulties to understand what makes real numbers different from rational ones. I understand the same number as qualitatively quite different if seen as real or rational, respectively. Weyl spoke of bones within a sauce. I feel forced to see the bones part of the sauce. That's why ) and ] must not be distinguished in IR.

    Eckard

    Steve.

    I like your BH analysis. But 'cyclic' isn't 'steady state' by any stretch the imagination in the DFM mechanism. It involves expansion and contraction stages prior to a complete renewal and new cycle (of perhaps something over 30 billion years at the cosmic scale).

    Your agree with my identification of the comprehensive cyclic dynamics implied by Mersini-Haughton and Pfeiffer (MHP, - not "Mersine and Haughton") which are equivalent or closely analogous to the actual data and analysis I gave. But we must remember that for a theory to be validated it must correspond with observation ('reality') not vice versa! So if MHP did NOT match observations of AGN's it would likely be her theory that was flawed. My initial comments confirmed that her theory is simply a different way of describing exactly what the data and (logically implied) cyclic model predicted, (including 'full' contraction but also a logical next phase) so is fully consistent. If you re-read my paper now the consistencies will all jump right out!

    What then confuses me is your linking of 'steady state' and 'cyclic', and suggesting; "Everything that I read indicates that the steady-state or recycling universe is just inconsistent with observation." Lets be clear, my hypothesis is NOTHING like steady state!!

    It appears you may have only skimmed the cyclic model paper and not extracted the implications. I agree there's no evidence supporting steady state over alternatives, but if you're also suggesting (despite your MHP comments) that you've found evidence inconsistent with recycling, could you please identify it. I assume however it was just misunderstanding (unless you're seriously concluding 'eternal' contraction, which is no more than poorly considered assumption, but I'd be interested if you've identified any actual evidence.)

    PS. Did you see the French 'Cosmic Cartography' video, which I agree may imply we're in the contraction phase. If not I'll look out a link.

    Best wishes

    Peter

    "Much of the conflict between Tom and I has to do with me not accepting spacetime as a physical reality, rather than just a mathematical model."

    John, the conflict is in your not understanding that it's the correspondence between a mathematical model and the physics it describes that determines whether something is physically real.

    Look at it this way -- flying a remote control airplane depends on the programming of the controller as well as the skill of the pilot. The pilot's skill would be irrelevant, however, unless the controls responded in the expected way. The experiments supporting spacetime do produce results consistent with the programming, i.e., the mathematical model.

    You are right that the Mersini-Houghton does ends up in an accretion cycling or bouncing of Hawking radiation near the event horizon. That is not a black hole, but rather a steady state that has some decay.

    The Mitra ECO does not seem to bounce, but does not seem to decay either, just exists as a steady state near the event horizon.

    What I meant is that there does not seem to be any evidence for significant recycling of galaxy energy back to matter over the life of the universe. That there is recycling of matter is certain...stars live, die, and form new stars. Galaxies only seem to live and grow by merging...they never seem to die.

    There is a long universe cycle 27 Byr contracting universe cycle, 13.5 Byr expansion of an antimatter antiverse followed by a 13.5 Byr contraction of a matter universe. We are 3.4 Byrs into contraction.

    Tom,

    The correspondence has to do with some very specific relationships between measuring distance and duration in different circumstances and how they are affected similarly. From this is derived the notion that the four dimensional geometry derived from this relationship is more fundamental than the actual process being measured. For example, it is then argued that the vacuum of space itself can expand and this explains cosmic redshift. The utter fatuousness of this proposal being that they forgot that in order for it to be relativistic, the speed of light would have to increase, in order for it to remain constant to this expanded space.

    Now I realize that what you hear when I make this point is "The moon must be made of green cheese!!!" So I don't expect you to respond with anything more than a hurrumph.

    Regards,

    John M

    Peter, Steve,

    There are a variety of ways the universe could be considered as "steady state," so avoiding the term only validates those insisting on a universe which doesn't fully recycle. Eventually we will accept energy is conserved, even that which is radiated for tens of billions of years. As such no new sources are necessary.

    In fact, it was the proposition that expansion and gravitational contraction are effectively balanced in overall flat space, since proven, which first led me to consider that cosmology overlooks its own evidence, in order to promote this Big Bang model.

    Regards,

    john M