Thursday, March 31, 2005
Dark Clouds Over Black Holes?
Over the last 80 years, few topics ignited more bitter squabbling among eminent physicists than black holes. Einstein didn't believe in them. Chandrasekhar did but never recovered his balance after he clashed with Eddington, who didn't. Oppenheimer proved their existence, only to have his claims publicly doubted by Wheeler, who paradoxically coined the term black hole. Hawking was a believer, he even showed how they eventually evaporate. The issue seemed settled.
But now George Chapline, scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says that black holes violate the laws of quantum physics and cannot exists. He says that the objects are instead dark energy stars, made of the mysterious invisible stuff that fills up 75% of the universe. [The remaining 20% is dark matter and 5% visible matter.] "Event horizons and closed, time-like curves cannot exists in the real world for the simple reason that they are inconsistent with quantum mechanics," wrote Chapline. Rather than spacetime singularities, Chapline says that black holes are really huge gobs of dark energy . He posits that these gobs, formerly known as black holes, might actually be the missing mass of the universe.
Under accepted theory, an imploding star of multiple solar masses will collapse into a rock of zero volume and infinite density. But we can never see the rock. It will be hidden from view by so called event horizon, predicted by Einstein's general relativity, where time freezes and beyond which there's no point of return.
However, Chapline says no such collapse can take place. He argues that an event horizon marks the space where regular visible matter undergoes a "phase transition" into a "compact object" made of dark energy. He says: "I call such a object a 'dark energy star.'"
But now George Chapline, scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says that black holes violate the laws of quantum physics and cannot exists. He says that the objects are instead dark energy stars, made of the mysterious invisible stuff that fills up 75% of the universe. [The remaining 20% is dark matter and 5% visible matter.] "Event horizons and closed, time-like curves cannot exists in the real world for the simple reason that they are inconsistent with quantum mechanics," wrote Chapline. Rather than spacetime singularities, Chapline says that black holes are really huge gobs of dark energy . He posits that these gobs, formerly known as black holes, might actually be the missing mass of the universe.
Under accepted theory, an imploding star of multiple solar masses will collapse into a rock of zero volume and infinite density. But we can never see the rock. It will be hidden from view by so called event horizon, predicted by Einstein's general relativity, where time freezes and beyond which there's no point of return.
However, Chapline says no such collapse can take place. He argues that an event horizon marks the space where regular visible matter undergoes a "phase transition" into a "compact object" made of dark energy. He says: "I call such a object a 'dark energy star.'"
