Posted on 06/20/2007 4:12:14 PM PDT by LibWhacker
"Nothing there," is what Case Western Reserve University physicists concluded about black holes after spending a year working on complex formulas to calculate the formation of new black holes. In nearly 13 printed pages with a host of calculations, the research may solve the information loss paradox that has perplexed physicists for the past 40 years.
Case physicists Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence M. Krauss report in the article, "Observation of Incipient Black Holes and the Information Loss Problem,” that has been accepted for publication by Physical Review D.
"It's complicated and very complex," noted the researchers, regarding both the general problem and their particular approach to try to solve it.
The question that the physicists set out to solve is: what happens once something collapses into a black hole" If all information about the collapsing matter is lost, it defies the laws of quantum physics. Yet, in current thinking, once the matter goes over the event horizon and forms a black hole, all information about it is lost.
"If you define the black hole as some place where you can lose objects, then there is no such thing because the black hole evaporates before anything is seen to fall in," said Vachaspati.
The masses on the edge of the incipient black hole continue to appear into infinity that they are collapsing but never fall over inside what is known as the event horizon, the region from which there is no return, according to the researchers.
By starting out with something that was nonsingular and then collapsing that matter, they were determined to see if an event horizon formed, signaling the creation of a black hole.
The mass shrinks in size, but it never gets to collapse inside an event horizon due to evidence of pre-Hawking radiation, a non-thermal radiation that allows information of the nature of what is collapsing to be recovered far from the collapsing mass.
"Non-thermal radiation can carry information in it unlike thermal radiation. This means that an outside observer watching some object collapse receives non-thermal radiation back and may be able to reconstruct all the information in the initial object and so the information never gets lost," they said.
According to the researchers, if black holes exist, information formed in the initial state would disappear in the black hole through a burst of thermal radiation that carries no information about the initial state.
Using the functional Schrodinger formalism, the researchers suggest that information about the energy from radiation is long evaporated before an event horizon forms.
"An outside observer will never lose an object down a black hole," said Stojkovic. "If you are sitting outside and throwing something into the black hole, it will never pass over but will stay outside the event horizon even if one considers the effects of quantum mechanics. In fact, since in quantum mechanics the observer plays an important role in measurement, the question of formation of an event horizon is much more subtle to consider."
The physicists are quick to assure astronomers and astrophysicists that what is observed in gravity pulling masses together still holds true, but what is controversial about the new finding is that "from an external viewer's point it takes an infinite amount of time to form an event horizon and that the clock for the objects falling into the black hole appears to slow down to zero," said Krauss, director of Case's Center for Education and Research in Cosmology.
He continued "this is one of the factors that led us to rethink this problem, and we hope our proposal at the very least will stimulate a broader reconsideration of these issues."
If black holes exist in the universe, the astrophysicists speculate they were formed only at the beginning of time.
Source: Case Western Reserve University
I’m afraid I’m gonna need to see those 13 pages of calculations before I can comment further on this article.
I understand this stuff much better after a few beers.
Say it isn’t so. Now what will we use as an excuse when we lose something?
The event horizon would have to be made of socks, pencils, and keys.
Bunny... pancake...
this arguement doesn’t hold. Sandy Burglar has proven that black holes exist!!
One has to wonder what the perception of a person who is falling into a black hole would be...is the warp in space/time so severe that the person falling in would perceive an ever increasing acceleration and compression until unity with the core mass is achieved...but that it appears to take "forever" to an outside observer?
If we have anyone interested in astronomy here, the following is a VERY interesting link.
Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida has put up a very interesting page
on their site. It begins as a view of the Milky Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of
10 million light years and then zooms
in towards Earth in powers of ten. 10 million, to one million, to 100,000 light
years and then it finally reaches a large Oak tree. If ever there was a witness to
the glory of creation (and perspective), they have captured it for our viewing
pleasure!
Once you click on the site, the software does all the work. Sit back and try to
imagine how perfect our universe is! Amazing!
Click on the link below to view this.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html
Uh... oh... according to the underlying research behind these findings, this appears to be ample proof that Algore not only does not currently exist, but never existed in the first place.
Was there a beginning in time? What happened in the eons upon eons before then?
“If black holes exist in the universe, the astrophysicists speculate they were formed only at the beginning of time.”
What?
I thought a star of certain mass, particularly one with a binary companion from which to draw further mass, would form a black hole on collapse.
Are they saying that time dilation actually prevents a black hole from forming over the life of the universe, hence there can be none?
It’s spaghettification, I tell ya! Spaghettification!
If you'll do the first 7, I'll handle the last 7.
Oops!!
"If black holes exist in the universe...."
And if I read this correctly, they are saying black holes cannot be created, but maybe some exist from the beginning of the universe. Those are big maybes and certainly raise the question what are all the black holes scientists think exist, if it turns out they aren't black holes?
You got a deel!
Funny how we can imagine time having no end, but it’s difficult to imagine it never having had a beginning.
Yep, that's what I'm getting out of it. The classic black hole with all its familiar properties, which froms a collapsing star, simply cannot exist, because everything freezes at the event horizon. Nothing "disappears" from our universe. At least from the outsider's point of view.
PFL
There’s something there. It’s just not as described in the literature. Information is not lost.
What's fun is when they start talking about creating an entire universe in the lab, one that is just as large as ours, has just as much matter in it, and one that will hyper-expand just as rapidly ours. But don't worry. It won't hurt us. It'll make its own space as it goes through its Big Bang period and not intrude into ours.
NOT GUILTY!!
Oops... Wrong thread.
My bad.
WHICH FORMS FROM!!!
i give :-(
Actually, no observer would survive long enough to find out. Tidal forces would rip them to pieces long before they reached the event horizon.
Quite fascinating. Thank you for the link. We live our normal lives in a very narrow range of physical magnitudes.
My brain hurts. The bit in quantum physics about observations being effected by the fact of observation gives me the willies. Going back to pondering why any Republicans would support this amnesty bill.
Tidal effects would be lethal long before getting to the event horizon. Assuming The invention of gravity opaque paint (I think H.G. Wells originally came up with the idea) and you survived the tidal forces, you would perceive yourself falling headlong towards the black hole. If somebody 10 billion years from now could retrieve you, you would perceive them pulling you out in the nick of time.
Very similar to the speed of light. If you could constantly accelerate at one gravity, you would eventually percieve that you were traveling faster than the speed of light but outside observers would see us as slowly approaching the speed of light but never reaching it. From the perspective of a photon, it is emitted from a star and instantly appears at it’s destination but from our perspective, they can take billions of years to reach us.
They are trying to say, a point singularity cannot form. The collapsing matter will form something that from our perspective is a black hole but in reality is something different.
The object will be terribly dense but over the course of eternity will never form the classic singularity.
Another question...how do photons “travel” then do they pass through some sort of “subspace” or another dimension to get to it’s destination?
there is no such thing as “time” in and of itself. “time” is delta kinetic energy. Don’t think so? Demonstrate a time event that is NOT a kinetic energy event.
I’d certainly never argue time with someone named timer. ;)
Ok, I have had a few beers……… If they claim that an outside observer cannot distinguish an object passing through the event horizon because “it will never pass over”, considering the effects of quantum mechanics. Where the object takes an infinite amount of time to pass over the event horizon, why would the observer be prevented from collecting any data from it assuming the observer would not be effected by the event itself? The only other question I want an answer to is, why is a duck?, and if so, why not?
From our perspective, they would redshift to the point we could no longer measure the light.
BECAUSE!
From a newtonian stand point, it is a little massless cannon ball that plods along at the speed of light unless, it interacts with something.
From a quantum standpoint, it is something entirely different that can only really be described by mathmatical formulas.
This is really fascinating stuff that makes my head spin. Do you have any links to some sites that explain quantum physics to dummies(if it can be done)? This stuff goes way beyond my college physics and math.
BECAUSE!
The event horizon, or the duck?
I wonder how many people world wide are following a conversation about a non-event, event horizon? (another question one beer later)
No links, sorry.
Just alot of casual reading. There are quite a few books written for lay people.
One has to wonder what the perception of a person who is falling into a black hole would be...is the warp in space/time so severe that the person falling in would perceive an ever increasing acceleration and compression until unity with the core mass is achieved...but that it appears to take “forever” to an outside observer?
It would suck. It would really, really suck.
Think of time in the purely scientific form. You can determine the time between two events if you know their coordinates and the velocity of propagation. This statement has no meaning if you take away the coordinate system. You can't measure the time before events before the universe was created unless you strictly assume that space existed before the Big Bang into which our universe expanded. Saying 'before' attributes more characteristics to time than have been defined by science.
All you need to know is it’s turtles all the way down.
To hell you say?!
I agree on the tidal forces and the big stretch...I was speaking hypothetically.
If you knew your Quantum Mechanics, ala Professor Feynman, you’d learn a whole new chapter in physics, IF you knew your QM...
Compared to the average person, I’m a professor of not only QM but quantum chromodynamics. Compared to someone who understands QM, if there is such person, I am clueless.
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