Posted on 03/31/2005 4:41:46 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist.
Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion.
George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. "It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist," he claims.
Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point.
But Einstein didn't believe in black holes, Chapline argues. "Unfortunately", he adds, "he couldn't articulate why." At the root of the problem is the other revolutionary theory of twentieth-century physics, which Einstein also helped to formulate: quantum mechanics.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Your link doesn't appear to be working
Actually it seems I just can't access nature.com for some reason
Niven's Law number 2:
Never fire a laser at a mirror.
And if you thought that laser-guns and explosions in space would make a noise then you haven't been paying attention to science fiction for about 30 years.
Remember the tag line to the first Alien movie (1979)?
Just another contractor from Lawrence Livermore posing as a National Laboratory and looking for more contract money.
A Nuclear Weapons Lab without any mission.
Obviously the writer has never spent a spring here in Michigan and blown a tire and ruined his suspension hitting one of those non-existant black holes.........
You know - when I was, like, 5 years old :)
Remember the tag line to the first Alien movie (1979)?
Of course. That's what burst the bubble for me. "They CAN'T?" ;-)
And where do you think all the missing socks go to? It's caused by dark energy, I'm telling you.
Oprah ?
Nice catch.
I was totally oblivious as to why a thread about black holes would make me think about socks...
Putz comes to mind.
George Chapline never met Hillary Clinton.
Not to mention his ___
I don't know from this stuff, but when I look up at night, what I see are white holes. Whatever is out there is black, and there's a whole bunch of it. Except there are these little white holes in it in the shapes of bears and crabs and stuff. I think these might be primitive sky drawings done by asteroid men whose only tool was the "pin." |
Free space trips tomorrow. Eat at Cosmos.
The real question is:
Has he made this announcement on Art Bell or George Norry's show?
He is not an *official* wack job until then.
Socks are the larval form of wire coathangers. Every time a sock disappears from your washing machine, a wire coathanger appears in your closet. This is why, every six months or so, you have to grab a big handful of them and throw them out, lest they take over your closet.
The sock manufacturers do not want you to know this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.