In 1971 physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that there might be “mini” black holes all around us that were created by the Big Bang. The violence of the rapid expansion following the beginning of the Universe could have squeezed concentrations of matter to form miniscule black holes, so small they can’t even be seen in a regular microscope. But what if these mini black holes were everywhere, and in fact, what if they make up the fabric of the universe? A new paper from two researchers in California proposes this idea.
Black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape, and are usually thought of as large areas of space, such as the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. No observational evidence of mini-black holes exists but, in principle, they could be present throughout the Universe.
Since black holes have gravity, they also have mass. But with mini black holes, the gravity would be weak. However, many physicists have assumed that even on the tiniest scale, the Planck scale, gravity regains its strength.
Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider are aimed at detecting mini black holes, but suffer from not knowing exactly how a reduced-Planck-mass black hole would behave, say Donald Coyne from UC Santa Cruz (now deceased) and D. C. Cheng from the Almaden Research Center near San Jose.
String theory also proposes that gravity plays a stronger role in higher dimensional space, but it is only in our four dimensional space that gravity appears weak.
Since these dimensions become important only on the Planck scale, it’s at that level that gravity re-asserts itself. And if that’s the case, then mini-black holes become a possibility, say the two researchers.
They looked at what properties black holes might have at such a small scale, and determined they could be quite varied.
Black holes lose energy and shrink in size as they do so, eventually vanishing, or evaporating. But this is a very slow process and only the smallest back holes will have had time to significantly evaporate over the enter 14 billion year history of the universe.
The quantization of space on this level means that mini-black holes could turn up at all kinds of energy levels. They predict the existence of huge numbers of black hole particles at different energy levels. And these black holes might be so common that perhaps “All particles may be varying forms of stabilized black holes.”
“At first glance the scenario … seems bizarre, but it is not,” Coyne and Cheng write. “This is exactly what would be expected if an evaporating black hole leaves a remnant consistent with quantum mechanics… This would put a whole new light on the process of evaporation of large black holes, which might then appear no different in principle from the correlated decays of elementary particles.”
They say their research need more experimentation. This may come from the LHC, which could begin to probe the energies at which these kinds of black holes will be produced.
Original paper.
Source: Technology Review
Nearly ten years ago now, I had read of a similar hypothesis:
World’s Top Scientists Ponder: What If The Whole Universe Is, Like, One Huge Atom?
Utterly fascinating speculation…
Notions come to my mind of an incredibly high force of gravity at particle scale, but we can never “see” it… because of 7 extra (tiny, curled up) dimensions of space at those scales…
…and so I boldly hypothesize that the inverse square fall-off principle becomes an inverse 9th power principle…
… hence those extra dimensions “swallow” most of this gravity before it continues to propagate in the space we can observe, at the familiar inverse square fall-off…
well, probably not, but a very entertaining notion
😉
Indeed!
And thinking about the fact that down to dimensions of 10^-18m the electron is still a point… hm. If an electron is smaller than (if I remember correctly) 10-34m it would be a black hole. Since it is theoretically possible that black holes are charged – well, why not?
The same thing could hold concerning quarks, since they are supposed to be points, too.
Amazing idea, indeed 😉
dark matter? dark energy?
Wasn’t this proposed a while bacK? I was think about this very thing a couple of days ago.
I remember reading somewhere that an electron could basically be thought of as a black hole, or it had properties similar to a black hole (charge, spin). I suppose it could work for other particles too.
I also remember Quantum Loop Theory basically saying that all particles are tiny-twisty-loops in the fabric of space-time.
Could they all be the same?
If so, how does Hawking Radiation come into play? Shouldn’t these mini-black holes evaporate?
As the above two posters suggest if these black holes exist they could be dark energy and their evaporation, in aggregate, across the universe fuels the unexplained increase in expansion that suddenly came about a few billions of years ago.
Individually they are unnoticed but hundreds of thousands of trillions (insert suitably large number) evaporating every x period of time serves to lessen the overall effect of gravity on cosmic scales.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
James
Ordinarily I wouldn’t try to review a scientific article in a field where I’m a layman, but as the post (or press release) is presented to laymen I feel I can.
This paper have qualities that I both enjoy and detest.
On the positive side it presents an interesting semiclassical model of varying gravitational strength, and concludes with testable predictions. I’m not even knowledgeable about ordinary quantization of fields (as in QFT) and even less of black hole quantization of area, but I have to assume the later is a property of a quantified system analogous to a field.
So I have to assume further that the quantization of entropy (available energy states) as proposed by the authors is legit, albeit by the author’s own characterization “a cottage industry”. It is interesting to see a semiclassical model where black hole anomalous entropy changes (phase transition) to expected normal behavior during evaporation.
The problem can be that I seem to have seen upper bounds on entropy, so the suggested “intrinsic entropy” is perhaps not available. Then the seemingly unnecessary modification of 2nd law of thermodynamics falls.
On the negative side is the part where the authors give way for the unfortunate tendency of physicists and cranks both, to suggest TOEs. The problems of suggesting geometrical or topological models of particles are shown by the classical model’s failure to predict spin. String theory handles this differently, and is the main alternative to boot.
Really, if I had been an author or a reviewer (which I have been both, albeit not in theoretical physics), I would have suggested to separate the pieces of the underlying model and if possible experimental tests into one paper, and the TOE speculations into another. Both areas would likely have benefited from this.
@ IVAN3MAN:
Still finding enjoyment in physics, I see! 😉
What utter piffle…
Cheers, Dave.
I have not read the full paper yet. It is a long one. There are clearly some questions that could be raised. It would seem to me that the black holes here need some type of BPS charge or quantum number. In scanning through this the authors do not seem to employ this.
The black hole solution with some charge can be extended at the extremal limit to an AdS spacetime. So it might be fair to say that the universe is ultimately a black hole in some quantum gravity sense.
Lawrence B. Crowell
davesmith_au,
Utter piffle is a good description of this sheer tripe.
@davesmith_au, solrey: why?
“davesmith_au”, the name rang a bell, though it took me a little while to track down what rang …
There is (or was) a BAUT Forum member with that handle who posted in a thread in the ATM section (Against The Mainstream), just one post, as far as I could see. The post’s title is “No science here…”, and is dated “15-October-2008, 12:14 PM”.
If the two davesmith_au’s are the same, then reading “What utter piffle…” in conjunction with the BAUT Forum post is … most interesting (shall we say).
I’ve heard there are Mini Zebra fish that are so small they can’t be seen by the naked eye or even the worlds most powerful microscope. They do have mass, but this mass is so small that the leading zeros in the decimal places cause a rounding error that leads to zero.
However, the mini Zebra fish are there swimming around you. Some are on your arm, some are in your hair. Some are dancing up and down on your dash board when you go to work.
Some are in the sky and so on. Each has it’s own special name and will respond when called. But no one knows their names are even notices that they are there!!!
The most interesting thing about them is that they all feed off of mnature Dorito chips and Cheeze-IT’s that are so small that even the Mini Zebra Fish don’t know they are there. But they feel happy and full all the time. So they exist, even on your keyboard where you type.. .
“No observational evidence of mini-black holes exists but, in principle, they could be present throughout the Universe.”
That bears repeating “no observational evidence exists” … but let’s speculate anyway!
Have the wildest of speculations truly replaced empirical observations in science?
From the paper. Yep, I suffered through that BS.
“But for very small m, one sees that g ? 1/ m2 and thus, using Eq. (4.4), m ? ?1/t: the black hole will never evaporate and can reach arbitrarily small masses. g(t) grows quadratically with time, never reaching a pole: it is dynamically suppressing its own infinities. Temperature T ? 1/t as well in this limit: the black hole cools off!”
WOW!
“It may come as a surprise to some that the quantization procedure for black holes has been a cottage industry for about thirty years, beginning with Bekenstein’s use of “adiabatic invariants” to justify the quantization of black hole horizon area [37]. A wide range of theoretical speculation has expanded on such ideas [38,39,40], and there is even a lively discussion in current literature arguing the fine points of exactly what the fundamental quantum of black hole area should be [41,42,43,44].”
Interesting they specifically mention “cottage industry”. (add sarcastic tone here) I’m sure they have no interest in protecting their incomes within this “industry”. It’s just pure science, right? What else is a pure theoretical mathematician, with zero practical skills, supposed to do to earn a living besides asking the big questions, like “would you like fries with that?” 🙂
“As of yet, the SSGS has no mechanism to explain the details of the large-G horizon membrane or of a leaky horizon. It suggests, however, that a consideration of unconventionally strong G behavior exceeding that of GR might automatically provide a
sensible environment and “gentle landing” for the evolution of an evaporating black hole into any scalar fundamental particle, consistent with QM everywhere and GR on the exterior of
the hole. From there, it is only a short flight of fancy to include all elementary particles as stabilized black holes.”
Short flight of fancy? This entire paper is like a huge leap off Valles Marineris.
Wait, there’s more.
“1) Gravity is seen everywhere in the Universe because all particles, conjectured to be bound black hole states of intense gravity, leak the weak asymptotic gravity (GR) into their environs; unstable small black holes and the explosions of the sort sought by experimenters are not necessary for the scenario.”
“4) Finally, as for the future LHC experiments, they may very well sample a region of T where semi-stable black holes of M ? T will be produced, but, in the scenario presented in this paper, that is what high-energy physics has been doing all along at other energy scales.”
“In SSGS, particles/holes decay by passing entropy and information on to the daughter particles/holes, which suggests that strong correlations will exist in the decay products. From the SSGS viewpoint, this has always been true in high-energy physics, where every particle repeatedly sampled the appropriate variable Planck “endpoint” for its particular mass. The scenario offered by this paper, unlike those of [2], suggests that the end to
conventional high-energy physics is comfortably far away.”
The problem is the futile attempt to make gravity the strongest force in the universe while ignoring electro-magnetic forces. Essentially they’re trying to prove that the cart is pushing the horse, that the effect is the cause, that the symptom is the disease, that 420 faeries can dance on the head of a pin.
😉
@mgmirkin: I’m not sure how you decided that this paper is, or represents, “the wildest of speculations”, but your comment about doing away with empirical observations is quite misplaced, as this snippet from the abstract of the paper clearly shows:
@solrey:
You omitted to mention the strong (nuclear) force, which is, as I’m sure you know far, far, far, far stronger than “electro-magnetic forces”. Wouldn’t your critique of the paper have been more credible if you’d referenced the strong force?
Also, it’s been a while since Salam, Glashow, and Weinberg gave us the unification of electromagnetism and the weak force; in the physical regime of the Coyne and Cheng paper, don’t you think you should be referring to the electroweak force?
In any case, how do you propose physicists go about researching the question of whether there is a viable theory of quantum gravity (or some similar phrase)? Or do you think that is not something which should be studied, period?
Well, Donald Coyne certainly has no such interest (you did actually read the UT story, didn’t you?).
@solrey: it would seem that your comment on the paper is little more than an argument from personal incredulity, but maybe I missed something?
Would you mind re-stating what you see as BS in this paper, from the perspective of science?
@ solrey
I don’t think that they are doing that. Proof it, quote the passage of the paper where they explicitly state that gravity is stronger than any other force. I wonder if you can do that, otherwise it would be pure speculation without any basis!
Btw: There is a reason to speculate about such things as elemantary particles being “stable black holes”. Real elemantary particles (like quarks or electrons) are points. Theory cannot treat them another way – otherwise they should have a “substructure” and wouldn’t be elemantary any more.
But also experiments shows them to be points until now. The electron is a point down to orders of magnitude of 10^-18 m. So even from an experimental point of view this speculation (it’s really anything more at the momen) has a basis.
And do you know what another consequence would be if an electron is really a point? Its mass-density and its charge-density would be infinite. I think you won’t reject the existence of electrons…..
@DrFlimmer: the paper does do what solrey claims … but only in physical regimes far, far, far, far beyond what has been observed to date (although the authors suggest that there may be ~LHC regime observables); it’s the scope of applicability that solrey seems to have misunderstood.
One somewhat inaccurate way to think of this the energy at which the various forces become equal, or at which the symmetry of the unified force becomes broken. The electroweak unification is, in one respect, a recognition that there is but one force, at a sufficiently high energy, which manifests as two separate ones at lower energies (the symmetry is broken). There’s no scientific doubt about this (@any reader: ask if you want some details).
The electroweak-strong unification is a bit tricker, IIRC, but not particularly controversial.
Gravitation has always been the outlier; what Coyne and Cheng describe, in their paper, is a novel approach to unifying it with the electroweak-strong force.
At least, that’s my understanding … I could be quite wrong, of course.
Oh, in this case my apologies @solrey.
But my other passages stay as they are (although there should be an “e” instead of an “a” in elementary….)
But nereid is right. Scientists do have a unification of the three “stronger” forces. But those forces normally act on atomic scales (probably the em-force sometimes spreads farther out). Gravity, so far, is only perceptible if you gain enough mass in a (relatively) small volume. That’s the reason why gravity is 10^37 times weaker than em (electrostatic force precisely), because this is a comparison on atomic scales.
If you compare a proton to the earth, you’ll probably find another value (you still have the problem to calculate a reasonable value for the charge of the earth…. I guess it’s almost zero…)
@ mgmirkin: Earlier you have stated “Have the wildest of speculations truly replaced empirical observations in science?” Without speculation or theoretical assumptions in science, where would we be ? Wolfgang Pauli’s 1930 speculation on what was later called the neutrino was only confirmed in 1956 by Cowan, Reines, Harrison, Kruse and McGuire (a 26 year interval that resulted in a Nobel Prize for the group in 1995 ). Nereid also brings up a good point. How does Plasma Cosmology (or other non-mainstream theories) account for the unification of electromagnetism and the weak force (electroweak force) ? And where does the strong nuclear force fit in these alternative cosmologies ( e.g. electroweak-strong force unification regimes) ? I’ve seen no citations to papers that reconcile these two important questions. I’m not trying to imply that the present paper is the last word on the subject, only that alternate theories do not seem to account for strong and electroweak forces explicitly. And where does gravity come into the picture, at what scale and energy regime?
It’s certainly not my place to do this, and there’s every chance I may have this quite wrong, but …
AFAIK, in Alfvén’s Plasma Cosmology (PC) this is not a cosmological question, because a) General Relativity (GR) is not relevant to the universe as a whole (so there’s no Big Bang, or equivalent, and hence no high density/temperature/energy state), and b) anywhere where energies may be sufficiently high (e.g. supernovae) are irrelevant, cosmologically speaking. There’s one important caveat to enter: there is, IIRC, one cosmological model with which Alfvén’s name is associated that has the universe (currently) expanding, but in its early history (in this model) there was some kind of bounce, so densities (temperatures, energies) didn’t get high enough for electromagnetism and the weak force to be unified.
AFAIK, in no other version of PC (e.g. Peratt’s, Lerner’s) is there any reason for energy regimes in which the electromagnetic and weak forces would be unified, because these cosmologies are essentially steady state ones (though quite different from the Hoyle-Narlikar et al Steady State cosmologies), so the question has no pertinence.
In the Electric Universe (EU) idea, stars are powered by giant, inter-galactic currents, and the universe is infinite in both space and time (of course, GR has no place in this idea). The weak force, and the strong force, are, AFAIK, mere curiosities in this idea, with no significant role to play, cosmologically speaking.
Alfvén’s PC is at least quantified; the EU ideas are mere word salad; Alfvén at least respected the work of high energy/particle physicists, EU proponents apparently feel, like solrey, that it’s just a bunch of high falutin’ math of interest only to mathematicians and of no practical value whatsoever (though they are strangely silent wrt the question of empirical/laboratory-based tests of HEP).
Of course, I could be quite wrong …
It is unfortunate this discussion is becomeing a pro-con matter on plasma-C stuff.
I looked at the paper a bit. This is not exactly what I think is the preferred way to proceed with this subject. I personally think that the examination of how solutions to the Einstein field equation extend into each other and p-brane/string aspects of the problem considered.
There is nothing about this subject in general which “ignores” EM or any any of the gauge/fermion fields. This particular paper argues for a quantized entropy function with gravity.
Gravity is of course the weakest force in nature. Yet on a large scale with lots of mass-energy it can assume scales far exceeding EM on the classical level. On the quantum cosmology level (presumably the PC people find umbrage in that) the gravitational constant adjusts according to
G_D = int^{E_c} dE,
for G_D the “brane gravity coupling,” in dimension D. At a low cut-off in energy and compactifications this reduces to the low valued G for gravity wave all know. This sort of physics with strong gravity can only become relevant at high energy. This might have some signatures in the TeV range of energy in the LHC.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Lawrence B. Crowell, thanks for your explanation and clarifiction of my query above.
Of course. I checked out the Wiki page on cosmology here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmology . The article even mentioned Alfven’s ‘ambiplasma’ cosmology (how did this ATM idea get past the ‘gatekeepers’ of modern astronomy, I wonder. Heresy!). Thank again to both Nereid & Lawrence B, Crowell for bringing me up to speed on this. But I would like to repeat something lbc mentioned in an earlier post, that these countless, fruitless ‘discussions’ all sound the same, and, indeed, do get boring. Let’s get back the the real world of mainstream, cutting-edge research in astronomy with some speculative , but well researched , stories appearing when appropriate .
Funny. This theory was postulated in the humorous book, Cubanito! referring to the constant filtering of things in the Universe.
@ Jon Hanford:
Jon Hanford states: “Let’s get back the the real world of mainstream, cutting-edge research in astronomy with some speculative , but well researched , stories appearing when appropriate .”
Does this include, “Is Everything Made of Mini Black Holes?”
It seems “modern” astronomy is slipping off the leash a little bit more all the time.
I got a song that sums this up pretty well, “Old MacDonald had a Farm”:
Old MacDonald had a farm, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
And on this farm he had a cow, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
With a moo moo here and a moo moo there
Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo moo
Old Mac Donald had a farm, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
Old MacDonald had a farm, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
And on this farm he had a pig, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
With an oink, oink here and an oink, oink there
Here an oink, there an oink, everywhere an oink, oink
Old Mac Donald had a farm, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
Now other folks have animals they are caring for
Let’s meet some different people and sing a little more
Henrietta had a house, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
And in this house she had a cat, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
With a mew, mew, here and a mew, mew, there
Here a mew, there a mew, everywhere a mew, mew
Henrietta had a house, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
Zebadiah had a zoo, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
And in this zoo he had a tiger, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
With a grrr, grrr, here and a grrr, grrr, there
Here a grrr, there a grrr, everywhere a grrr, grrr,
Zebadiah had a zoo, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
Pamelina had a pet shop, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
And in this shop she had a puppy, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
With a woof, woof, here and a woof, woof, there
Here a woof, there a woof, everywhere a woof, woof,
Pamelina had a pet shop, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh
With a moo, moo, here and a moo, moo, there
An oink, oink, here and an oink, oink, there
A mew, mew, here and a mew, mew, there
A grrr, grrr, here and a grrr, grrr, there
A woof, woof, here and a woof, woof, there
Animals are everywhere, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh!
Anaconda, you seem to have misread the UT story; the paper referred to is a physics paper, and the authors propose possible tests of their idea using the LHC; where did this come from then?
Also, it would seem that you are 80 to 100 years behind the times; the path from relativity and quantum mechanics – with all their mind-twisting implications – via thousands of rigourous experiments, to this paper is reasonable, rational, and logical.
Of course, there may be some intolerable internal inconsistency lurking in the paper (if so it will likely be rather subtle, and will be brought to light soon enough anyway), further work may show that it is already at odds with some well-established results in HEP (high energy physics), and results from the LHC may rule it out … that’s just par for the course in science, isn’t it?
But what would you, Anaconda, do if you were in charge of the large budget of a university’s physics or astronomy department (assuming any such budget could be characterised as ‘large’)? Where is a cogent, coherent, comprehensive, alternative proposal for *alternative* research in these fields to be found?
And let’s not forget that all Coyne and Cheng needed to come up with the ideas for this paper were, very likely, little more than the modern equivalent of a pencil and paper, and access to a good library.
It wouldn’t be for chasing “little black holes”, that’s for sure.
I’m sorry, but the fact that this kind of paper could get published in the first place is the basis for my comment:
“It seems ‘modern’ astronomy is slipping off the leash a little bit more all the time.”
Nereid, you need to loosen up and take a joke.
It’s a serious question though Anaconda; you, solrey, davesmith_au, and mgmirkin have all come on strong – in the comments to this UT story – with what seems to be nothing more than an argument from personal incredulity; in comments on other UT stories (at least, the ones that I’ve read) it’s much the same (and, in many cases, large doses of venom and vitriol as well) … but not once have I read even the hint of what research you would recommend be done instead.
How about applying your imagination and creativity, not to mention your vast knowledge of things alternative, and come up with the outline of a research program that would get your seal of approval?
Here’s just a few ‘minor’ problems with the paper: 😉
“We also consider a seemingly independent approach1 that allows gravity to grow in strength only when the temperatures of evaporating black holes are trying to become infinite, and suggest a largely ad hoc picture of how a black hole might behave in this situation.”
As early as page 2, they dive straight in to ‘ad hoc’.
From Wiki:
“In science and philosophy, ad hoc means the addition of extraneous hypotheses to a theory to save it from being falsified.”
“The large-hole evaporation calculations would have to include a possible flow of correlated information via the intrinsic entropy of the “daughter holes”. Without further speculations, we have already seen a big hint that this can happen, namely, in the calculations of Appendix B that showed it is possible that the new intrinsic entropy alone can satisfy the second law of thermodynamics, for both large and small hole evaporation. That would depend on a larger conjecture being true: that all particles are black holes, not just the uncharged scalar modes.”
Conjecture, huge massive conjecture. Hints, speculations…?
“It implies that while black hole production at LHC will likely occur, it could be in conventional 3+1 dimensions; furthermore, the process will appear as ordinary business-as-usual particle physics, with interesting new particles to be discovered.”
Not very specific and also NON-FALSIFIABLE!
Ad hoc + conjecture + non-falsifiable = garbage
Recently, a paper was published about capturing ‘excitons’ (electrons excited by photon energy) in ‘quantum donuts’ using tuned EM fields to capture/hold/release those ‘excitons’. It seems that it would behoove the realm of particle physics to utilize tuned, harmonic EM waves/fields to isolate and study subatomic particles, rather than using what essentially amounts to physical force (momentum of colliding particles) to break the energetic bonds of particles. A technique of tuned/harmonic EM fields would be much less expensive and provide more precise results, than something like LHC.
@ solrey
Your idea is not really new. It is especially used for trapping particles, cooling them and finally to analise them for special characteristics. There have been some interesting results. E.g. this is the only way to study the characteristics of anti-matter in greater detail. This technique has also been used to creat anti-hydrogen atoms – the only problem is that, when the anti-hydrogen is created, you cannot trap it anymore and it crashes into the walls quite quickly.
On the other hand if you really need high energies, because some things are just detectable in that energy regime, the only chance is by colliding them at high velocities. Otherwise you just couldn’t reach the interesting energies.
And, believe it or not, the results of the LHC (and other accelerators) are very precise. Since the trajectories of the created particles are examined in high accuracy, it is an easy task to get information like its energy, charge, etc; basically all the information you need to say which particles you just saw.
Hopefully everything goes well with the LHC in autumn, when they turn it on again….
I think that some people have a problem with this paper because it could be wrong. Oh horrors, may the shame be upon us all — a theory that could be wrong! Come on, that is what physics is about. Theories are proposed and their predictions tested. There is nothing about this paper which compels me or anyone to throw up their hands and confess the “TRUTH” of plasma cosmology.
To be honest I have some problems with this paper, which I have picked at. It is a bit long, so it takes time to go through it. Yet, the idea is a part of what has to be considered with quantum gravity and cosmology. There are four basic constants in physics involved with gravitation and quantum gravity. These are:
G, c, hbar, k
The gravity constant, speed of light, the Planck constant of action, and the Boltzmann constant in statistical mechanics. Quantum gravity will have to illustrate how nature as described by these constants operates in some way unified way in a single structure.
This paper is an attempt to “quantize” entropy S = energy/T = Nk. Here T is temperature and N is an integer (or 1/2 integral number). I think the Bogoliubov coefficients in Hawking-Unruh radiation on a fine grained scale have a different structure than this, but … . The idea is worth consideration and maybe certain tests could be brought to bear on the issue.
Lawrence B. Crowell
@solrey: as DrFlimmer has already noted, similar techniques have been used for quite some time (google ‘Penning trap’, for example).
They are good for studying particles at rest, in stable environments (so to speak), so are widely used in atomic and nuclear physics.
Perhaps the most significant contribution this kind of system has made to physics is the highest precision measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, which is thus the most stringent test of QED.
However, these sorts of systems have very little applicability to most of HEP, because heavy hadrons are very unstable (so you have no time to even cool them, let alone trap them). Also, collision cross-sections are very good tests of HEP theories, and, by definition, you can’t study those by studying isolated particles!
Yeah, I know that particle confinement has been done with magnetic fields for quite a while. I’m just suggesting taking that a few steps further using the ‘quantum donut’ capture technique and using the EM ‘tuning’ to not only capture and analyze, but to also disrupt the bonds of the constituents of electrons and protons, etc., analogous to the right sound frequency shattering glass. Hold it, ‘dissect’ it and catch the pieces in tuned ‘baskets’.
Finesse.
The LHC is more like using a hammer and picking the jumbled remains trying to make sense of it all.
I do think that particle colliders have been invaluable as a first step down the ‘rabbit hole’. 🙂
Ions in a Penning trap still oscillate in a cyclotronic, toroidal pattern, electric field (electro-magnetic) tuning just brings electrostatic potential to a minimum and provides containment perpendicular to an axial magnetic field.
I’m familiar with electron ‘cooling’ of ions via laser, btw. That technique is used in ultra-cold plasma research to cool ions to near 0 K.
Here’s that quantum donut reseach. Those quantum donuts were a happy accident. The most intriguing stuff mostly comes from the un-expected.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090309105026.htm
I’m suggesting taking the research with catching and releasing ‘photons’ to new levels.
@lbc
“There is nothing about this paper which compels me or anyone to throw up their hands and confess the “TRUTH” of plasma cosmology.”
Well count me in then. My reasons for thinking this paper is bunkus have nothing to do with plasma cosmology, or EU in the slightest. I don’t believe I’ve even mentioned them once regarding this article.
To examine physics at its deepest foundations you have to do two things. The first is to look deeper into the distant universe to examine its large scale structure. The Planck probe should detect B-modes in the CMB which are signatures of early graviton/gravity wave physics. The other is to look at the universe at its smaller scale. This requires one probe the vacuum with smaller wavelength particles, which means higher energy. Hence the LHC.
The LHC is the last of its type of accelerator. If accelerators are built in the future they will be laser based or some other technology. An alternative approach is to detect cosmic ray particles at high energy up to 10^6 times that of the LHC.
Lawrence B. Crowell
@ solrey
Very interesting link, indeed, although it is about solid state physics, which is not my field of interest 😉 .
My only problem with the article is that they say that the “quantum donuts” are slowing light. That is not exactly what happens, AFAIU the article. The energy of the photon is stored in the exciton and the donut keeps it in its higher state. When the electron falls down again a new photon is emitted with the same energy as the first one. But that photon has not been slowed or stopped, it just disappeared.
But I don’t think that such devices could be useful for examining the structure and constituents of protons (and other particles). You won’t get a chance of looking “inside” the proton with any form of light. If I understand you correctly, you would use the trap and the light just like a microscope. But for a resolution of areas smaller than 10^-15m you need a frequency that is higher than 10^23Hz, which is 9 orders of magnitude higher than visible light.
If you had another plan in mind to examine the substructure of the proton, feel free to tell and correct me.
I think you may have mis-read a part of the article. They mentioned previous research in slowing the progress of light, but the quantum donut research is the first to completely hold and release photon energy at will, which is what you described.
My idea for studying sub-atomic particles is to use the quantum donut method to capture an electron or proton, subject it to an EM field tuned to a disruptive harmonic to break the energetic bonds of the sub-particles and capture them in an array of specifically tuned donuts to hold each of them for study (maybe a combination of advanced electron tunneling microscopy, or laser, or EM feedback could be used to study the captured particle). I think this would provide the possibility of controlling the decay/recombination of the particles, as opposed to the more random mix and rapid decay generated by colliders.
Obviously the quantum donut capture method would have to be refined for that kind of HEP research, but I think it might have potential. 😉
@solrey: As I understand it, there is no evidence whatsoever that the electron is comprised of “sub-particles”; may I ask from where you got the idea that it was?
wrt the proton, its “sub-particles” are quarks, which cannot be liberated as individual particles (though with sufficient energy lots of different kinds of disruption are possible, and many hadrons can be produced from the virtual pairs). But maybe you are referring to something completely different?
It seems that solrey is not familiar with the precepts of ‘quark confinement’ in QCD and is not aware of the energies involved in trying to liberate a single quark from a electron or a proton. Quark-gluon plasmas may be in the reach of current accelerators, but energies required to truly liberate a single quark are far beyond our technology (‘disruptive harmonics’ or not).
As a bit of a correction, quarks and leptons form the two basic fermionic sectors, where quarks exist in confined systems called hadrons. Leptons, such as the electron, is not composed of quarks.
QCD is a decent mention, for the interaction scales with energy. At very high energy QCD is weak, leading to something called asymptotic freedom. A low or zero energy it is strong, leading to confinement. Quarks interact by QCD gauge particles, sometimes called gluons. The gluons carry the “charge” of QCD (two colors), and so they interact with each other. This is a part of how one arrives at this strange physics.
Two quarks bound by gluon fluxes (similar to EM fluxes of E and B field lines). The flux lines are folded into a sort of tube due to their self-interaction. At high energy this flux “tube” will break with a quark anti-quarks on either end. It is similar to breaking a bar magnet in two to get two new N-S ends. You can’t isolate quarks — at least not easily.
Lawrence B. Crowell
To continue, the physics of QCD, confinement at low energy and freedom at high energy involves something called the renormalization group. This is a rich subject one might pursue, and I can’t discuss it in any depth here. However, it is a bit like fluid mechanics, with analogues to Navier-Stokes equations for hydrodynamics. How this physics occurs has parallels to the scaling of Reynold’s numbers in hydrodynamics.
In my work, a reduced version of this is that QCD is dual to a reduced deSitter spacetime. So this 3 dimensional spacetime (2-space plus 1 time) is dual to QCD, and the renormalization group flows for QCD carry over to the quantum gravity physics.
Lawrence B. Crowell
@jonhanford
I understand more than you give me credit for, me thinks.
@lbc
QCD, QED…basically convection processes. Tuned harmonic fields ought to fit right in with that crowd. If an exciton can be captured by a tuned quantum donut, why not explore that avenue further?
What is a ‘particle’ really? A standing waveform quantified by volume, polarity and charge density? How does mass or gravity or magnetic fields manifest themselves? What is the source, or driving force, of it all? Does the act of observation/manipulation cause a wave to appear as a particle, due to a certain transference of energy measured as mass and volume?
Such a dynamic universe, eh?
Thanks, lbc, for the clarifications concerning QCD and its implications (It’s been a while since I went over this in college and I found myself digging out my old book on ‘Quantum Field Theory’ by M. Kaku for a refresher ). @ solrey, with this great understanding of the triumphs of your theories and the myriad flaws in the Standard Model, why expend your energy and time at this website(UT) trying to gain acceptance ? Surely, more efficient means exist to expose the fraud of modern astronomy and give a full exposition of theory you hold onto so dearly. Collaboration and publication seem the sensible route to apprise the professional astronomical community to your theories. Why not give it a try?
Some people enjoy participating as an avocation and don’t need or want to go through the rigamorole and politics when they aren’t getting paid to do it.
Gee, “you don’t know what you are talking about – – go way, or you know too much about what you are talking about — go away.”
Obviously, this is really about, “you’re being a skunk at our little garden party and we don’t like it, go away.”
Not much to do with Science but there it is.
I suspect solrey wants to appraise casual readers about the various anomalies that “modern” astronomy downplays or ignores concerning the observations & measurements because they contradict the “party line” concerning various dogma.
Also, it’s hard applying reasonable sceptism when one doesn’t even know an alternative hypothesis exists.
Too many times “modern” astronomy treats their hypothesis as fact and their menagerie of exotics as reality.
Anaconda, IIRC you stated that you are not a physicist nor a mathematician (or perhaps that you have but a weak grasp of both physics and mathematics?).
If so, may I ask if you have considered the possibility that you do not understand what’s in the Coyne and Cheng paper? Nor most of what Lawrence B. Crowell has written in comments on the UT story about this paper? Nor, even, what solrey actually wrote (concerning quantum donuts)?
Oh, and what lead you to conflate astronomy with HEP (high energy physics)?
Anaconda said:
“Some people enjoy participating as an avocation and don’t need or want to go through the rigamorole and politics when they aren’t getting paid to do it.”
Exactly! Plus, for me personally, I have a broad range of interests and a diverse skillset that makes most peoples heads spin. All that keeps me pretty busy. Comments on science sites is an area of interest and provides a good amount of mental exercise.
One may be fully capable of producing a peer-reviewable paper, but that doesn’t pay the bills, so to speak.
Additionally, in general, regardless of how insightful or accurate one’s hypotheses may or may not be, without a post-grad degree of some sort, good luck getting any kind of recognition.
@solrey: I very much doubt that your quantum donut idea would work for anything other than ~eV photons; according to the SD article, excitons “describes the pairing of an electron that has been kicked into a higher energy state by a photon, with a hole or gap it (or another electron) leaves within the shell or orbit around the nucleus of an atom” (bold added)
This seems very much to be a condensed matter phenomenon; do you have concrete ideas how it could be developed to apply to other states of matter?
@solrey: without at least a really good BSc with a major in either physics or maths, what are the chances that you – or anyone else – could develop any hypotheses at all in physics, today (let alone an insightful or accurate one)?
For avoidance of doubt, stringing together words into vaguely plausible sounding ideas doth not a contemporary physics hypothesis make (sorry if that seems too harsh, but I’m sure you recognise its veracity).
Jon Hanford wrote: @ solrey, with this great understanding of the triumphs of your theories and the myriad flaws in the Standard Model, why expend your energy and time at this website(UT) trying to gain acceptance ?
On second thought maybe we really don’t want to go there 🙂
I don’t want to appear to be supporting Solrey’s ideas here. Primarily because they strike me as rather nebulous. Yet there is a bit of a bone I can throw. Quantum fields are conformal (CFT) and obey a renormalization group (RG) flow. This flow occurs from the Planck energy, or near there, to the standard model energy at 1TeV ~ 10^{-16}E_p. At this energy the RG flows stop, and the mass induced by the Higgs fields makes the structure difficult to continue. There is a transitional energy from the TeV energy to around 100 MeV, or the Compton wavelength of fermions ~ 10^{-11}cm which defines most of particle physics. Then below the scale 10^{-11}cm there is a curious physics associated with particles called zitterbewegung.
The bone I have to throw is that the zitterbewegung, obtained from the energy of a particle at that scale with a frequency by E = hf and E = mc^2
f = mc^2/h.
I think that this motion is induced by a noncommutative geometry associated with a “mirror gauge”-like field. Some physics such as Bose-Einstein condensates likely has connections with this. At this low energy scale the RG group flows are re-established. The intermediary zone from 1TeV to 100 MeV is a transitional zone where the two physics interchange.
This is a duality principle, and curiously it has connections to black holes (oh the horror, the inhumanity of it all! 🙂 ). An event horizon according to an accelerated observer will appear more and more as a quantum singularity, so the stretched horizon changes its behavior. I can’t go into great depth on this, and the UT moderators want to avoid “theory mongering.”
I have hesitated writing about this, for I could well imagine it would be misinterpreted. So it is possible that if this is correct, and it could well be wrong, that very low temperature physics might give dual-data for very high energy physics.
Lawrence B. Crowell
In a nut shell, solrey’s idea is simple enough, electromagnetism has shown an ability to seperate particles and it can be done at far less cost and possibly more refinement and control.
Interesting, that electromagnetism keeps raising its ugly head at all kinds of levels and places.
Kind of like its important or something…you think?
Nereid,
Actually, I was a math, and English, tutor in college. I excelled at Calculus. Made the ‘Deans List’. My Aerospace Technology degree included plenty of physics. I’m very adept at learning on my own, which is why I have such a diverse set of skills.
“For avoidance of doubt, stringing together words into vaguely plausible sounding ideas doth not a contemporary physics hypothesis make (sorry if that seems too harsh, but I’m sure you recognise its veracity).”
Stringing together words into vaguely plausible sounding ideas, seems to describe someone who can articulate their thoughts and comprehends what they’re talking about.
OK, I’ve dealt with more harshness than you would probably care to imagine. Try being an American in Liberia, just a couple of months from the outbreak of civil war, meeting with the financiers of the rebel forces (who got screwed by Taylor, whom I met, and I tried to warn them about him because I had an “intuition” about the guy, but they had good intentions in ousting the dictator Doe), so I wound up being in a position of passing information between that group and the U.S. Embassy, in order for embassy personnel to have a time-line on getting their families out. Pretty intense stuff.
Try vertical rock climbing, on hundreds of meters cliffs, with no safety ropes for a profound tutelage on how unforgiving nature, or gravity, can be. Or try going through Army basic training for some exposure to humility and the development of leadership.
Nothing you could do or say would be more severe than what I’ve already experienced. I’m not intimidated by anything…or anyone.
peaceout
@ Anaconda
Yes, electrons and protons.
But that’s not what particle physicist are studying with accelerators. They want to study the mysteries that are hidden deep inside the proton (e.g.). Quarks have been a target (they were a theoretical idea that has been proven). You cannot analise quarks with light (em-interaction). Although charged quarks are bound together by glouns which do not interact electromagnetically. And the force of the gluons (the strong one) ties the quarks together in such a way that the electromagnetic force can do exactly nothing. You have to bring in energies of tremendous scales in order to get a view of the inside of a proton. Such energies can only be achieved by colliders/accelerators.
Thanks, again, lbc for bringing me up to speed with QCD. I do really appreciate your time & efforts here 🙂 . My main point, also noted by Nereid, is the energy regime being discussed. Solrey’s reference to an article in Science Express seems to refer to energies of a few eV while creating a quark-gluon plasma requires temperatures on the order of 2 trillion degrees Kelvin (and this is still not a solitary quark plasma! ) I am somewhat familiar with the conjecture concerning degenerate quark matter at ‘low’ temperatures of 100 MeV to 1 TeV. This from Wiki: “Given high enough baryon densities and relatively low temperatures, quark matter is expected to degenerate into a Fermi surface of weakly-interacting quarks. The nature of QCD and the color SU(3) imply that this surface would be characterized by a condensation of quark Cooper pairs – even though such a condensate would defy the local symmetry of SU(3)c as it is presently known. Such a phase of quark matter would be color superconductive; that is, color charge would be able to pass through it with no resistance. This color superconductivity is explained by the properties of asymptotic freedom; as quark matter becomes denser, the strong interaction becomes weaker and the average interaction lengths between individual quarks become shorter.” But again, I raise the question of the energy regime we’re talking about. Even this gigawatt laser cooling would require the likes of the National Ignition Facility! Solrey seems to imply this is either trivial or easy to accomplish. Thanks again, lbc, for your time & patience in explaining and expanding my knowledge of QCD. @ solrey: All I have asked above was that you may want to collaborate with a like-minded person with a different set of math and physics skills to rigorously develop your theory, not to come up with it all by yourself. What would be the harm? Surely you know and correspond with other individuals concerning your theory. There are published papers on Plasma Cosmology after all. All I was suggesting is that two (learned) heads are better than one. And do feel free to continue posting here at UT. I learn much from the replies to your posts 🙂
Thanks for sharing that solrey.
Totally OT, and possibly against the comment policy, but I’m curious: with your experience and skills, creativity, etc, what is it about PC that you found (and, presumably, still find) worthy? I mean, you seem to have a well-developed critical thinking capability, and PC is so obviously non-science (and the EU stuff even anti-science) …
jonhanford, nereid:
Hey ya’ll. Thanks for the feedback. Seriously, I’d like for us all to feel as though we’re among peers, (on a human level, if nothing else) whether we agree or disagree.
jonhanford: Destructive interference waves via narrow focused x-ray pulses on a trapped proton. That’s the advantage of the quantum donut trapping, it allows the opportunity for precisely calculated and timed interference waves, thus much less energy required.
Are you familiar with the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse?
http://www.cosmolearning.com/physics/videos/40/
nereid: I feel that PC is very scientific. Plasma research has been going on for over a hundred years. Birkeland froze his tail off taking measurements of the northern aurora, went to the lab and re-created them in his Terella experiments. He measured, quantified and verified through in-situ observation. That’s good science, imo. Alfven won a nobel prize in physics. You seem to hold math in high regard and the math of magnetohydrodynamics, as well as straight up EM physics, is pretty advanced stuff. Wrapping ones head around the math of diocotron instabilities is a pretty good mental workout. 😉
As our observational instruments have advanced, we’re quantifying more and more EM and plasma interactions in space. Even the sigmoids that trigger solar flares have been quantified and described as being an electric current. Regardless of what’s at the center of the galaxy, there is no doubt that it is a very active plasma environment.
I am always skeptical, even towards PC/EU, but along the way I’ve been able to verify many aspects of PC/EU theory by discovering independent, ‘mainstream’, corroborating research.
Actually, I welcome skepticism because it causes me to dig deeper, and you do raise some good points at times, I must admit. 🙂
And thanks to the moderators, if they’re paying attention, for allowing several degrees of freedom here because I’m not into making it ‘personal’ and hopefully we can clear the air on that. 🙂
@Anaconda: when you use the term “electromagnetism”, what is it that you mean?
Specifically, do you make a distinction between Maxwell’s equations (from classical physics) and QED (from quantum mechanics)? If so, how does “electromagnetism” relate to each, and how is the relationship different?
As I understand the trapping, in quantum donuts, it won’t work wrt trapping protons.
Besides, how do you focus x-rays (onto the quantum donuts, I presume)? Though perhaps I should first ask ‘x-rays of what wavelength (or energy)?’
Thanks solrey.
I may be mistaken, but this seems to indicate a rather disturbing lack of critical thinking:
Too much time spent on crackpot websites perhaps?
Anyway, distorting history, esp the history of science is one thing, and explicitly proclaiming a field of study to be non-science is quite another! I’d rather talk about the latter, at least to begin with (more later).
All that is undoubtedly so.
Here’s a recent example of how such physics is applied, in astronomy: “Influence of AGN jets on the magnetised ICM” (source: http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3345)
Here’s another part I am curious about; at one level, all of astronomy is, and always has been, the study of “EM interactions in space” (to date, the only way we see the universe, beyond our solar system, is via electromagnetic radiation (‘light’, for short), and you may say that astronomy is the reconstruction of how the light was created, and how it travelled from where it was created to here).
Further, detailed analysis of the light received ‘from the sky’ strongly suggests that many of the emitters are (or were) plasmas … but they are (or were) also atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, blackbodies, …
Neither of these things makes PC inherently scientific, does it?
What is “PC/EU theory”?
Specifically, in what respect is it science?
I’ll give you part of a definition of PC, by Lerner (I assume that you agree he is one of today’s leading PC lights); I’ll have to put a link to the source in a later comment:
(I added bold)
How do you square this last assumption with science?
@ Nereid:
Nereid states: “@Anaconda: when you use the term “electromagnetism”, what is it that you mean? Specifically, do you make a distinction between Maxwell’s equations (from classical physics) and QED (from quantum mechanics)?”
Yes.
The problem with QED is the determination to reduce everything to a particle in physics.
This is manifestly false. There are fields, both electric and magnetic and also gravity that can’t be reduced to a “particle”.
But that hasn’t stopped QM from claiming “particles” exist where none has been found.
This philosophical imperative (the need to identify a “particle” for every observation & measurement of ‘fields’ has driven it into fanciful notions.
The basic concepts of Quantum Mechanics are fine: Probability theory, uncertainty principle, but you can only go so far. The ‘wisdom’, if I can call it that, is realizing QM limitations.
Or any mathematical construct for that matter.
Mathematics is a necessary “tool” for science, but it must never be the master, for then those that are enslaved by their “mathematics” will wonder off into unreality and swear that it is reality.
This is the hight of anti-science.
Nereid states: “…and PC is so obviously non-science (and the EU stuff even anti-science)…”
No, Nereid. That is your opinion.
In reality, so-called “black holes” are anti-science, in that they are in actuality “black boxes” that are not quantitized, and as Stephen Crothers has mathematically demonstrated, do not have a theoretical foundation.
What is anti-science is that “modern” astronomy holds out these “black boxes” as rigorously quantified when in fact they are not quantifized and can NEVER be!
You can’t quantify “infinity”.
So-called “modern” astronomy ignores established physical laws, i.e., Maxwell’s Equations, which hold that magnetic fields are a result of electric current. To do as “modern” astronomy does, ignoring the necessary underlying electric currents is anti-science.
To believe in “magnetic reconnection” where field lines are real instead of a conceptual aid, and to ignore the established science that demonstrates magnetic fields change as a reflection of changing electric currents is anti-science.
As I’ve stated before: “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”
To the extent that you slavishly defend these supposed principles that have been demonstrated as antithetical to known scientific principles, it makes you, Nereid, anti-science.
You are nothing more than an educated shaman.
Plasma Cosmology is a rival school to “modern” astronomy.
The relationship between the two is much the same as between medical and osteopathy where in the early 20th century medical societies tried to outlaw osteopathy, the result: Osteopathy set up its own schools, but medical societies failed in the bigger gambit, they were not able to outlaw osteopathy.
But they tried and, Nereid, your ignorant statement only opens you up to charges of anti-science.
For goodness sake, look in the mirror at “modern” astronomy before you say something stupid like that!
Before anybody comes back and says, “That Anaconda doesn’t believe in mathematics,” let me be crystal clear: “Mathematics is the language of Nature.”
Not only is mathematics necessary, it is indispensible to science. It is a “tool” of Science that establishes quantified relationships in the physical world.
But as ANY “tool” mathematics can be misused. In fact, it is a very powerful “tool”, and because it is so powerful, its misuse can lead to very bad outcomes.
Look at this post for example: I tried to offer humor, yes, ridicule with my “Old McDonald had a Farm” comment, everywhere a “black hole”, the idea that the profiled paper presented. This paper’s thesis completely contradicts “whatever” physical basis there is for a “black hole”.
The “black hole” concept argues that an infinite amount of matter contained in an infinitely small volume (whatever that means) has the gravitational pull to capture light and everthing else.
To suggest that “black holes” exist all over the place and that the super collider can make “black holes” jettisons the whole idea of a infinitely large amount of matter.
It competely changes the concept of what a “black hole” is.
Actually, it does turn it into a “black box” of sorts.
But such is what happens when you have no physical constraints, which is what happens when “infinity” is the constraint on “black holes”.
Yes, Nereid, you go ahead and believe in “black holes” all over the place. (I bet you privately and personally think this is garbage just like solrey pointed out, but oh, no, Nereid will never publically contradict something some “modern” astronomer will conjure up.)
If you were a scientist, Nereid, you’d call this popeycock out for what it is, but, oh no, you are the defender of the faith, so you calmly defend such garbage.
Nereid, you have absolutely no room to criticize any other alternative hypothesis because you can’t even call out something as obviously garbage as this paper.
Until you do have the capability to call out something like this, you should keep quiet.
Thanks for the clarification on electromagnetism, Anaconda.
So when you read that QED (Quantum Electrodynamics) is the most stringently tested theory in physics, today, what do you interpret this to mean?
Specifically, what is it – the theory – that is tested (in your view)?
Anaconda, I think you’ve said, at least once, that you are no mathematician (or something like that); if so, then re this:
(I added some bold)
How did you, independently, assess this demonstration? Specifically, how did you determine that it is mathematically sound? I’m very curious to know, as I’ve read his work and found that it involves math that I would have thought was far beyond what you can follow (based on what I’ve read, in UT story comments, and the BA’s blog, by “Anaconda”).
@other readers: the BAUT Forum, a companion to this UT site, has a thread devoted specifically to this so-called demonstration; full disclosure: I started that thread. Here it is: http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/79996-fun-gr-fans.html
@ Nereid:
Nereid states: “So when you read that QED (Quantum Electrodynamics) is the most stringently tested theory in physics, today, what do you interpret this to mean?”
Here is my answer:
Nereid previously stated the QM definition for an electron:
“The electron is currently thought to be a ‘point particle’ (i.e. it is a zero-dimensional object, with no volume and no structure).
The definition of charge density is charge/volume; ergo, the charge density of the electron is ‘infinity’.”
This reveals the fallacy of QED:
“zero-dimensional object, with no volume and no structure”
“Zero-dimensional object”
Sorry, if it has “zero-dimension” then it is not an object in the physical sense. Rather, it is nothing but an abstract mathematical concept with no physical reality.
The definition of “point” in the above description is not a physical object, a physical object must have volume and location.
To say something has no volume is a classic example of an abstraction, particularly in the case of an electron which has a mass even at rest.
Mass without volume is non-sensical.
Perhaps that is why QED proponents and “black hole” proponents have each other’s backs.
Essentially, the above defintion of an electron is the same definition of a so-called “black hole”. The “black hole” concept states that an infinite amount of matter is contained in an infinitely small volume.
In other words, mass without volume. The only difference is the supposed scale. But if an electron is the same as a “black hole” in terms of abstract mathematical description then really it has no physcal meaning.
To say that an electron is equal to a “black hole” is non-sensical. But close scrutiny comes to that result.
Another way to put it is that the QED definition of an electron and the definition of a “black hole” takes a supposedly real object and then abstracts it and then reifies it back into reality.
The problem, here, is that an electron is a real object, while a “black hole” is an abstract theoretical concept , yet the two are treated the same.
This is impermissable in empirical science.
Comparing an electron and a “black hole” is not comparing apples to apples, yet the definition is the same.
What it’s really saying is, “we don’t know”, and then having the arrogance to say, “even though ‘we don’t know’ we want you to believe [X, Y, and Z].”
That doesn’t pass muster by standards of empirical science.
Nereid asks: “How did you, independently, assess this demonstration? Specifically, how did you determine that it is mathematically sound?”
No, Nereid, the burden of mathematical proof is on you, to show that Crothers is wrong.
Go ahead and google Stephen Crothers, check his mathematical work and reasoning, and then get back, here, and show mathematically why Crothers is wrong. After all, it is you who are the proponent, here, for a supposed physical object that has infinite mass in an infinitely small volume.
Notice, Nereid did not object to the definition I provided of a “black hole”, here, repeated: “The “black hole” concept argues that an infinite amount of matter contained in an infinitely small volume (whatever that means) has the gravitational pull to capture light and everthing else.”
(I’ll go to the BAUT forum link you provide [the mathematics would be too cumbersome for this format].)
Lerner link: http://bigbangneverhappened.org/wiki.htm
Anaconda: “… infinite amount of matter contained in an infinitely small volume …”
Infinite amount of matter? Where’d you get that? It’s not supposed to take infinite amount of matter to create a black hole.
That said, I still don’t understand you Anaconda. You are not related in anyway to any scientific field and yet you’re really angry at current state of astronomy. In other words you have not had something like a paper rejected by the scientific community and yet you’re very very upset. You have great animosity towards modern astronomy. You’re either hiding something or you have a large ego.
You lack any scientific and mathematical understanding and thus zero credibility.
As for Crothers, it’s irrelevant how right or wrong his ideas are, you claimed he’s right but you have no scientific background to grok his arguments. When you say “and as Stephen Crothers has mathematically demonstrated,” it’s hard to take you seriously.
@ Nereid:
Thank you for the link to the BAUT forum.
And, it’s to be noted that you link Lerner’s website (to your credit).
I reviewed the BAUT forum discussion.
I came away unimpressed by the proponents of “black holes”.
Nobody answered or made sense of the assertion that you can have (an infinite amount of) mass without volume. And the problem was put directly before the interlocutors, but they ducked it.
The whole discussion seemed vaguely similar to a discussion about “how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.”
“Not so,” readers might say (see discussion below).
And it spurred this additional thought about QED’s definition of an electron.
I had stated above: “Comparing an electron and a “black hole” is not comparing apples to apples, yet the definition is the same.”
Now, some might say that the definitions aren’t the same, but when you define an electron as being zero-dimensional and having zero volume, you are saying in effect that an infinite number of electrons can fit into an infinitely small space just like a “black hole”.
I see no meaningful distinction.
Readers might say, “it’s not the same as asking how many angels can fit on the head of pin.”
No, it’s worse because angels are metaphysical — there is no answer — you’re not pretending angels are physical objects.
As opposed to so-called “black holes” which are claimed to be physical objects and electrons which are physical objects.
Again, it’s worse because not only are you claiming to be able to answer this question (but actually not because infinity can’t be quantified), but you take it an additional step further: “An infinite amount of matter can fit in a volume infinitely smaller than the sharp end of a pin.
This may be okay for mathematics, but it’s not to be confused with physical science or the empirical method.
Observation & measurement are the bedrock of the empirical method.
@ ND:
You better read the defintion of a “black hole”, before you offer opinions. It is indeed an infinite amount of matter in an infinitely small volume.
Maybe, if you knew the definition, you would realize how non-sensical it is.
On second thought I doubt it.
@ Anaconda:
Please, provide a link to your definition of “infinite mass in no volume”-black holes. Black holes never have infinte mass. We quantify that mass in most cases – the SMBH in the galactic center is about 10^6 solar masses.
Btw: Ask particle physicist: Down to 10^(-18)m an electron remains a point, a physical point, and it does behave that way in every experiment (regardless of the experiments where it behaves as a wave…).
And electrons are fermions. Therefore they cannot be put into one spot – unless there is enough gravity to force them 😉
And it is really funny. You always praise experiments over theory. But your answer to Nereid about QED being one of the best tested theories ever, is quite ridiculous in this sense!
Before you discredit quantum mechanics, you should learn about its power! It is possible for you to discredit black holes, since there has never been seen one directly, but you cannot discredit QM, QED, QCD or the standard model of particle physics (which contains all three of the Q’s).
Anaconda, what do you think is the reason why QED theory and experiment match so extraordinarily well?
Jon Hanford Says:
May 22nd, 2009 at 4:12 am
Thanks, again, lbc for bringing me up to speed with QCD. I do really appreciate your time & efforts here . My main point, also noted by Nereid, is the energy regime being discussed. Solrey’s reference to an article in Science Express seems to refer to energies of a few eV while creating a quark-gluon plasma requires temperatures on the order of 2 trillion degrees Kelvin (and this is still not a solitary quark plasma! )
—————–
Very clearly you cant get a 10000K plasma at about 10ev/particle to tell you much about QCD plasmas, You do need to push the physics up to the energies required, with the hadronic density, to do physics on quark-gluon plasmas.
An interesting point is made with QCD superconductive phase. We are getting into a bit of an frontier area here. The physics is similar to a three-color Bose-Einstein condensate. where Cooper pairing between colored fermions occurs with respect to a quark Fermi surface. The physics is a Skryme confinguration, where gauge fluxes take on a “ropey” topology on the F-surface. You do need to have a RHIC type of configuration to measure any physics of this sorts.
There was some kerfuffle a year ago or more over whether the RHIC and LHC would result in black holes. Of course the fear was misplaced, for clearly cosmic rays to this all the time. The point is that the SU(3) of QCD is dual to an AdS_3, and the condensate phase a BTZ-like black hole. So quark gluon plasmas are thought to have amplitudes associated with black holes. This is a bit different than saying black holes are going to come flying out of the detector, and more of a stretch to say they would eat up the Earth.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Anaconda writes: Go ahead and google Stephen Crothers, check his mathematical work and reasoning, and then get back, here, and show mathematically why Crothers is wrong.
—————————
I went through his paper. His argument involves an apparent misidentification of the radius with curvature, which would be the case in a purely two dimensional case. A surface enclosing the the spherical gravitational source does by itself not provide this definition. Yet since it is embedded in 4-dim spacetime there is an extrinsic correlation.
There are other bad associations, such as how the classical singularity in a BH, which is frankly irrelevant, implies some infinite mass in a special relativistic context.
This editor is not TeX capable, nor is the intended space here meant for detailed mathematical analysis. Yet his objections to BHs fall very short. To be honest the upshot of his paper is frankly that general relativity in its entirety is wrong. The “Hawkings” of general relativity have not been so blind as Crothers appears to think.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Anaconda, you don’t need to demonstrate your understanding of Crothers’ paper because you don’t understand it. We all know this. Who are you trying to fool?
A previous answer to your posting is awaiting moderation.
@ DrFlimmer:
DrFlimer states: “Please, provide a link to your definition of “infinite mass in no volume”-black holes.”
As per Wikipedia’s entry for gravitational singularity (black hole): “A gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity is a location where the quantities which are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system. It is also called a black hole.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity
Also, known as a point-mass.
A “point” in mathematics has no volume, as helpfully pointed out by Nereid. Rather, it is a abstract concept.
An equivalent to no volume is an infinitely small volume.
DrFlimmer states: “…electron remains a point, a physical point…”
No, this is an oxymoron. A mathematical point is not a physical object with location.
Zero-dimentional and no volume by definition is no a physical object.
DrFlimmer, that is one of the secret fatal contradictions of mathematics. The principle claim of mathematics is that it define terms and they remain consistent, but actuality the terms are not defined and are contradictory.
Sadly for you and other young aspiring mathematicians/astronomers, your teachers don’t tell you this (if they did, they would be invalidating their whole world-view, so why would they), but just because they fail to tell you the reality doesn’t mean these fallacies don’t exist.
(Much as your teachers failed to tell you about electromagnetism in space, and even when you asked them directly as a result of our initial discussion, they failed to tell you. Only upon being embarrassed by me, did you finally acknowledge electromagnetism’s presence in space. Your teachers have let you down.)
DrFlimmer states: “We quantify that mass in most cases – the SMBH in the galactic center is about 10^6 solar masses.”
This is a conjured figure with no observation & measurement to support it.
I provided a series of telescopic photos of Sagittarius A, the galactic center of the Milky Way, in various electromegnetic wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.
None of them are consistent with a hypothesized structure of a “black hole”, nor with the artist’s renderings of a supposed “black hole”.
Nereid’s response was to say the “black hole” wouldn’t even be the size of a “pixel” in the photos.
The conjured size of the supposed “black hole” is based on the supposition that only gravity determines galaxy dynamics. The size, 10^6 solar masses, is an amount that mathematicians surmise is needed to “hold the galaxy together” .
It is not determined by any observation & measurement.
Indeed, a “black hole” has never been observed, nor an event horizon, as Nereids response obliquely acknowledges.
@ DrFlimmer:
I thought you might like to see the photos I was referring to above of Sagittarius A and each photo can be clicked on and enlarged.
http://images.nrao.edu/Galactic_Sources/Galactic_Center
DrFlimmer, et al.:
Check out the link Nereid provided previously in this thread regarding AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus). AGN is the appropriate term for the galactic center of galaxies.
As you know (or should by now) Plasma Cosmology hypothesizes that a electromagnetic plasmoid inhabits the centers of galaxies. As opposed to the “black hole” hypothesis.
Yes, there is a viable alternative hypothesis.
It seems to me that the neutral term Active Galactic Nucleus is the best term to use at the present date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_galactic_nuclei
Without prejudging what an AGN is or its processes, one can investigate the region to make observations & measurements and then record this set of data and then engage in analysis.
It seems that premature interpretation, or at least ultimate conclusions have been engaged in based on erroneous a priori assumptions.
Now, is the time to put those assumptions in abeyance, so that unbiased observation & measurement can be made.
Active Galactic Nucleus is the proper term for the centers of galaxies.
Anaconda, you do realise that SgrA and SgrA* (note the symbol ‘*’) are different objects, don’t you?
(I added bold)
Perhaps you meant ‘image(s)’?
Do you use the term ‘photo’ and ‘image’ interchangeably? If not, then how do you distinguish between them?
How far from us is SgrA*, Anaconda (or, if you prefer, what is the distance from here to SgrA*)? How is this distance estimated? How robust do you think the estimate is?
At that distance, 1′ (one arc-minute) on the sky corresponds to what distance (in metres, astronomical units, or parsecs)?
At the estimated distance of SgrA*, what would the size (on the sky) of the event horizon of a 1 million sol black hole be (assuming such a thing could exist, and assuming its event horizon would be reasonably accurately characterised by GR)?
What is the scale of each of those ‘photos’? Specifically, what angle does each pixel subtend?
If you have difficulty with any of these questions, please ask; I would be only too happy to help (as, no doubt, would several other regulars).
Active Galactic Nucleus
The abstract, below, is the same abstract as Nereid previously linked to:
“Influence of AGN jets on the magnetised ICM”
http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3345
Readers will note no reference is made to so-called “black holes”. The abstract is strictly based on observation & measurement, this is the proper procedure for analysis & interpretation for galactic centers.
@ND: you might consider re-posting your comment (the one awaiting moderation). If it contains more than one link, then re-post with just one link (and post the other links in separate, subsequent, comments); if it contains one link, re-post without the link and indicate what the URL is in some other way (as well as putting it in a separate, subsequent, comment).
I fear that your comment may be awaiting moderation for a long time …
Just in case you missed this comment of mine, Anaconda …
@ Nereid:
I already answered your question and you didn’t respond:
It hasn’t. It predicts particles where none has been found: Electric fields and magnetic fields. But I’ll say this, my criticism was that it was taken too far, not that the whole idea was wrong, perhaps I was to stringent in an earlier comment and did convey the impression that the whole approach is wrong.
My criticism was directed at the definition QED gives for the electron and perhaps the abstract construct further the mathematics, but it doesn’t explain the reality — that is physics.
Nereid, you never did have an answer for my criticisms, namely, zero dimensional and no volume are non-sensical.
Where is the AGN in the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy? Where is the AGN in Holmberg IX? Where is the AGN in the Small Magellanic Cloud? Where is the AGN in NGC 6822.. Not all galaxies have a well-defined nucleus, much less an active nucleus. Certainly galaxies have a gravitationally defined center, but it is a mistake to state ‘AGN is the proper term for the centers of galaxies’. Once again, idiosyncratic use of a term (and an incorrect use at that) only confuses the point you are trying to make and just shows that you also have problems using standard terminology to state your propositions.
Nereid, I see Anaconda has resorted to a familiar ploy regarding one of the abstracts you have provided a link to. As per his usual tactic, he’ll only read the abstract you have linked to and ignore the paper entirely! He has done this with a link to an abstract I have previously provided. My guess is that his limited math skills preclude any reading of the referenced paper at all, just the abstract. I’ve now started linking to the paper directly to avoid any confusion, but those most likely go unread (or are certainly incomprehensible to him).
Anaconda, you answered the first question, and I followed your response with a second question; the two are not the same.
Let me try again.
You can regard QED as just a bunch of equations whose symbols have technical definitions. By doing calculations – in principle little different from addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, albeit far more extensive – you can work out the value of something called ‘g’.
That’s the theory; it’s just equations and numbers.
It’s completely objective and unbiased; anyone can, in principle, repeat the calculations and discover what the value of ‘g’ is.
The experiment: you can treat this like a cooking recipe, in that there are a bunch of ingredients, a set of steps to be followed (carefully, in sequence), and results obtained.
It’s completely objective and unbiased; anyone can, in principle, repeat the experiment and get a result … and the result everyone gets will be the same (within the appropriately estimated uncertainties).
Notice one very important thing about the above: there is no mention of particles, reality, fields, electrons, etc!
That’s right, you read me correctly; the equations are just equations, and the experiment is just a set of instructions.
Here comes something awesome, wondrous, and breath-taking: the value you calculated using the equations etc is the same as the result from the experiment!
And that’s just the start; using the same equations you can calculate hundreds and hundreds of other values. And you can do thousands and thousands of other experiments, and will find the values worked out from the equations match the results from the experiments!!
Now I guess you may not believe me, and given all that you’ve written (at least that which I’ve read), I sincerely hope you wouldn’t.
Fine.
You can check everything I wrote on your own …
If you choose to do so, I’ll be patient and wait until you’ve finished, and then re-ask my question (“what do you think is the reason why QED theory and experiment match so extraordinarily well?”); otherwise, I do hope you’ll have another go at answering it.
@other readers: please jump in if you think my few paragraphs is a summary too far.
Anaconda, the answer to your criticisms (below) is as follows: “dimension” (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, …) is a technical concept in mathematics. It has wide applicability and very considerable explanatory power; that makes it extremely ‘sensical’.
Some time ago I tentatively concluded that a large part of the reason why you and I keep talking past each other is a very different view of the relationship between science and ‘reality’; this difference is even deeper than our differences of views on the nature of science (IMHO).
In the comments to a different UT story, I proposed a path that might get us to a common basis of understanding, on which to build, to perhaps start engaging in a meaningful discussion. That UT story comment section is now closed, and we didn’t get to even the end of point 1)!
If you’re interested, we can resume; if not, well, OK, just say so.
Well, since it seems that I face the same problem as ND, I’ll repost my previous one. Just in case and in order not to get to far away with the topic….
@ Anaconda
Check out this link:
nature.com/nature/journal/v419/n6908/fig_tab/nature01121_ft.html
Especially graphics 2 and 3 are really interesting! Click on “Full size figure and legend” to read what they are about!
In short: The star S2 needs for an orbit that is bigger than Pluto’s around the sun only about 15 years. Orbits of other stars also indicate that there is a mass in the center that is about 10^6 solar masses, pressed into a volume of a few AU – and is invisible (especially in the infrared, meaning it gives up no heat which is rather unusual if it were a sphere of plasma).
Yes, density, e.g. The density becomes infinite, indeed. But charge density of an electron is the same example. As I said, in every experiment that particle physicist conducted, an electron behaves as if it were a point. You just quoted me wrong – I gave a specific number down to which order of magnitude this holds. This means that an electron is smaller than 10^-18m. That is all I said – although you understood me wrong (or wanted to…).
The following gif has been made out of infrared observations of the galactic center:
wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/679/696181/galactic_center_movie2002.gif
The following is my comment awaiting moderation:
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Nowhere in the wiki page for black holes does it mention infinite matter. Neither do the following two pages:
cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html
imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/black_holes.html
Where did you get your definition of black hole?
Do you mean infinite density?
—END———————-
Once again, I would encourage interested readers (Anaconda included) to read the 2008 paper by Mark Reid entitled ‘ Is There A Supermassive Black Hole At The Center Of The Milky Galaxy?’. The paper can be found here: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.2624v1.pdf . This paper recounts the many paths taken by astronomers that have led them to the conclusion that a SMBH with an event horizon of between 1 AU and 0.1 AU (93 million-9.3 million miles) in diameter resides in the center of our galaxy with a mass 4 million times that of the sun! Don’t take my word for it, read the paper I linked to fully and check all the current references supporting this claim (this is an overview paper, after all). And to clear up another misunderstanding, the gravity of a SMBH does not in any way hold a galaxy together! Can you cite a paper where this is explicitly stated? SMBHs may alter the environment a galaxy forms in or even create huge radio bubbles in galaxy clusters, but in no way does a SMBH ‘hold together’ a galaxy in which it happens to reside. I’m also still waiting for a response to your assertion that an ‘Active Galactic Nucleus’ is the ‘proper’ term for the center of galaxies. Seeing that you did not qualify that statement, I take it that ALL known galaxies have an AGN in their nuclei. Might you want to rethink that proposition? @Nereid, your efforts and explanations of various phenomena and expositions on how science works are thought provoking and informative (at least to most readers) and are highly appreciated. I’ve stated before that I usually can see certain astronomical issues in a new light by reading your responses to Anaconda and solrey, so keep up the good work 🙂
In the paper I linked to above, see page 9, Figure 6 for a closeup look at star S2 and its’ 15.8 year elliptical orbit around Sag A* (as referenced by Dr. Flimmer). What do you propose S2 is orbiting? Possibly a 4 million solar mass ‘plasmoid’ at most 93 million miles across? There is also some evidence of QPOs observed in high energy EM radiation, implying a rapidly spinning ‘object’. How does plasma cosmology explain all these observations of Sag A* ?
@ Jon Hanford
Thanks a lot for that paper!!! It is really interesting and provides even more details than I knew. I consider using it as a reference in my master’s thesis next year 😉
I guess Anaconda will come up again with “his” plasmoid. I just want to say that this plasmoid should be quite warm (for being a ball of plasma). Hence it should be quite visible in the infrared. Or if it’s much hotter than the sun it should be visible in the UV/X-ray band. But, as the paper clearly states, in all three bands the object is dark. I think this rules out any form of a plasma ball…..
There are some misconcpetions on the nature of black holes by Anaconda. The singularity in a Schwarschild black hole is not a point, but rather a three dimensional region where the Weyl curvature diverges.
From the perspective of an exterior observer nothing is observed to apss into a black hole. The time you observe on a clock at some radius R near a black hole is
T = 1/sqrt(1 – 2GM/rc^2)t,
Which means, that a clock near the horizon is observed to mark time very slowly. A more complete calculation for how a clock marks time as it freely falls into a black holes is given by
T = t – ( 2GM/c^3)(r – 2GM/rc^2),
as the radius approaches 2GM/rc^2. You never observe the clock actually reach the horizon. The slowing down of clocks also means that stuff approaching the horizon is redshifted completely as it approaches the horizon.
So the singular region inside the black hole is sealed off from where observers to proper physics. The singularity is only apparent to an observer who enters the interior. Yet that observer can’t send a signal to the outside world to report back.
The idea that some huge plasma can play the role attributed to black holes is similar to the hyperstar idea back in the 1960s. This has been eliminiated. The putative object could not be shown to be stable. Further, by observing the motion of stars near the central BH in the Wilky Way galaxy it is clear this is more compact and is not luminous.
Lawrence B. Crowell
My expression for the time of infall should read
T = t – ( 2GM/c^3)ln(r – 2GM/rc^2),
where there is a natural log “ln.” I think my fingers hit the delete key when I edited it.
To Nereid, et al.:
@ Hanford: Okay, not all galaxies have a defined Active Galactic Nucleus, I’ll take your point, and galaxies do have gravity, but those galaxies that don’t have an Active Galactic Nucleus do have an axis of spin rotation which may or may not be the “center of gravity” (spin axis and gravity center are usually the same).
I’m sorry, but I don’t pay for the subscription for papers, although, even though you complain, I don’t see you placing any quotes.
(Where is your direct link to the paper?)
It’s obvious enough, AGN (where appropriate) is more neutral term.
But this is typical of your approach: Form over substance. If I was inartful or awkward, I’ll accept the correction, but my point was easy enough to see: AGN is a more neutral term than “black hole” and allows for an approach more about observation & measurement without preconceived ideas, rather than trying to get the observations to fit the theory.
Trying to get the observations to “fit the theory” has been a major stumbling block (in my opinion) effecting astronomy, which has retarded a better understanding of the dynamics of the Universe.
@ ND:
ND states: “Nowhere in the wiki page for black holes does it mention infinite matter.”
Infinite density implies imfinite matter. You can’t get infinite density without infinite matter.
But astronomers have already admitted that the abstract mathematical construct of a “black hole” doesn’t exist. Basically what they are saying it that, “the math isn’t right, but ‘whatever’ the maths, there are physical “black holes” that trap light.
The problem is that once you acknowledge the math is simply a placeholder for “we don’t know the specifics, but we know it exists”, then it fails because the ONLY reason one can believe a “black hole” can exist is because the “math says so”.
No “black hole” or “event horizon” has ever been observed & measured.
You can’t junk the theoretical abstract mathematical reasoning and then reasonable go on to say, but we know it exists.
But that is exactly what some researchers have done.
From the post:
“The violence of the rapid expansion following the beginning of the Universe could have squeezed concentrations of matter to form miniscule black holes, so small they can’t even be seen in a regular microscope. But what if these mini black holes were everywhere, and in fact, what if they make up the fabric of the universe? ”
i’m sorry, but this is junk science, yet, here, we had some comments seemingly lapping it up.
And my basic point of criticism is still the same: Infinity is no constraint at all and therefore allows these kind of wild aaumptions.
And the fact that Nereid can’t bring herself to criticize the paper reveals her intent: Blanket defense of whatever wild hair comes out of the “big bang”, “black hole” complex.
Let me be clear, the “big bang”, “black hole” complex, is the same as military-industrial complex in terms of organizational desire at self-preservation.
That was absolutly clear. Give him some evidence and he ignores it and turns back to somewhere else.
In this case I quote myself from the beginning:
I think, Nereid will agree that this is an idea with some reason behind it, but nothing more.
But, Anaconda, you can still give us some thoughts about Jon Hanford’s and my links.
The relatively flat spiral galaxy rotation curves are due to the galaxy acting as a massive homopolar motor. Closer to the core, the magnetic fields become more complex, as opposed to the more orderly spiral arms, so orbits of stars around the core will be more eccentric than out in the disc.
Interesting that there will soon be sub-millimeter imaging via this recently networked radio telescope array, allowing for more detail of the core.
One of the things I expect them to find is a corresponding spiral structure, similar to that on the east shell, where the current from the other spiral arms is concentrated onto the outer sheath of the ‘plasmasphere’ around the central plasmoid. I believe that has been detected/hinted at even in the current centimeter range images.
There will likely be a series of stacked, filamentary toroids, something like 7 or 9 along the north axis with fewer, maybe 2, 3, or 5 along the south axis, decreasing in diameter towards middle, although probably with a larger toroidal belt around the center as well. Some of those stacked toroidal structures can even be seen in the current images. The new images should reveal more of them.
The central plasmoid should be oblong, like a football, which should also be the only area of strong thermal radiation, while the surrounding area will be mostly non-thermal radiation, with isolated areas of thermal activity. The surface could even be reminiscent of a very active sun, with abundant flare and CME activity.
Perfect word salad from Solrey here. I am not a galaxy structure person. There is a pretty active community in this astrophysics. The process is largely as I undersand about large scale hydrodynamics in gravity to model density waves.
Whether a galaxy has an active nucleus is determined by how much matter is interacting with the central black hole. Our galaxy is in a quiet phase right now. Yet there are indications of nebula approaching the center which could flair it up again.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Anaconda: “You can’t get infinite density without infinite matter.”
You forgot about volume duder. Here’s something from the wikipedia page on Infinity for your consumption:
“However, there are some theoretical circumstances where the end result is infinity. One example is the singularity in the description of black holes. Some solutions of the equations of the general theory of relativity allow for finite mass distributions of zero size, and thus infinite density. This is an example of what is called a mathematical singularity, or a point where a physical theory breaks down. This does not necessarily mean that physical infinities exist; it may mean simply that the theory is incapable of describing the situation properly. Two other examples occur in inverse-square force laws of the gravitational force equation of Newtonian Gravity and Coulomb’s Law of electrostatics. At r=0 these equations evaluate to infinities.”
You made up the infinite matter in a blind effort to discredit the idea black holes. Reminds me of the time you claimed that according to the 3-body, you can’t have stable orbits like we see in the solar system (and tried to wedge in electromagnetism as a stabilizing force). Again, who are you trying to fool? You’re making up your own stuff to save your ideas. This has been your form over substance, to use your own words.
Here’s another choice quote from the wiki page on Black Hole:
“At the center of a black hole lies the singularity, where matter is crushed to infinite density, the pull of gravity is infinitely strong, and spacetime has infinite curvature.[39] This means that a black hole’s mass becomes entirely compressed into a region with zero volume.[40] This zero-volume, infinitely dense region at the center of a black hole is called a gravitational singularity.”
Black holes are referred to with finite mass, usually in units of solar mass.
EXCELLENT SCIENCE!
The late Donald Coyne and D. C. Cheng are on the right track, but severely handicapped by failure of the scientific community to pay attention to precise measurements of variations in:
a.) Abundances of isotopes and elements in the solar system, and
b.) Rest masses of the 3,000 different types of atoms that make up the entire visible universe.
Please contact me, Dr. Cheng, if you read this message. One of my former students is also at the Almaden Research Center.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://myprofile.cos.com/manuelo09
They are handicapped by the
@ solrey
Sorry. But if there is such a “strong” thermal source we should’ve detect it by now. And the only strong source that we detect from the center is in the Radio-part of the spectrum. No infrared, no x-ray. I think this is not what one should expect, if your idea would be true. Meaning: No, there is no plasma ball in the center of the Milky Way.
“No observational evidence of mini-black holes exists” Someone has not been paying attention – there are scientist at the RHIC that believe they have created some, with a very short lifespan (sub-femtosecond) but still real.
I wanna hear what a loop quantum gravity expert makes of this!
The RHIC found amplitudes associated with quark-gluons that are similar to what is expected of so called soft black holes. All this really means is that high energy condensates have properties expected in quantum black holes. However, since the energy involved is 10^{-18}E_{planck} this is not a full fledged black hole really.
While this has signatures expected of so called “black branes,” this does not rule out the loop q-gravity stuff. To be honest I think loop q-gravity and string theory may be just different perspectives on the same physics.
drflimmer,
I said:
“The central plasmoid should be oblong, like a football, which should also be the only area of strong thermal radiation, while the surrounding area will be mostly non-thermal radiation, with isolated areas of thermal activity. The surface could even be reminiscent of a very active sun, with abundant flare and CME activity.”
I’m saying that the thermal signature will be a narrowly focused source embedded within the surrounding non-thermal region, with probable evidence of ‘flares’. Previous data pretty much confirms this.
From http://www.springerlink.com/content/p24374339168j239/
“We present the first NACO thermal infrared observations of the Galactic Center. L’-band imaging has been performed during NACO Science Verification nights in 2002. During these observations, the separation between S2, the closest star to Sgr A*, and the black hole was too small to directly see a counterpart of the latter. However we have detected a thermal infrared excess that could be its signature. In addition, the Northern Arm, a gaseous structure revealed with unprecedented details, is found to be made of intersecting and nested arclets, which doesn’t match with the previous interpretations of a stream of matter orbiting around the central black hole. The 2003 observations in the L’- and M’-bands have revealed an unambiguous emission from Sgr A*. The discovery of very red sources aligned with this counterpart may be the signature of a jet coming from the black hole.”
‘Thermal infrared excess that could be it’s signature.’
As I was saying.
“Intersecting and nested arclets, which doesn’t match with the previous interpretations of a stream of matter orbiting around the central black hole.”
NONE of the observations of the Galactic Center have met predictions of black holes, nothing new in this particular statement.
Although, nested arclets would describe the electrical interaction between stacked toroids.
From Max Planck Institute:
“Since the first near-infrared high-resolution observations of the galactic centre in the beginning of the 1990s, the GC was regularly monitored. However, in spite of all efforts, no unambiguous NIR counterpart of SgrA* could be detected up to 2003. On the 9th of May, during routine observations of the GC star cluster at 1.7 microns with NAOS/CONICA at the VLT, we witnessed a powerful flare at the location of the black hole. Within a few minutes, the flux of a faint source increased by a factor of 5-6 and fainted again after about 30 min. The flare was found to have happened within a few milli-arcseconds of the position of Sgr A*. The short rise-and-decay times told us that the source of the flare was located within less than 10 Schwarzschild radii of the black hole.”
I said:
“The surface could even be reminiscent of a very active sun, with abundant flare and CME activity.”
That includes any surrounding double layers that would exist around the central plasmoid. Rapid rise and decay would indicate electrical arc discharge.
Scoff all you want. My predictions will be more accurate than the, already previously many times over falsified, black hole hypothesis, of this I am confident
I am soooooohohnoho looking forward to being able to say “I told ya so.” 😉
This one’s for solrey, and his word salad (Lawrence B. Crowell’s description is very apt).
Let’s start with a quick refresher on “flat spiral galaxy rotation curves”.
If you plot the estimated speed of luminous matter in a spiral galaxy wrt the nucleus of that galaxy, as a function of distance from the nucleus, you often find that the curve is approximately ‘flat’ past a certain radius (‘flat’ in the sense that the luminous matter at these distances has approx the same speed, typically a few hundred km/s). Further, the range of speeds at a given radius is quite modest; among other things this strongly suggests that the luminous matter is in approximately circular orbits around the nucleus.
The curves for different kinds of luminous matter – stars, neutral ISM (interstellar medium) gas, hot ISM plasma – are the same.
Read that again, and let it sink in … it’s important because it points to one reason why solrey clearly was not thinking when he wrote the following (earlier; I added some bold):
I’m feeling generous today, so solrey, would you like to take some time to reflect, and get back to this thread with an amendment, or clarification?
HINT: calculate the force that must be acting on the luminous matter, for it to be in an approximately circular orbit; write down an equation giving the force on a test particle at distance r from the nucleus, assuming the galaxy is “a massive homopolar motor”; then derive the consistent physical conditions under which each of the three classes of luminous matter will experience the same force.
solrey, what is the mass of this “central plasmoid” that you think is SgrA*?
What is the approximate temperature of the “strong thermal radiation”?
How did/do you estimate that temperature?
What is the SED (spectral energy distribution) of the “non-thermal radiation”?
What is the principal mechanism that causes it (e.g. synchrotron radiation due to electrons)?
solrey, you have not presented any predictions yet.
When you have numbers – such as those which answer my questions – you will have started to make a prediction; when you can show that all these numbers are internally consistent, then you will have a prediction.
I, for one, am looking forward to reading your predictions.
solrey,
you are missing the most important point:
A plasmoid, made of hot plasma, will ALWAYS radiate away a thermal spectrum. I repeat: ALWAYS. That means that you should detect a steady flux of thermal photons from the GC. But that is not the case, hence there is no steady source, resulting in no plasmoid being in the center.
A flare can happen, accretion is a good process I guess. Probably it didn’t match quite the prediction, but still: a flare is no proof of a plasmoid (and also not of a black hole, as I may add).
And I think the steady-flux argument is the one that is against your “prediction” (although I agree with Nereid: Saying “this and that could happen” is definitly not a strict scientific prediction; calculations are! It would be really interesting to see a few numbers about your prediction, indeed!).
Solrey, how can you reconcile the fact that we can see several giant and supergiant stars orbiting a nearly invisible object at the same distance that weighs 4 million solar masses. From the Reid paper that I linked to earlier, pg 18 Sec. 6 states ” While quiescent emission from Sgr A* has been difficult to detect outside of cm to sub-millimeter wavelengths, it does produce detectable “flares” of short duration at radio and infrared wavelengths and x-ray energies. This flaring is thought to be associated with material occasionally spiraling inward….. Of particular interest is the hint of a quasi-periodic flaring at infrared wavelengths, which could arise during the final few orbits of material falling into a black hole.” A recent (2008) paper addressing newer observations of flaring of Sgr A* by VLT-NACO (with actual images of a NIR flare) can be found here: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0810/0810.0138v1.pdf . For some reason, the 17 authors of the 2 papers that were linked (one by you, one by me) all believe a black hole exists at the core of our galaxy and have made observations and reduced their data to back up their assertions. Yet you argue they (and Reid) are all in error, but give no references or mathematical equations that back up your assertions. Both Dr Flimmer, Nereid and ND bring up valid points about your “hypothesis” that go unanswered and Lawrence B Crowell reminds us this idea of yours resembles the already dismissed ‘hyperstar’ theory of decades past. I’d be curious to see a rigorous presentation of your ideas explicitly as they relate to Sgr A* (along the lines of what Nereid inquired about in her May 26 posts, i.e. calculations).
I’d advise Solrey to go to the website for the UCLA Galactic Center Group.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ghezgroup/gc/
There is a nice little video of the motion of stars around the 4.1 million solar mass BH in the center or the MIlky Way. A couple of these stars whip around this dark mass which indicates by Kepler’s 3rd law they come pretty close to this object. There is no EM radiation or signature of anything there.
There is one star which appears to come close here, but obviously it orbits on a plane with a significant angle of declination with respect to the effective projective plane in the video.
It is good for astrophysics that the galactic BH is quiet right now. Otherwise there would be an accretion disk there Solrey and other plasma cosmos people would cite as this “plasmoid.”
The BH in Sgr A* is far more massive, in the 100 million sol-mass range as I understand. There is one hell of an accretion disk around that black hole. The rotational energy of the BH is wrapping up magnetic field lines and acting as a generator for the jets.
Lawrence B. Crowell
I think you mean CygA
That UCLA page is awesome! The time-lapse animations are great. I like animations 🙂
The first animation looks like a gravity sim screensaver found on Linux distros.
Please, let’s be clear all references to the Active Galactic Nucleus in the Milky Way are “word salads”.
The “singularity” description is a mathematical place holder. Nobody, serious, thinks that is an accurate description of reality.
That has been exposed as an abstract mathematical construct which may or may not have some approximate relation to what is there at the galactic center.
Twice, now, Nereid has had an opportunity to disagree, but she doesn’t because she knows…it’s a fiction.
Nothing more than a reification.
So, since all descriptions are “word salads” it really doesn’t advance anything to call one description or another “word sald”.
But what is DANGEROUS is the continued promotion that so-called “black holes” actually do have a quantified foundation — they don’t — you can’t quantify “infinity”.
Anybody, who says differently, and this includes you, Nereid, are being intellectually dishonest.
That is why Salacious B. Crumb was willing to unendingly attack me personally because he also knew this reality, and knew that I knew it.
Solrey’s predictions are as good as anybody’s because nobody has a handle on the actual quantification of processes around the Milky Way’s galactic center.
(Oh, I acknowledge there are some quantifications of the Milky Way’s galactic center, but mostly regarding sizes and distances of various aspects of morphology [shapes], not the energy quotients those shapes represent or an explanation of what energy source animates those shapes.)
I say the above putting aside for the moment my own convictions regarding solrey’s analysis and prediction about plasmoids.
As long as “modern” astronomy ignores the physical necessity that electric currents underlie all magnetic fields, its professions of quantification will be false.
As long as “modern” astronomy demonstrates its confusion regarding a conceptual aid, ‘magnetic field lines’ and spouts off about “magnetic reconnection” when the reality that magnetic fields are just that, a continuum of force, that exists because of the supporting electric currents, “modern” astronomy has no claim on rigorous quantification.
So, word salads? No problem — everybody uses “word salads”, it’s how humans convey meaning and explanation.
Some are more honest then others about what they are doing.
Whether solrey is right in every detail, that is the question observation & measurement are supposed to find out.
I’ll say this, solrey is more honest about his word salad than the “black hole” proponents are about their “word salad”.
And frankly, a Engish language explanation has more meaning and connection to reality and conveys that meaning and explanation to the reader than a series of abstract mathematical equations that are dishonest placeholders, particularly when the “word salad” describes and explains physical structures that actually have a scientific basis to exist as opposed to mathematical “scribbles” that its proponents, when pressed admit is nothing but a placeholder.
“One can not believe in singularities…”
“I doubt that the astrophysicists in general believe in the reality of the singularity.” — Dr. Stefan Gillessen, Max – Planck – Institute for Extraterrestial Physics, Garching, Germany.
Singularities don’t exist.
So called “modern” astronomers engage in dangerous and dishonest double-talk when they claim their ideas of “black holes” are rooted in rigorous quantification.
In this case, whoever’s “word salad” which best reflects physical processes at the galactic center will carry the day.
sorey’s outline of a electromagnetic plasmoid at this point is “light years” ahead of references to a “black BOX” with unknown powers to suck in even light.
The “black hole” concept is the biggest farce ever concocted by “modern” astronomy…oops…the “big bang” is because it uses all the same meaningless mathematical concepts, but not just for one location(s) in space, but the whole damn Universe.
“Something out of nothing”
Sorry, Science doesn’t do miracles.
The crisis in Cosmology runs unabated.
I’ve said this before, Anaconda, several times, and I’ll say it again: we have no reliable basis for a meaningful discussion.
Why?
Because (choose one, or any combo; not intended to be a complete list):
* you do not understand the mathematics used in contemporary physics
* you do not understand the mathematics used in classical physics
* you have a confused and very rudimentary grasp of the empirical aspects of astronomy
* there is a huge difference between your views on the relationship between science and ‘reality’ and those of most (almost all?) others who comment here
* you use key words in highly idiosyncratic ways, without defining them.
So why not take the time and trouble to find a mutually acceptable basis, from which to start having a meaningful conversation?
In the meantime, how about we do a little exercise?
For the sake of showing us that you understand the physics embodied in Maxwell’s equations, suppose we start with this:
-> a region of space which is pervaded by a magnetic field
-> the physical size of this region is of the order of ~hundreds of pc x ~hundreds of pc x dozens of pc
-> the region contains a partially ionised gas, in thermal equilibrium
-> the elemental composition, by mass, is 90% H, 4% He, 1% Fe
-> overall, the region is close to electrical neutrality
-> the magnetic field has a strength of ~10 microgauss (~1 nanotesla)
-> the average density is ~5 electrons/cc.
What is the magnitude of any electric currents flowing through, or in, this region?
If you need more inputs to calculate, or estimate, the answer(s), what further inputs do you need?
How, in principle, do you use Maxwell’s equations to go about working out answers to the above questions?
FYI, the above is an approximate description of one phase of the interstellar medium (ISM); the values of things such as density and magnetic field strength come from extensive and painstaking “measurement and observation”, leading to “quantification”. And who do you think undertook all that work and quantification (no prize for getting the answer right)?
LOL!
Anaconda, I could repeat some words about quantum mechanics, but we had that several times before. You can just look it up somewhere else.
You should try to find an agreement with yourself. Once you said: Mathematics are the language of nature, then it’s just a tool and finally it is nothing but a placeholde. So, what is it, once and for all?
I think we have made some good points why solrey’s idea is, indeed, invalid. And what do you mean with those quantifications? Observations (there are many!), equations (there are many as well!)?
Whether solrey is right in every detail, that is the question observation & measurement are supposed to find out.
There is a hugh “wrong” in the details….
So, what do you think?
The absence of a steady flux of infrared or X-ray photons rules out any form of hot matter (=plasma). The center is dark in these regions. But there is a steady thing in the center – the radio point hasn’t moved in the last years….
So what could it be? Something that is “there”, that does not radiate in the infrared or X-rays and that is in the same spot, although some stars are swirling around very close-by.
What specific “observation & measurement” would be required to find out the extent to which solrey’s idea about SgrA* being a “plasmoid” is right (in your view, Anaconda)?
Suppose that you, Anaconda, were given complete freedom to use any of the world’s leading astronomical facilities, or any combination of them, completely unrestricted, over a period of a year.
What – specifically – is the observational program you would undertake to find out what details of solrey’s idea are right?
If none of today’s facilities, in any combination, could realistically be used to get answers, what new facilities would do the trick?
Restrict yourself only to astronomical facilities, located within the solar system … and if computing power beyond that available with something like BOINC would be required, please say so, and specify what would be needed.
Anaconda, above you state “…..mathematical “scribbles” that its proponents, when pressed admit is nothing but a placeholder.” So mathematics is not a valid way to express an astronomical theory ? Seems to me, Birkeland used an awfully lot of equations in his papers on currents in space, and, oh, Alfven used a ton of dense mathematical equations in his work on MHD. And did’nt the NASA team of Themis scientists use an awfully lot of mathematics in their paper confirming ‘Birkeland currents’ ? And let’s not forget Peratt and other current PC proponents use a lot of mathematics in their papers. Taking your dim view of the value of mathematics in science, we immediately strip Alfven of his Nobel for obviously fraudulent work using nothing more than a placeholder. Ditto for Bikeland and the Themis team, all frauds, and they know it, because they used mathematical equations! And shame on Peratt, Arp, Hoyle & Narlikar for using math. How dare they! We need more ‘word salad’ salad here and less math 🙂 Btw: how many light years is Solrey ahead of us ? 10 ly or 100 ly? Do you even know that a light-year is a unit of distance?
I will try to say it again to those concerned about BH singularities. Astrophysics does not need to worry about the singularity of a black hole. The event horizon shields it from the outside, and quite literally for an inertial or asymptotic observer it really does not exist. Everything approaches the event horizon with a huge time dilation and redshift. The event horizon valences the interior form the outside utterly, at least in the classical situation. BH astrophysics is purely about the classical BH.
The singularity only becomes important for a highly accelerated frame close to the event horizon, for a quantum black hole, or for the observer who choses to enter the black hole. For a highly accelerated frame the Hawking radiation of the horizon assumes singularity-like behavior. An observer (here a fictional observer of sorts) very close to the horizon with a huge acceleration that keeps them stationary will observe a huge radiation flux and physics similar to that near the interior singularity. This leads to the quantum black hole. In this case the horizon and the singularity becomes quantum superposed with each other. The singularity is no longer a mathematical infinity, but rather an instanton of the quantum gravity field. This leads to a curious duality with the black hole, for the quantum black hole (a small black hole of atomic or subatomic size) exhibits physics similar to a large black holeas observed by an accelerated observer at a static point relative to the event horizon. There are all sorts of subtle issues with equivalence principle and universal frame bundles here! This duality also connects with the Susskind stretched horizon and holography. This duality connects to the duality noted by Wheeler, that there are two dual perspectives of a BH: That of the exterior observer and the observer who enters into the BH.
The concern over the singularity is a red herring, and lots of absurd statements have been made about it — such as it requires an infinite mass.
Lawrence B. Crowell
To quote IVAN3MAN,
*crickets*
Lawrence,
you said that the event horizon sheilds itself from the outside, and it technicaly doest exist. Yet all material to close gets pulled to non exisitance. How is this possible when the non existant BH is sheilded from the outside.
please understand this is not an attack