# Fictional



## Metryq (Dec 2, 2012)

Since black holes are alleged to be gravitational singularities (mathematical infinities), I've wondered how there can be a spectrum from microscopic black holes to "supermassive" black holes. Wouldn't all of them be the same? Oh, that's right, they don't exist.

*Black Holes, General Relativity and Newtonian Gravitation*
(Video runtime: 51 minutes.)



> The experts are always quick to conveniently brand anyone who questions the black hole as a crackpot. Unfortunately for the experts that does not alter the facts. The experts must also include Schwarzschild himself as a crank since his paper invalidates the black hole outright, as does Brillouin's, and Droste's. They must also label Einstein a crackpot, because Einstein always rejected the idea of the black hole, claiming in his research papers and other writings that it is not physical, and that singularities in the field nullify the theory of General Relativity.



—Stephen J. Crothers


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## Huttman (Dec 3, 2012)

So it seems that podcast is debunking the existence of black holes. But what, then, is at the center of galaxies acting as a gravity well immense enough to hold a galaxy together so effectively? Something must be there. I too always had difficulty wrapping my mind around 'different sizes' of black holes. It kind of freaked me out when they said they want to make micro singularities with the hadron collider. Um, aren't all black holes supposed to be microscopic? Could someone explain this to me? I can follow along as long as there is no math.


_(unrelated)_-is it just me, or does Stephen Crothers sound like the chap on the boat in _Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon_ who was bullying everyone? 
_
bully - (to bruce) what's your style?_
_bruce - you could say, it's the art of fighting without fighting._

Too obscure? Sorry, strange things pop in my head from time to time...I'm an artist, not a mathematician.


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## Interversus (Dec 3, 2012)

A singularity is a point rather than a dimension, and the space is infinitely curved with infinite gravity. You can stick as much or little mass in as you like to get your black hole "size" as long as you've got the infinitely curved space.

Keep questioning their existence though, there's 95% funkiness out there that's going to rock the universe when we figure out what it is, or isn't.

Observations are confirming their existence, or something explained best by black hole theory anyway. It's not fair to use 100 year old quotes though when things have moved on since.


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## Vertigo (Dec 4, 2012)

Yes, as I understand it the "size" is referring to the mass of the black hole not its physical dimensions.

On their existence. You don't have to go to the centre of galaxies to find them. The fact is stars have been detected orbiting around... well "nothing". The mass of that 'nothing' can be deduced from the behaviour of the bodies orbiting it. And I've yet to hear a better explanation for stellar bodies orbiting around nothing!

Black holes are predicted (by quantum physics) to emit radiation, though not from the black hole itself but rather from it's event horizon. However this is difficult to observe as it is inversely proportional to the mass. So the more massive the black hole the _less_ radiation is emitted, resulting in very little being emitted from the black holes believed to be at the centre of most (or all) galaxies.


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## TheTomG (Dec 5, 2012)

I believe the size refers to where the event horizon lies, as it is at this point that light can no longer escape. This means the more mass in the singularity, the farther out the event horizon will be, as the greater the force of gravity.

This would make more massive black holes (those that have swallowed more) larger. I'd also say, in my relatively uninformed knowledge, that the singularity is at the center, and matter or light inside the black hole has not necessarily fallen into the singularity yet, just that it cannot escape back past the event horizon. So there is still some sort of "regular space" there inside the boundary, with the singularity lying at the heart of it.

In other words, a black hole has a structure, layers if you will, of which the singularity itself is just one part.

I may be talking utter bollocks though


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## J Riff (Dec 6, 2012)

Collapsed matter = super gravity magnet, whatever that is.
If the atoms themselves are crushed...then do the electrons still ine up somehow. like in a magnet?  Probably they are proprietary, and only fit together one way. It would figure.
Or-*


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## Interversus (Dec 7, 2012)

J Riff said:


> Collapsed matter = super gravity magnet, whatever that is.
> If the atoms themselves are crushed...then do the electrons still ine up somehow. like in a magnet?  Probably they are proprietary, and only fit together one way. It would figure.
> Or-*



I'm not sure what a gravity magnet is, and if you had a good theory to unify gravity and magnetism then there will be a nobel prize coming your way 

I think the question on magnetic fields and black holes is an ongoing one with several theories and a few observations that still need sorting out.

I think you may be right with your query on how a singularity can form a magnetic field, and on a basic level it probably can't. There are observations however that indicate the presence of magnetic fields, but they are most probably due to stuff happening outside of the event horizon, or something odder like the field of the collapsed star being 'fossilized' around the black hole.


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## RJM Corbet (Dec 9, 2012)

Metryq said:


> ... black holes are alleged to be gravitational singularities (mathematical infinities) ...


 
I haven't had a chance to run the video yet, but perhaps black-hole singularities can be thought of as points beyond which it becomes impossible for mathematics to function as a tool? They are the limit, essentially, not of reality or of the universe, but of mathematics? Like the edge of the world was to flat-earth mariners in the past. What lies beyond? 

Some physicists may find that difficult to accept. I mean, Einstein wasn't that keen on quantum mechanics either, now was he?


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## Dave (Dec 9, 2012)

Metryq - in a number of threads now I have seen you try to debunk the conventional wisdom of modern Physics. I may be wrong, but seems to me that you are missing the point of the scientific method. The whole point of a theory is that it is there to be tested rigorously. It is meant to be modified and altered to fit new results. Then some new better theory comes along that wipes the floor with it and takes its place instead. We know that some theories are lacking in completeness. I am aware that theories of the Aether, Phlogiston, Spontaneous Generation and a Flat Earth were once held in just as high a regard as Black Holes, but unless you can come up with a better explanation for what is observed around 'Black Holes' I don't see the point you are making by calling them "fictional."


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## Harpo (Apr 3, 2013)

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/04/03/3728673.htm

"Astronomers have witnessed the rare event of a black hole waking up from a decades-long slumber to feed on a planet-sized object in a galaxy 47 million light years away.
The observation, made using the European Space Agency's Integral satellite project, is outlined today in a paper published in the _Astronomy and Astrophysics_ journal.
"The observation was completely unexpected, from a galaxy that has been quiet for at least 20-30 years," lead author Marek Nikolajuk of Poland's  University of Bialystok says.
It also comes as astronomers wait on a similar feeding event, albeit on a gas cloud, that is expected to soon happen at the black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way Galaxy.   
The observation revealed a black hole that had been slumbering for years chomping on a giant, low-mass object that had come too close."


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