Why Hawking is Wrong About Black Holes

[fayt]

A recent paper by Stephen Hawking has created quite a stir, even leading Nature News to declare there are no black holes. As I wrote in an earlier post, that isn’t quite what Hawking claimed.  But it is now clear that Hawking’s claim about black holes is wrong because the paradox he tries to address isn’t a paradox after all.

It all comes down to what is known as the firewall paradox for black holes.  The central feature of a black hole is its event horizon.  The event horizon of a black hole is basically the point of no return when approaching a black hole.  In Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the event horizon is where space and time are so warped by gravity that you can never escape.  Cross the event horizon and you are forever trapped.

This one-way nature of an event horizon has long been a challenge to understanding gravitational physics.  For example, a black hole event horizon would seem to violate the laws of thermodynamics.  One of the principles of thermodynamics is that nothing should have a temperature of absolute zero.  Even very cold things radiate a little heat, but if a black hole traps light then it doesn’t give off any heat.  So a black hole would have a temperature of zero, which shouldn’t be possible.

Then in 1974 Stephen Hawking demonstrated that black holes do radiate light due to quantum mechanics. In quantum theory there are limits to what can be known about an object.  For example, you cannot know an object’s exact energy.  Because of this uncertainty, the energy of a system can fluctuate spontaneously, so long as its average remains constant.  What Hawking demonstrated is that near the event horizon of a black hole pairs of particles can appear, where one particle becomes trapped within the event horizon (reducing the black holes mass slightly) while the other can escape as radiation (carrying away a bit of the black hole’s energy).

While Hawking radiation solved one problem with black holes, it created another problem known as the firewall paradox.  When quantum particles appear in pairs, they are entangled, meaning that they are connected in a quantum way.  If one particle is captured by the black hole, and the other escapes, then the entangled nature of the pair is broken.  In quantum mechanics, we would say that the particle pair appears in a pure state, and the event horizon would seem to break that state.



Last year it was shown that if Hawking radiation is in a pure state, then either it cannot radiate in the way required by thermodynamics, or it would create a firewall of high energy particles near the surface of the event horizon.  This is often called the firewall paradox because according to general relativity if you happen to be near the event horizon of a black hole you shouldn’t notice anything unusual.  The fundamental idea of general relativity (the principle of equivalence) requires that if you are freely falling toward near the event horizon there shouldn’t be a raging firewall of high energy particles. In his paper, Hawking proposed a solution to this paradox by proposing that black holes don’t have event horizons.  Instead they have apparent horizons that don’t require a firewall to obey thermodynamics.  Hence the declaration of “no more black holes” in the popular press.

But the firewall paradox only arises if Hawking radiation is in a pure state, and a paper last month by Sabine Hossenfelder shows that Hawking radiation is not in a pure state.  In her paper, Hossenfelder shows that instead of being due to a pair of entangled particles, Hawking radiation is due to two pairs of entangled particles.  One entangled pair gets trapped by the black hole, while the other entangled pair escapes.  The process is similar to Hawking’s original proposal, but the Hawking particles are not in a pure state.

So there’s no paradox.  Black holes can radiate in a way that agrees with thermodynamics, and the region near the event horizon doesn’t have a firewall, just as general relativity requires.  So Hawking’s proposal is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

What I’ve presented here is a very rough overview of the situation.  I’ve glossed over some of the more subtle aspects.  For a more detailed (and remarkably clear) overview check out Ethan Seigel’s post on his blog Starts With a Bang!  Also check out the post on Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog, Back Reaction, where she talks about the issue herself.


Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/108870/why-hawking-is-wrong-about-black-holes/#ixzz2tMJOWU7q

[charliehouse]

Correct as cited. The media was so focused that they forgot to read the paper itself. What hawking's paper is pertaining to is not the existence of black holes but rather the non-existence of event horizons and instead the existence of apparent horizons. Thanks for the article!

[bigbanggoo]

Ok tong article na to ah, napaka educational pero tama pa rin si hawking.

[fayt]

Ok tong article na to ah, napaka educational pero tama pa rin si hawking.

san po tama si hawking at kung paano? dito po ba sa article?

[Jonel]

How I wish I have the intellect to understand Physics the way Hawkin does even just 20% of it.

I am really interested in astro Physics and theories about the Origin of the universe however I just don't have the Math to fully appreciate what Mr.Hawkin has to say.

It seems that he is now postulating that there is no singularity where Matter is compressed to infinity and that Mater is just ejected?

[betlog]

mga bossings alternative view naman ito :
Hawking finally sees the light: Says black holes do not exist

Physicist Stephen Hawking has now reversed his stand on black holes.  He gives his reasons in a paper that he posted five days ago on the physics preprint internet archive at (http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5761).  He says that according to his new analysis “There would be no event horizons and no firewalls.  The absence of event horizons mean that there are no black holes – in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity.”  He says that the concept of a black hole should be “redefined as a metastable bound state of the gravitational field” which has a chaotic interior.  In other words, he now envisions that a supermassive Galactic core should be a collapsed region from which energy can escape through an “apparent horizon“.  An apparent horizon is described as a surface that traps light but which also varies its shape due to quantum fluctuations allowing the possibility for light to escape.

His new stand on black holes has caused quite a media frenzy since Hawking had been an early developer and long-time supporter of black hole theory dating back as far as 40 years.  Here are a few links to media stories:

Nature.com
Foxnews.com
news.com.au

    For many years I have argued against the black hole idea, which has been a very unpopular stance to take among physicists.  For example, as early as 1985 when I first published subquantum kinetics in the International Journal of General Systems (Special Issue on Systems Thinking in Physics), I wrote “Black holes would not exist in a subquantum kinetics cosmology” (LaViolette, 1985, p. 342).  I explain that this is because a black hole gravitational singularity is unable to form in subquantum kinetics.  Furthermore even a quasi singularity that Hawking calls a “bound state of the gravitational field” would be unable to form.  One reason is that the gravitational field of a subatomic particle does not rise to infinity at its center, but rounds off to a plateau at the particle center, thus preventing unrestrained gravitational collapse.  This predicted particle profile is apparent in simulations performed of subquantum kinetics’ Model G and this contour for the particle’s nuclear electric field has been confirmed through particle scattering experiments.  Thus as particles approach increasingly close to one another, their mutual gravitational attraction approaches zero instead of infinity.

Another reason singularities are unable to form is because a star continuously produces enormous amounts of genic energy (spontaneously generated nascent energy) which effectively opposes any gravitational collapse even when fusion reactions have died out.  Red dwarf stars (M < 0.45 Msolar) are 100% powered by genic energy; about 12% of the Sun’s radiation is of genic origin; and only a few tenths of a percent of the energy radiated by a 20 solar mass blue giant star is of genic origin.  But when fusion burning subsides and a blue giant begins to gravitationally collapse, the genic energy production equations predict that genic energy sky rockets and becomes the dominant stellar energy source.  The result is a very dense stellar core that I have termed a Mother star, which continually creates, radiates, and ejects both energy and matter.  Smaller Mother stars are objects astronomers call neutron stars, X-ray stars, and magnetars.  Mother stars that have grown far more massive over their billions of years of existence are what astronomers observe as supermassive Galactic cores.  Those interested to learn more about genic energy are referred to various papers (LaViolette, 1992 and LaViolette, 2005), the following webpage on the Pioneer effect, as well as the verification of Prediction No. 3.  For further discussion about the problems with the black hole idea view the following webpage: Five Reasons Why the Milky Way’s Core is Not a Black Hole.  For the most thorough treatment of the nonexistence of black holes and the reality of genic energy and matter creating Mother stars, read the book Subquantum Kinetics (4th edition).

Over the years I have continued to maintain my stand against black holes throughout the years and have bolstered this with observational evidence that counters the black hole idea.  So to hear that Hawking now admits, after many decades, that black holes should not exist is music to my ears.  But Hawking still has a long way to go to make the journey from the classical black hole concept to the Mother star concept of subquantum kinetics.   Hawking still believes that any energy radiated from a Galactic core, which he views as a metastable bound state of the gravitational field, would come entirely from the accretion of surrounding matter.  For one thing, he would have to relinquish this idea and embrace the subquantum kinetics idea of genic energy.  It is this energy that  supermassive Galactic cores radiate and which keeps in check their further collapse.  Genic energy unabashedly violates the First Law of Thermodynamics (the law of energy conservation) as conventionally construed.  Physicists who adopt the closed system positivist view that the only real existents are physically observable phenomena would find this idea intolerable.  However those adopting the wider perspective that the physical universe operates as an open system and is part of a much more expansive higher dimensional environment that remains inherently unobservable to us, then the genic energy concept becomes quite acceptable.  Ultimately, if physics (and society) is to progress, physics will need to move towards this latter view which not only comes closer to age old spiritual teachings but also opens up a golden age for humanity based on the commercialization of over-unity energy generation technologies and gravity defying propulsion devices; see the December 2013 news posting.

The subquantum kinetics Mother star idea does not deny the possibility that there is a radius within which light rays approaching tangent to the surface of the Mother star would become trapped in a closed orbit.  If we identify this radius with the classical concept of the Schwarzschild radius, such a light trapping horizon would likely lie in the Mother star’s interior in the case of the Milky Way’s galactic core.  For example, to my best estimation, the surface of the Sgr A* Mother star would lie a radius of about 22 solar radii from its center, whereas the ungravitationally lensed Schwarzschild radius for this supermassive body would be 19 solar radii, just below the surface of the Mother star.  But light rays traveling radially outward from the surface of Sgr A* or at an angle to the surface would radiate outward without a problem; although they would be gravitationally redshifted by about 45%.

Source : http://starburstfound.org/hawking-finally-sees-light-black-holes-exist/

[charliehouse]

^ Pure garbage... the author should abandon his career and focus on philosophy instead.