Black Hole Existence Has Yet to be Proven

DJW001
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Reread your posts. You've offered nothing.

You mean other than overwhelming evidence for the existence of something you claim, for no apparent reason, hasn't been proven to exist?

That little video of lights moving is overwhelming evidence of black holes?

Really?

It's evidence of lights swirling on a video clip, but you neglected to provide any real data that translates that swirl of lights.

I am not required to disprove anything. I have suggested that Black Holes have NOT been proven to exist. I have not suggested that Black Holes have been proven to NOT exist. You - on the other hand - have declared that they have been proven to exist, and that requires you to produce that proof. To my own understanding of what the OP suggests, someone has just been granted $19 million to provide proof that Black Holes exist.

The European Research Council has given 14 million euros ($19.3 million) to the creators of BlackHoleCam, a project that will use radio telescopes and supercomputers to try to prove the existence of what Luciano Rezzolla, a principal investigator for BlackHoleCam, calls "one of the most cherished astrophysical objects."

If they've been proven to exist already, then why is someone giving these guys $19 million to - as the article's author clearly states - "...prove the existence of what Luciano Rezzolla, a principal investigator for BlackHoleCam, calls "one of the most cherished astrophysical objects.""? Seems to me that the granting of that kind of money is only done when there is a need that has yet to be resolved, and the grant is made under the conditions that there is a likelihood that the recipient of the grant has the capacity to provide that resolution. If what you say is true, there's no need that exists, relative to the establishment of proof that Black Holes do exist as the principal structural impetus of galaxies that are similar to our own Milky Way.

The article does not state that the grant is for a photo shoot of the Milky Way's black hole. It specifically states that the BlackHoleCam project "...will use radio telescopes and supercomputers to try to prove the existence of..." black holes. Any other interpretation of what this article is stating is an inference that the article itself simply doesn't support.

As for "running away" from this discussion. I have a life off this board, and I spent some time with it after posting briefly this morning.

reply to post by Son of Will


Thank you. This is exactly what I was trying to point out with this thread. I do understand the difference between theories and facts. I have just been amazed at how few scientific and technology news articles bother to educate the public they serve on exactly this point.

The entire field of physics is in full civil war at the moment over this issue, and this will affect the reality view of many millions before it's resolved - if it's ever resolved. Meanwhile, I see press release after press release touting "breakthroughs" that are predicated on completely ludicrous hypotheses involving mulitverses, dozens of dimensions that will never be proven or experienced, and over 50 new hypothetical particles and antiparticles (c'mon...squarks? neutrinos? muons?) that have seasoned physicists throwing their clipboards across the room in disgust.

The fields of physics and cosmology are in deep trouble right now, and the insurgency within both communities is just starting to heat up.

Ericthedoubter
Black holes are theoretical until someone can walk up and give it a tap.The black hole theory is the best working model at the moment and will remain so unless someone can offer a better one.

STRONG EVIDENCE BUT NOT PROOF!

Thanks for the link. I wanted a nice, concise presentation of the theoretical relationship between galaxies and black holes. That one really fills the bill.

JadeStar
We long observed stellar mass black holes such as Cygnus X-1 (one of the the first to be identified).

Cygnus X-1 was the first X-ray source widely accepted to be a black hole candidate and it remains among the most studied astronomical objects in its class. It is now estimated to have a mass about 14.8 times the mass of the Sun and has been shown to be too compact to be any known kind of normal star or other likely object besides a black hole.

V404 Cygni is a binary star system consisting of a black hole with a mass of about 12±3 solar masses and a late G or early K companion star of mass slightly smaller than the Sun in the constellation of Cygnus. The two stars orbit each other every 6.5 d at fairly close range. Due to their close proximity the main sequence star would be distorted into egg shape by the black hole's gravity and lose mass to black hole.

We have also observed supermassive black holes at the heart of other galaxies.

Black holes are not a theoretical object like wormholes.

They are more like Brown Dwarfs because we have observational evidence.

What seems to have confused a lot of people (due to a very poorly worded media headline) is that the article says we've not imaged ANY black hole, when in reality what the researchers are trying to do is image the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy.

edit on 20-12-2013 by JadeStar because: (no reason given)

This is Cygnus X-1...



So, a high relative density of light that maintains a consistent "shape" as well as relative size and mass is assumed to be a black hole. I've never found a thorough argument that successfully defends the notion that these intense light centers are actually "holes" that literally trap everything - information, light, time, etc - within their black confines. All actual data suggests that they are light centers.

I'm not declaring that they aren't "holes" surrounded by light, but if all we can detect is the light....

Maybe I've just become completely jaded as a result of chasing down String Theory, M-Theory, and the impossibly convoluted Standard Model over the last few years. Now, all of this stuff shines with that same bullsh*t patina I've begun to see all to well.

NorEaster

Ericthedoubter
Black holes are theoretical until someone can walk up and give it a tap.The black hole theory is the best working model at the moment and will remain so unless someone can offer a better one.

STRONG EVIDENCE BUT NOT PROOF!

Thanks for the link. I wanted a nice, concise presentation of the theoretical relationship between galaxies and black holes. That one really fills the bill.

Now you've got me confused. Do you want a theoretical relationship, or do you want to walk up to one and give it a tap? I guess it really doesn't matter what you believe in the end.

DJW001

NorEaster

Ericthedoubter
Black holes are theoretical until someone can walk up and give it a tap.The black hole theory is the best working model at the moment and will remain so unless someone can offer a better one.

STRONG EVIDENCE BUT NOT PROOF!

Thanks for the link. I wanted a nice, concise presentation of the theoretical relationship between galaxies and black holes. That one really fills the bill.

Now you've got me confused. Do you want a theoretical relationship, or do you want to walk up to one and give it a tap? I guess it really doesn't matter what you believe in the end.

I just wanted the concise presentation.

reply to post by NorEaster

If they've been proven to exist already, then why is someone giving these guys $19 million to - as the article's author clearly states - "...prove the existence of what Luciano Rezzolla, a principal investigator for BlackHoleCam, calls "one of the most cherished astrophysical objects.""?

Because that is not what the grant is for. Instead of taking it third hand, perhaps the source article (cited in the article of the OP) would help. The purpose is not actually to prove the existence of black holes. It is to learn more about them and things that are intimately involved with them (like general relativity).

Actually, it could be seen as an attempt to falsify the theory. Now, that would be something, wouldn't it?

“The technology is now advanced enough that we can actually image black holes and check if they truly exist as predicted: If there is no event horizon, there are no black holes”.

www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de...

Ask ourselves this:
Are we as certain of black holes as we are that the earth revolves around the sun?

The way to establish universal certainty, imo, is to compare any problem to what is universally unequivocally accepted.

That way we can gauge the degree of what we really know about something.

Understand that a “theory” in science is certainly more tangible than yourr average theoretical assumption or conjecture but it still remains theoretical, therefore not completely understood and known

reply to post by DJW001

Dark matter is invoked to explain the "wrapping problem." If stars orbit the center of a galaxy with Keplerian velocities, why don't the spiral arms "wrap up?" How do they maintain their structure? Why is there evidence of large scale structures in intergalactic space? "Dark matter" is easier to accept than the mind blowing alternative: macroscopic probability waves.

tiny bit off topic... but, thank you for this tidbit. science does not have to be quite so esoteric as most scientists tend to project about their particular discipline.

and that right there went into my handy bag of 'simple and useful' explanations.

good debate, btw, for all participants.

DJW001
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Data indication is one thing. Accurate interpretation of data indication is something entirely different.

And no amount of data will suffice to persuade a prisoner of belief.

And that is a double edged sword.

Phage
reply to post by NorEaster

 

If they've been proven to exist already, then why is someone giving these guys $19 million to - as the article's author clearly states - "...prove the existence of what Luciano Rezzolla, a principal investigator for BlackHoleCam, calls "one of the most cherished astrophysical objects.""?

Because that is not what the grant is for. Instead of taking it third hand, perhaps the source article (cited in the article of the OP) would help. The purpose is not actually to prove the existence of black holes. It is to learn more about them and things that are intimately involved with them (like general relativity).

Actually, it could be seen as an attempt to falsify the theory. Now, that would be something, wouldn't it?

“The technology is now advanced enough that we can actually image black holes and check if they truly exist as predicted: If there is no event horizon, there are no black holes”.

www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de...

edit on 12/20/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Falsifying the theory equals proving that black holes either exist or don't exist as depicted.

This has been my point all along ... well, sort of my point. My actual point in this thread has been that the existence of black holes has never been proven (it's still a theoretical interpretation of what is a proven and quantifiable suite of phenomenal indications) even though entire hypotheses have emerged that are based on (meaning that they can only be seriously considered as plausible in connection with) the factual existence of black holes as they have been widely and repeatedly depicted.

The $19 million project has been launched to falsify (provide tangible proof of) the factual existence of black holes as the accurate interpretation of the data that's been gathered suggesting that "something" is affecting entire galactic structuring in a very specific and repeating manner. The blackboard math might be good enough for some, but blackboard math has proven itself to not be indicative of the dirty and asymmetrical nature of actual reality again and again. Hell, true symmetry is stasis - only achieved through system death. If these balanced blackboard formulas actually represented reality ... well ... the fact that anyone is laboring over those formulas at all is proof that they (those formulas) only represent the imaginations of the formulators that are laboring over them.

Lee Smolin has suggested that blackboard math-based physics is the effort to bring God back into the Theory-of-Everything pursuit. I don't know about that, but the realm of mathematics - clean and pure mathematics - is the same kind of perfected realm that theologians have been dreaming of for centuries. Only the names have been altered and the worship services moved into the theoretical physics labs. Physical reality is dirty and thoroughly contaminated with contextual precedent. Much too littered with incidental complexity for any math formula to ever achieve even the slightest approach to accurate representation of the system dynamics alone ... forget about any such equation presenting an accurate representation of the entire system as a whole.

Maybe they need to lay off the calculating and just start looking at what's right there in front of them as if it's intrinsic and connected to what they're trying to study. After all, it's all one system.

reply to post by NorEaster

That little video of lights moving is overwhelming evidence of black holes?

Really?

It's evidence of lights swirling on a video clip, but you neglected to provide any real data that translates that swirl of lights.

I'm sorry. I assumed that your years of research would have made you familiar with the work of A. M. Ghez and UCLA's Galactic Center Group. They have been doing precision astrometry of the galactic center using the Keck 10 meter telescopes on Mauna Kea for the past ten years or so. If you are genuinely interested, here is a link to their published (and peer reviewed) work:

www.astro.ucla.edu...

Now, if you wish to critique it from the scientific, rather than the merely philosophical point of view, feel free to raise questions about the precision of the instruments and the possibility of systematic error. If you cannot find any flaws from the methodological point of view, please present an hypothesis that would explain the observed phenomenon better than the obvious one. Many massive stars are orbiting a point so small as to be invisible. It is clearly not their mutual barycenter; it appears to be an invisible point much more massive than all of those stars put together. What do you think it could possibly be? Feel free to put random strings of words together if you must: Tesla scalar warp field, for example. That's easy. Creating mathematical models, which you seem to find contemptible, is difficult. Observing physical evidence that they are correct is extremely gratifying.

You claim that there is a civil war going on in Physics. Really? People rolling their eyes when someone makes a wild cosmic " prediction" based on String Theory is hardly the battle of Gettysburg.

DJW001
reply to post by NorEaster

 

That little video of lights moving is overwhelming evidence of black holes?

Really?

It's evidence of lights swirling on a video clip, but you neglected to provide any real data that translates that swirl of lights.

I'm sorry. I assumed that your years of research would have made you familiar with the work of A. M. Ghez and UCLA's Galactic Center Group. They have been doing precision astrometry of the galactic center using the Keck 10 meter telescopes on Mauna Kea for the past ten years or so. If you are genuinely interested, here is a link to their published (and peer reviewed) work:

www.astro.ucla.edu...

Thanks. I am interested.

Now, if you wish to critique it from the scientific, rather than the merely philosophical point of view, feel free to raise questions about the precision of the instruments and the possibility of systematic error. If you cannot find any flaws from the methodological point of view, please present an hypothesis that would explain the observed phenomenon better than the obvious one.

I have some thoughts concerning Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and the whole "expanding universe" conundrum, but I haven't done much thinking about Black Holes beyond my efforts to verify whether they've actually been "observed" beyond the smattering of suspected indications that have been widely referenced. The entire notion seems extremely counterintuitive, but I readily admit to an intellectual predilection that's based on a belief that a physical system - even an apical system such as our entire universe - doesn't possess fundamental properties that aren't thoroughly threaded throughout the entire system as a whole. The suggested properties of black holes (gravitational singularity, infinite time dilation, infinite mass) are properties that clearly cannot exist threaded throughout the entire system of the universe as the apical holon that it is. What is more troubling, however, is that these specific properties severely contradict the fundamental structure that all physical properties (that we CAN examine and verify as being factual) require to be in-place and ubiquitous in order for them to exist as they do.

This, and the fact that no one has ever actually examined or even observed a black hole, causes me to doubt the veracity of these claims concerning the basic component properties assigned to black holes. I have serious trouble with the existence of anything that completely violates the fundamental structure of material reality by simply existing as it's been described - be it a Creator God or a black hole.

Many massive stars are orbiting a point so small as to be invisible. It is clearly not their mutual barycenter; it appears to be an invisible point much more massive than all of those stars put together. What do you think it could possibly be? Feel free to put random strings of words together if you must: Tesla scalar warp field, for example. That's easy.

Offering an interpretation for what that video contains - even with the entire contents of the data vault that goes with it - is still just an interpretation. It's not an explanation. The accurate explanation might require a lot more data than can be "observed" from millions of light years away, and it might require a very different knowledge basis concerning the physical nature of our universe to provide the necessary context for whatever it is that could be better "observed" with either better technology or more immediate proximity.

If you were a native resident of a completely isolated island community, and you stumbled across a digital watch that some stealthy-yet-careless-with-his-property researcher lost along a pathway, you'd have all the empirical data concerning that watch that you could ever need to accurately assess exactly what it is you've found. That said, unless you were already in possession of the necessary knowledge basis (the concept of seconds, minutes, hours, and quantized units of time; numerical designs and their translation into conceptual quantity representations; digital electronics and all that it drags around behind it as cultural and technological baggage; and a lot more that I won't bother with) you might just end up worshiping the thing once you realized that its patterns changed with the position of the sun (perhaps even causing the sun to change, as far as you could ever really know).

Creating mathematical models, which you seem to find contemptible, is difficult. Observing physical evidence that they are correct is extremely gratifying.

As the native resident of a completely isolated island community, who's just discovered a digital watch, you might find it extremely gratifying when you proved to your fellow islanders that your new "god-watch" made the sun move across the sky with its dancing little pictures. Not saying that you would, but you just might.

You claim that there is a civil war going on in Physics. Really? People rolling their eyes when someone makes a wild cosmic " prediction" based on String Theory is hardly the battle of Gettysburg.

Try some of these recent releases. Not all are the authors are world-class Physics PhDs, but they're all accredited professionals with their own long-held positions within the scientific community. I'm only parroting what they've declared to be the state of physics today. These are just the books that have been published on the topic. There are dozens and dozens times more articles and papers that have also been published with the same general slant and tenor.

The Trouble With Physics

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe

Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth

The Higgs Fake: How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee

Bankrupting Physics: How Today's Top Scientists are Gambling Away Their Credibility

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law

reply to post by NorEaster

No. Observations which falsify a theory do not demonstrate that it is correct. They only show that it isn't. If no event horizon is found there's going to be a major kerfuffle about it.

Maybe they need to lay off the calculating and just start looking at what's right there in front of them as if it's intrinsic and connected to what they're trying to study. After all, it's all one system.

Got it.
Guess my computer doesn't work on principles revealed by quantum mechanics. Stuff that's pretty impossible to do without "calculating".

Phage
reply to post by NorEaster

 

No. Observations which falsify a theory do not demonstrate that it is correct. They only show that it isn't. If no event horizon is found there's going to be a major kerfuffle about it.

They prove whether it is correct or not. I guess I didn't phrase my post properly.

Maybe they need to lay off the calculating and just start looking at what's right there in front of them as if it's intrinsic and connected to what they're trying to study. After all, it's all one system.

Got it.
Guess my computer doesn't work on principles revealed by quantum mechanics. Stuff that's pretty impossible to do without "calculating".

edit on 12/21/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

The contextual infrastructure that you'd need to include as the basis of any equation you're working with as you perform calculations that are designed to accurately and fully represent physically real systems & system dynamics is going to be an infrastructure that is constantly "updating" to the degree that I don't see how it could ever be satisfactorily represented by any equation on a blackboard. Calculating your way through system analysis isn't wrong-headed if you can possibly work with an equation that is suited to the task. In those precisely crafted, contextually stripped-out, artificial systems that theorists toss as proofing requirements into experimental physicists' in-boxes, for those guys to then puzzle over how such a system can be physically constructed, aren't representative of physical reality any more than a history class diorama is representative of an actual historical event that took place.

Physics math isn't representative of the very real systems that they're being used to examine. The physical and intellectual separation between the theorist and the actual system itself, caused by a "shut up and calculate" cultural mindset, has created the existence of this imaginary world where multiverses, multi-dimensional brane structures, point particles, antimatter, and one-dimensional strings are free to make sense, and to not completely violate the nuts and bolts infrastructure of the reality confine that hosts the minds that invented it. It's not World of Warcraft, but it's not that much unlike it.

reply to post by NorEaster

They prove whether it is correct or not.

No. Observations which falsify a theory do not prove the theory is correct. They only prove it is not. It is more difficult to prove a theory correct than it is to prove it incorrect. Unless of course it is correct, then it can be really hard to prove it isn't.

Calculating your way through system analysis isn't wrong-headed if you can possibly work with an equation that is suited to the task. In those precisely crafted, contextually stripped-out, artificial systems that theorists toss as proofing requirements into experimental physicists' in-boxes, for those guys to then puzzle over how such a system can be physically constructed, aren't representative of physical reality any more than a history class diorama is representative of an actual historical event that took place.

Let me try to rephrase that to see if I understand what you are saying:

Calculating your way through system analysis is wrong-headed if you can possibly work with an equation that is suited to the task not. In those precisely crafted, contextually stripped-out, as proofing requirements into experimental physicists' in-boxes artificial systems that theorists toss, for physically constructed can those guys to then puzzle over how such a system be, are representative of physical reality any more than a history class diorama is representative of an actual historical event that took place not.


Mathematics cannot describe the whole of reality but it can do a fine job of describing parts of it. The parts that make my computer work, for example. The parts that describe how gravity affects things, for example.

reply to post by NorEaster


You seem to be packing a lot of baggage there. That the universe has uniform laws that are consistent across time and space is a useful assumption; it may or may not be true, however. Similarly, you seem to have inconsistent epistemologies and ontologies. Why do you assume the universe is holographic? Why do you assume that mathematics and logic are inherent in the systems they are used to study, rather than being mental creations which serve human purposes? Perhaps if you stop trying to look outside yourself for meaning, you will not find modern science, which you believe to be a culture bound activity anyway, to be so baffling. The magic words in science are "as if," as in "it is as if two bodies are mutually attracted by an unseen force that is proportional to the amount of, for want of a better concept, the amount of 'stuff' they contain." It is as if light were made out of particles. It is as if light is a wave.

Phage
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Let me try to rephrase that to see if I understand what you are saying:

Calculating your way through system analysis is wrong-headed if you can possibly work with an equation that is suited to the task not. In those precisely crafted, contextually stripped-out, as proofing requirements into experimental physicists' in-boxes artificial systems that theorists toss, for physically constructed can those guys to then puzzle over how such a system be, are representative of physical reality any more than a history class diorama is representative of an actual historical event that took place not.

The sentence I wrote was grammatically correct, and I have no idea why you felt the need to edit it. I'm going to assume that English is not your native tongue, and not that you're being a jerk.

Mathematics cannot describe the whole of reality but it can do a fine job of describing parts of it. The parts that make my computer work, for example. The parts that describe how gravity affects things, for example.

I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. These clowns are trying to use it to define the foundational structure of physical reality. That'd be like trying to put together an entire magazine layout using PowerPoint. Or trying to build a car with only a hammer and a wrench. The job itself requires a lot more than math, and it's too bad that none of those geniuses understand that.

DJW001
reply to post by NorEaster

 

You seem to be packing a lot of baggage there. That the universe has uniform laws that are consistent across time and space is a useful assumption; it may or may not be true, however. Similarly, you seem to have inconsistent epistemologies and ontologies. Why do you assume the universe is holographic? Why do you assume that mathematics and logic are inherent in the systems they are used to study, rather than being mental creations which serve human purposes?

The universe has to feature scale replication or it simply can't physically persist as a stable system. "As above, so below" is how the ancients put it, but it's a structural constant that we use ourselves with everything we design and manufacture. There are emergent systems, but they don't violate the fundamental structure. Nothing that we have proven to be reliably existent violates the fundamental structure. That's just the way it is, and there's nothing that has ever been proven to be true or factually existent that has ever presented evidence that the widely available fundamental structure is a localized phenomenon. This is why I assume what I assume. The hard evidence strongly suggests it.

Perhaps if you stop trying to look outside yourself for meaning, you will not find modern science, which you believe to be a culture bound activity anyway, to be so baffling. The magic words in science are "as if," as in "it is as if two bodies are mutually attracted by an unseen force that is proportional to the amount of, for want of a better concept, the amount of 'stuff' they contain." It is as if light were made out of particles. It is as if light is a wave.

edit on 21-12-2013 by DJW001 because: (no reason given)

There's nothing subjective about physical reality. Nothing. The only source of subjectivity is the human mind. I have no problem with conjecture, as long as it is presented as conjecture. Black holes are no longer presented as the educated conjecture that they remain, and as far as I am concerned, that's a problem.

reply to post by NorEaster


how is 19 million dollars going to let you see an object that is infinitesimally small and half the galaxy away ?