No Black Holes?

[MylesBAstor]

http://www.nature.com/news/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-1.14583

 

[ack]

Frankly, the core of the claim addresses an issue I've had with all these theories for a very long time: why the heck isn't anyone considering the possibility that all that energy in a black hole probably transforms into heat (e.g. trapped light), which itself, in turn, is trapped within the event horizon, raising the temperature in that region so that anything crossing the event horizon is essentially evaporated... Since then, they have discovered jets of energy released back into space from the polar regions of the spinning black hole... So apparently this same issue has been raised long ago (phew, I don't feel so special anymore), and I just wasn't aware of it; so glad to see the article discussing this:

[h=2]Fire fighting[/h] Hawking's new work is an attempt to solve what is known as the black-hole firewall paradox, which has been vexing physicists for almost two years, after it was discovered by theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski of the Kavli Institute and his colleagues (see 'Astrophysics: Fire in the hole!').
In a thought experiment, the researchers asked what would happen to an astronaut unlucky enough to fall into a black hole. Event horizons are mathematically simple consequences of Einstein's general theory of relativity that were first pointed out by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild in a letter he wrote to Einstein in late 1915, less than a month after the publication of the theory. In that picture, physicists had long assumed, the astronaut would happily pass through the event horizon, unaware of his or her impending doom, before gradually being pulled inwards — stretched out along the way, like spaghetti — and eventually crushed at the 'singularity', the black hole’s hypothetical infinitely dense core.



But on analysing the situation in detail, Polchinski’s team came to the startling realization that the laws of quantum mechanics, which govern particles on small scales, change the situation completely. Quantum theory, they said, dictates that the event horizon must actually be transformed into a highly energetic region, or 'firewall', that would burn the astronaut to a crisp.

The entire article is thought-provoking. Thanks

 

[treitz3]

That's both interesting and thought provoking Myles. If Einstein was still alive, I would love to be a fly on the wall during a discussion between him and Hawking about this.

Tom

 

[Steve williams]

Terrific read. Thanks Myles