Black Holes May Not Exist

A new mathematical calculation may dramatically change the current scientific understanding of black holes: they don't exist. At least according to what Case Western Reserve University physicists Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence M. Krauss have proposed after using a mathematical approach called a functional Schrodinger equation, which allows them to predict what a distant observer would see as a sphere of matter collapses. Their results say that the gravity of a collapsing star will generate non-thermal "pre-Hawking" radiation that reduces the mass-energy of the collapsing body, preventing it from ever becoming dense enough to form an event horizon and a true black hole. Vachaspati told New Scientist Space, "There are only stars going toward being a black hole but not getting there."

Astronomer Kimberly Weaver of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is skeptical, saying, "we have never observed any events that would back this up." Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft of Utrecht University in the Netherlands also disagrees with the Case team's findings. "The process [the Case team] describes can in no way produce enough radiation to make a black hole disappear as quickly as he is suggesting," as the horizon forms before the black hole can evaporate.

Star This to Save in Your Profile