Black Holes don't exist - the pictures of Sgr A* and M87*?

[RedshiftDrift]

I've been asked

Why don't you subscribe to the idea of Black Holes?
If Black Holes don't exist, what takes their place?
And how do you explain the pictures of Sgr A* and M87*?

"Black holes" don't exist because they cannot form. There are many reasons they can't form, one of them is explained here:
https://phys.org/news/2014-09-black-holes.html (The conclusion of the article relevant to this forum: "... if singularities do not exist, then physicists have to rethink their ideas of the Big Bang and whether it ever happened.")

Apart from radiating all their energy, another reason they can't form is that as matter falls on a massive object, it slows down as observed from the outside (relativistic effect; Pound-Rebka experiment). The closer the mass is to a massive object, the slower things fall and as a result the actual "black hole" never forms.

All this was clearly explained by Einstein himself in 1939 in a paper saying that "black holes" cannot form (Einstein, Albert (October 1939). "On a Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses". Annals of Mathematics. 40 (4): 922–936. doi:10.2307/1968902. JSTOR 1968902).
Read it for yourself: 1939_Einstein_No-black-hole-formation_1968902.pdf
On the last page, in the second paragraph from the end, Einstein concludes:
"The essential result of this investigation is a clear understanding as to why the "Schwarzschild singularities" do not exist in physical reality" (my emphasis)
Einstein did not make a mistake, "black holes" do not exist in reality. He explains that "this is due to the fact that otherwise the constituting particles would reach the velocity of light." Matter reaching the speed of light has never been observed.

The "black hole" can be described by analogy with the "Locked-room mystery" which does not have a solution unless one is able to "defy the laws of nature". Some contemporary physicists claim black holes exist if we look at them from the inside, but to continue with the analogy: they don't explain how to get the "key" inside "a room that can only be locked from the outside".

---

The images generated to represent Sgr* and M87 are not pictures. They are made by assuming that a black hole exists in the first place (without giving any mechanism explaining how it could have been formed) and then analyzing the radio signals from the massive object (not a "black hole") located at the centre of a galaxy by fitting the best assumption to the data.
Explanation from Dr. Bouman https://youtu.be/P7n2rYt9wfU
In other words, the image could only look like what theorists have put in the analysis software, and what they put in was based with "black hole" models that are wrong according to Einstein.

---

What takes the place of a "black hole" is just a massive amount of matter that produces a large gravitational field. This causes the matter it pulls in to radiate the gravitational energy as intense light.

[Francois-Zinserling]

I have often wondered how those pictures were not making sense.
So we're looking from this side and see a ring with a hole in the middle. Look from another angle 90' and you still see a 'ring with a hole'?
As if the object is shredding/radiating in every direction, except directly toward the observer.

This causes the matter it pulls in to radiate the gravitational energy as intense light.

I cannot relate to this though. Where does this energy come from? Every object will radiate itself into nothing, or else how do you replenish the gravitational energy?.
Gravity cannot originate from inside.

[genotics]

Louis and Francois, These are very thought provoking ideas. Einstein's article has also been discussed by Bloomer and Dunning-Davies, and black holes by Campbell and Carroll, as well as black hole universes by Browne (but without singularity!). Others had arrived at the same conclusion before Browne's work. The problem of energy recycling through gravitation and radiation is addressed by Broberg through a concrete formulation of de Broglie's vacuum thermostat.

[Francois-Zinserling]

The problem of energy recycling through gravitation and radiation is addressed by Broberg through a concrete formulation of de Broglie's vacuum thermostat.

A friend of de Broglie is a friend of mine! This appears to be a fine pice of work which deserves a more thorough reading.

[RedshiftDrift]

@Francois-Zinserling

This causes the matter it pulls in to radiate the gravitational energy as intense light.

I cannot relate to this though. Where does this energy come from? Every object will radiate itself into nothing, or else how do you replenish the gravitational energy?

Take two masses separated by a large distance. Now let them fall on each other. Just before they collide they are down their self-generated gravitational potential (i.e. less gravitational energy) and have more kinetic energy. The total energy of the system is the same.

Now the masses collide, heat up to high temperatures and release a lot of light that escapes the central massive lump. A sphere of light carries the energy away from the collision site. The energy comes from the kinetic energy (which came from the potential gravitational energy of the initial system).

If the objects at the collision site are dense enough, gravity will be strong enough to further pull the parts of the massive lump together and convert more kinetic energy into light. As you describe, an "object will radiate itself into" no mass and the energy will all go to radiation. (And @Pierre314159 all this happens before reaching the unreachable $R_s$.) However, that object has to be dense enough for the gravitational forces to overcome the nuclear forces. Not every object will do that (although over time such an object will increase its density by attracting other matter it encounters in space). The entire mass may not be radiated in a finite time as relativistic effects slow down the process, but the radiation will spread over very large distances.

[Francois-Zinserling]

This causes the matter it pulls in to radiate the gravitational energy as intense light.

I get it now. I was picturing one object, undisturbed, radiating itself away into nothing.
What you describe is effectively the Kevin Helmholtz mechanism? Not sure if it still applies to large-scale collisions, but the principle is the same.

[HanDeBruijn]

@genotics . Two reviews from my side.

• Black Holes, Other Exotic Stars and Conventional Wisdom
  Three excellent sections: the Introduction, especially a surprising formulation of the Maxwell equations, with Euler derivatives $d/dt$ instead of the usual ones with $\partial/\partial t$. Furthermore the Black holes section and the Conclusion are worthwile reading. The rest of the paper about all sorts of Exotic Stars escapes me.
• Black Holes – Fact or Fiction?
  Unfortunately, the total energy stored in the gravitational force field as expressed in equation (3) has the wrong sign. It must be negative instead of positive, which makes the rest of the article questionable. Though there is exellent proze on page 154 that I would immediately copy & paste.

Thank you for a valuable post, Roy !

[Pierre314159]

At last! A thread about black holes!!

as matter falls on a massive object, it slows down as observed from the outside

This doesn’t hold water. Pound and Rebka showed that clocks run slow, not that objects slow down, and the equation between the two escapes me totally. Anyways, even if that were valid, in-falling matter would come to a stop only when reaching $R_s$ which we postulated doesn’t physically exist. Therefore, however slow it gets, infalling matter will always reach the massive body.

All this was clearly explained by Einstein himself in 1939

Einstein used a very complex approach to just demonstrate what is known as the ISCO, and that in no way implies the impossibility of black holes: it just implies the impossibility of orbits at an altitude inferior to the ISCO. That black holes cannot exist because if they did, their escape velocities would be superior to $c$, is fine, but that doesn’t explain what happens to any accretion superior to an almost-black-hole…

This causes the matter it pulls in to radiate the gravitational energy as intense light

I too would like this elaborated. SgrA* is known to be an intense radio source (I thought nothing could escape black holes?). Is this radio emission the “Intense light” gravitationally redshifted? Because if the frequency of this “intense light” is known, and the mass of the object is known, and that gravitational redshift holds, then the physical radius of the object could be inferred…

[bgreenman]

Right now we probably don't know how information gets from one side of the sphere to another. Its necessary to test Newton,Einstein and other approaches to the problem to see what approach is either right or is a combination of approaches needed

[Pierre314159]

@Francois-Zinserling,

I was arguing in Newtonian terms, where $R_s$ is the point where escape velocity $V_e=c$. In Schwarzschild and Einstein terms of course it is different

This is an interesting approach to the question of black holes. If, instead of the Newtonian formulation, SR is used for escape velocity, we get: $V_e=\sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}-(\frac{GM}{rc})^2}=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}c$ (not $c$) at $r=R_s$. If, again, SR is used in the calculation of the kinetic energy, we obtain $E_k=\frac{mc^2}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}-mc^2=mc^2$ at $v=V_e$. Which means that any mass $m$ that collides with $M$ at $R_s$ at escape velocity will need to shed off the equivalent of its mass in kinetic energy. Hence, no mass is added to the bigger mass $M$.

[Francois-Zinserling]

@Pierre314159 nice one. I was reading again about the photon sphere yesterday. I have not studied GR thoroughly so I might be caught talking rubbish now and then ... :).

Agreed that kinetic energy can be $mc^2$ (I would argue it could be even more but let's stay with your example)
Shown another way from momentum P= $γmv$ and Energy = $Pc$ = $γmvc$ which equals $γmc^2$ at v=c. (Except γ is now infinite and this would be a problem).
We can get around that though by stating that not $v=c$ but $γv=c$, meaning that in your case above, $γ=\frac{2}{\sqrt{3}}c$, because in the above example $v=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}c$ so the conclusion is that $γv=c$
I don't think this is a maximum, because theoretically γ has no maximum, but $γv=c$ is certainly allowed.

Interesting further that Newton says you cannot escape a BH ($V_e=c$) but for SR it is less than c, $v=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}c$. My entire discussion of yesterday that I deleted reminded myself that 'escape velocity' means instantaneous velocity needed to 'escape' which means to reach infinity. Now I am even more confused as to why a photon may not cross the Schwarzschild radius! Were you possibly referring to escape from photon sphere in your equations above?

You also show $E_k=\frac{mc^2}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}-mc^2=mc^2$ where
$\frac{mc^2}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}-mc^2$ can also be shown
$E_k=mc^2*(γ-1)$ or $γmc^2-mc^2$

However the total energy of the object is $γmc^2$ = $E_k+mc^2$ = $2mc^2$ from your example.
If $mc^2$ is radiated, where does the other $mc^2$ go?

[Pierre314159]

However the total energy of the object is ${\gamma}mc^2=E_k+mc^2=2mc^2$ from your example. If $mc^2$ is radiated, where does the other $mc^2$ go?

That's because the $v$ in $\gamma$ takes the value $\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}c$, hence you get $2mc^2-mc^2=mc^2$

[HanDeBruijn]

Two remarks on a remarkable post by @Pierre314159 .

1. The escape velocity according to Special Relativity is

$$ V_e=\sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}-\left(\frac{GM}{rc}\right)^2}=\sqrt{\frac{2GM'}{r}} \quad \mbox{with} \quad M' = M + \left[-\frac{GM^2}{2rc^2}\right] $$

The term between square brackets is recognized as the - Newtonian ! - negative mass of the Self Energy Field of the same body with radius $r$ and mass $M$.

2. Due to the SR formulation, the escape velocity $V_e$ cannot exceed the speed of light $c$ :

$$ c \gt V_e \quad \Longleftrightarrow \quad \frac{2GM}{r}-\left(\frac{GM}{rc}\right)^2 \lt c^2 $$

$$ r^2-2\frac{GM}{c^2}r+\left(\frac{GM}{c^2}\right)^2 \gt 0 $$

$$ \left(r-\frac{GM}{c^2}\right)^2 \gt 0 \quad \Longleftrightarrow \quad r \neq \frac{1}{2}\frac{2GM}{c^2} $$

It is concluded that the size of a (celestial) body cannot pass a radius less than one-half the Schwarzschild radius.
Herewith the infamous Black Hole singularity is removed; by Special - no General - Relativity.
I have the uneasy feeling that with SR and half the Schwarzschild radius we are running into the same problems as with GR and the "old" Schwarzschild radius.

[MJoseph315]

Louis, I appreciate you addressing my question, you raised some good points, but I don’t think anyone on this forum should be quoting Paul Austin Murphy, judging from what I read about him here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Paul_Austin_Murphy I think doing so only damages our credibility in the eyes of the layperson.

[bgreenman]

I think the only way to enhance our credibility is to not quote extremists

[MJoseph315]

Thanks, bgreenman, I’m glad yo agree with me.

[RedshiftDrift]

Thanks for pointing this out, I didn't know who Austin Murphy was and only looked at that article found from a Google search.
I replaced the reference with a link to Bouman's talk where she explains the technique used to train the computer model with "familiar objects".

[MJoseph315]

Speaking of Black Holes, I think this article that was very recently published is worth discussing: https://as.cornell.edu/news/hawkings-black-hole-theorem-observationally-confirmed

[RedshiftDrift]

if gravitational waves were gravitationally redshifted, we couldn’t observe black hole mergers. We observe black hole mergers, therefore...

I'm not convinced "we observe black hole mergers". The LIGO and VIRGO interferometers are extremely sensitive devices that can detect all sorts of phenomena other than gravitational waves (GW) from "black holes" merger. High energy astronomical events release high energy particles which can strike the mirrors used in interferometers and produce mechanical resonances in the mirrors that look like a GW. LIGO and VIRGO use the same size mirrors, so they see "oscillations" that look the same.

[Francois-Zinserling]

I'm not against time dilation and my following post is certainly not an attempt at 'time dilation does not exist'.

Black holes are predicted, even if you revert to Newtonian physics. By this I do not mean singularities. Call it dark stars then if you like.
We observe bending of light around 'invisible objects', and LIGO has, in my opinion, displayed what I would expect from a 'vibrating space' when 2 very large masses circle and merge. All of these are observed.
Galaxies have - in general - a supermassive object at the centre that, if it had been radiating like a star, it would have been very blue or UV or even up to X-Ray radiation. It would certainly outshine the stars in the centre of the galaxy. This is not observed. Radiation observed around galactic centres seem to be in the immediate surrounds of the BH, not from the centre.

Time dilation on the event horizon has not been observed, yet some of the posts above use a hypothetic time-dilation scenario to break all of the rest of science, including known science where observations closely matches theory.
My opinion is we don't understand time dilation (especially at the event horizon) and cannot use the 'time stands still' argument to break all of the rest.

[Pierre314159]

@Francois-Zinserling, this is a very lucid summary of what has been said in this thread so far, thanks.

if it had been radiating like a star, it would have been very blue or UV or even up to X-Ray radiation

It most probably does, though, however, from our observational perspective, these UV or X-Rays (or gamma rays?) would be so much redshifted thanks to the object’s heavy gravitational potential, that we would perceive it as extra long wavelengths far down in the radio band. If we’d bother looking at the right frequency, I’ll bet my pay check that « outshining stars » is what we would see.

Time dilation on the event horizon has not been observed

…and a good reason for that is that event horizons themselves have never been observed (and they never will because they can’t exist, if you ask me). The part of science that needs to be « broken » is not the consequences of what happens at the event horizon, but rather the bit that predicts the existence in physical reality of event horizons.

[RedshiftDrift]

if it had been radiating like a star, it would have been very blue or UV or even up to X-Ray radiation

Black hole theorists justify the lack of observed UV and X-rays caused by absorption in the dust of accretion disks - isn't that convenient!

[HanDeBruijn]

Accretion disks. And then we have the jets - another artist impression, of course:

From Wikipedia Astrophysical jet:

The formation and powering of astrophysical jets are highly complex phenomena
Mechanisms behind the composition of jets remain uncertain

Isn't it easier to say that we understand nothing of it ??

[bgreenman]

The object event horizon dosen't shrink with merger,which is correct. themain problem is finding the source of contradiction entropy of matter falling in and hawking radiation emitted at the same time.

[RedshiftDrift]

"Black Hole Singularities "Faith, not science!" Prominent Physicist Claims"
It's about time someone exposes this error! Thank you Roy Kerr.

arXiv pre-print "Do Black Holes have Singularities?" R. P. Kerr https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.00841

Sabine explains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz55jONtFAU

P.S. Indeed, ExpEarth had already mentioned the paper.

[RedshiftDrift]

Can someone understand this nonsense? https://youtu.be/HRir6-9tsJs

[Pierre314159]

Yes. Kerr and Penrose fighting for who pisses farthest.

[HanDeBruijn]

Can someone understand this nonsense?

I do not agree with @RedshiftDrift . On the contrary: the video reveals some interesting issues.
Jump to 9:30 and read/listen:

To illustrate this crudely: the affine parameter could be an exponential of coordinate time.
This function is bounded from below even though time can go from minus to plus infinity.
So, that limit of the affine parameter doesn't mean that time itself has come to a halt, argues
Roy Kerr.
He also argues that this invalidates any arguments about the inevitability of singularities
due to coordinate system dead ends.

Is it so simple? Roger Penrose doesn't know what "proper time" is, so he takes any "affine parameter" and thinks he can get away with it Jumping on my hobby horse, I think that the mistake is indeed purely mathematical, just a matter of improper interpretation of an affine parameter. Let's start with the well known approximation of an exponential function.

$$ \lim_{n\to\infty}\left(1+\frac{x}{n}\right)^n = e^x \quad \mbox{with} \quad x = H_0t $$

Replace the expression on the left by approximation for finite $n$ and replace variable $t$ there by another timescale $\tau$ in order to maintain equality.

$$ \left(1+\frac{H_0\tau}{n}\right)^n = e^{H_0t} \quad \Longleftrightarrow \quad 1+\frac{H_0\tau}{n} = e^{H_0/n.t} $$

Now replace $n/H_0$ by an timelap named Age, giving at last

$$ A = n/H_0 \quad \Longrightarrow \quad 1+\tau/A = e^{t/A} $$

Something weird has happened. Just like in the video, time on the right hand side can go from minus to plus infinity. But on the left hand side we have, for $t\to -\infty$

$$ 1+\tau/A = e^{-\infty} = 0 \quad \Longrightarrow \quad \tau = -A $$

This means that, in the past, the other affine parameter [ .. ] has come to a halt. One timescale ($t$) is not the other ($\tau$).
I'm not making this up. Put $\lambda=1/A$ in $a(t)=e^{\lambda t}$ below.

[RedshiftDrift]

Their error is to fit a mathematical function to a physical quantity without any concern for the physical meaning of all this (for which there is none).

[HanDeBruijn]

the physical meaning of all this (for which there is none).

I wouldn't go this far with that "none", but it is for sure that any physical meaning is missing too much of the time.
An example is given in a thread 198 reply where @mikehelland says the following.

Minkowski time isn't a real thing, it's what you'd have, hypothetically, without time dilation.

Isn't a real thing ? Dismissed, I would say ! With the Variable Mass Theory we have, on the contrary (in Mike's notation)

$$ \frac{m}{m_0} = e^{H_0t} \quad \mbox{and} \quad \frac{d\tau}{dt}=\sqrt{\frac{m}{m_0}}=e^{H_0/2.t} $$

With some calculus it follows that Mike's "Minkowsi time" $\tau$ is our "Orbital time", which definitely has a physical meaning.

$$ 1+\tau/A = e^{t/A} \quad \mbox{with} \quad A=\frac{2}{H_0} $$

Orbital time $\tau$ is the governing timescale in (Newtonian) gravity. Atomic time $t$ is for all the rest, as far as I know. Mind the factor $2$ in the relationship between Hubble parameter $H_0$ and Age $A$. Quite in general, the relationship between Hubble parameter and Age has become quite loose in the latest version of our theory. The same can be said about the relationship between Hubble parameter and (gravitational constant times) mass density (here and now). Independent of any further cosmological models it is claimed that there are proportionalities and that's it, namely

$$ H_0 \sim 1/A \quad \mbox{and} \quad H_0^2 \sim G\rho_0 $$

Update.

Let's take a look at Wikipedia's Leap second and quote:

A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate the difference between precise time (International Atomic Time (TAI), as measured by atomic clocks) and imprecise observed solar time [ .. ] The leap second was introduced in 1972 and since then 27 leap seconds have been added to UTC. [ .. ] In 1972 [ .. ] the UTC clock was already 10 seconds behind TAI [ .. ] so the difference is 10 + 27 = 37 seconds.

Remember the latter value. In Wikipedia's Wikipedia's page about $\Delta T$ (timekeeping) we read, on the other hand:

The value of $\Delta T$ for the start of 1902 was approximately zero; for 2002 it was about 64 seconds. [ .. ] Since early 2017, the length of the day has happened to be very close to the conventional value, and $\Delta T$ has remained within half a second of 69 seconds.

Don't know what other people think about all this, but I find it a mess.

Nevertheless there maybe empirical evidence, especially meant for those who do not believe in Variable Mass. Most of us may think that there is NO difference between orbital time $\tau$ - with an age of the earth $A$ - and enduring atomic time $t$, because time is time with an atomic clock, isn't it? Let mathematics come in and help to decide.

$$ 1+\tau/A=e^{t/A} \quad \Longleftrightarrow \quad t/A = \ln(1+\tau/A) $$

Because the exponent is the inverse of the logarithm. Taylor series expansion of $\ln(1+x)$ gives

$$ t/A = \ln(1+\tau/A) \approx \tau/A-\frac{(\tau/A)^2}{2} \quad \Longrightarrow \quad \tau-t \approx \frac{\tau^2}{2A} $$

In words: atomic clocks shall always been running ahead of orbital clocks with a difference of $\tau^2/(2A)$ .
Let's calculate and see what happens.

year := 31556926; # seconds
Age := 4.54*10^9*year;
period := (2002-1902)*year;
leaps := period^2/(2*Age);

                         leaps := 34.75432380

That is close to the above 37 seconds. Coincidence? I don't know.