The Universe was created by a black hole. Black holes are the result of collapsed stars. However, this particular black hole wasn't, and nothing existed before it.
I think Hawking is great, but he's gonna have to explain this one again for the benefit of numbskulls like me who find it odd to set scientific precedent aside because the theory somehow stops working.
If we can't see what came before this particular super massive black hole, why is the theory that nothing existed, rather than the super massive black hole is a result of the collapse of a super massive star?
You do realise
the science community do not agree or even know if black holes even exist. Hawking has done too many meds.
They found what appeared to be a black hole leaking matter out one end there goes hawking's theory.
Bullshit!
Black Holes - NASA Science
Scientists can't directly observe black holes with telescopes that detect x-rays, light, or other forms of electromagnetic radiation.
We can, however, infer the presence of black holes and study them by detecting their effect on other matter nearby. If a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, for example, it will draw matter inward in a process known as accretion. A similar process can occur if a normal star passes close to a black hole. In this case, the black hole can tear the star apart as it pulls it toward itself. As the attracted matter accelerates and heats up, it emits x-rays that radiate into space. Recent discoveries offer some tantalizing evidence that black holes have a dramatic influence on the neighborhoods around them - emitting powerful gamma ray bursts, devouring nearby stars, and spurring the growth of new stars in some areas while stalling it in others.
Most black holes form from the remnants of a large star that dies in a supernova explosion. (Smaller stars become dense neutron stars, which are not massive enough to trap light.) If the total mass of the star is large enough (about three times the mass of the Sun), it can be proven theoretically that no force can keep the star from collapsing under the influence of gravity. However, as the star collapses, a strange thing occurs. As the surface of the star nears an imaginary surface called the "event horizon," time on the star slows relative to the time kept by observers far away. When the surface reaches the event horizon, time stands still, and the star can collapse no more - it is a frozen collapsing object.
Babies and Giants
Although the basic formation process is understood, one perennial mystery in the science of black holes is that they appear to exist on two radically different size scales. On the one end, there are the countless black holes that are the remnants of massive stars. Peppered throughout the Universe, these "stellar mass" black holes are generally 10 to 24 times as massive as the Sun. Astronomers spot them when another star draws near enough for some of the matter surrounding it to be snared by the black hole's gravity, churning out x-rays in the process. Most stellar black holes, however, lead isolated lives and are impossible to detect. Judging from the number of stars large enough to produce such black holes, however,
scientists estimate that there are as many as ten million to a billion such black holes in the Milky Way alone.
On the other end of the size spectrum are the giants known as "supermassive" black holes, which are millions, if not billions, of times as massive as the Sun. Astronomers believe that
supermassive black holes lie at the center of virtually all large galaxies, even our own Milky Way.
Astronomers can detect them by watching for their effects on nearby stars and gas.
B.S. ?
Do black holes really exist?
22:16 18 June 2007 by Stephen Battersby
Black holes might not exist - or at least not as scientists have imagined, cloaked by an impenetrable "event horizon". A controversial new calculation could abolish the horizon, and so solve a troubling paradox in physics.
The event horizon is supposed to mark a boundary beyond which nothing can escape a black hole's gravity. According to the general theory of relativity, even light is trapped inside the horizon, and no information about what fell into the hole can ever escape. Information seems to have fallen out of the universe.
That contradicts the equations of quantum mechanics, which always preserve information. How to resolve this conflict?
One possibility researchers have proposed in the past is that the information does leak back out again slowly. It may be encoded in a hypothetical flow of particles called Hawking radiation, which is thought to result from the black holes' event horizons messing with the quantum froth that is ever-present in space.
But other researchers argue the information may never have been cut off in the first place. Tanmay Vachaspati and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, US, have tried to calculate what happens as a black hole is forming. Using an unusual mathematical approach called the functional Schrodinger equation, they follow a sphere of stuff as it collapses inwards, and predict what a distant observer would see.
They find that the gravity of the collapsing mass starts to disrupt the quantum vacuum, generating what they call "pre-Hawking" radiation. Losing that radiation reduces the total mass-energy of the object - so that it never gets dense enough to form an event horizon and a true black hole. "There are no such things", Vachaspati told New Scientist. "There are only stars going toward being a black hole but not getting there."
Dark and dense
These so-called "black stars" would look very much like black holes, says Vachaswati. From the point of view of a distant observer, gravity distorts the apparent flow of time so that matter falling inwards slows down. As it gets close to where the horizon would be, the matter fades, its light stretched to such long wavelengths by the dark object's gravity that it would be nearly impossible to detect.
But because the pre-Hawking radiation prevents the formation of a black hole with a true event horizon, the matter never quite fades entirely. As nothing is cut off from the rest of the universe, there is no information paradox.
The idea faces firm opposition from other theoretical physicists, however. "I strongly disagree," says Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "The process he describes can in no way produce enough radiation to make a black hole disappear as quickly as he is suggesting." The horizon forms long before the hole can evaporate, 't Hooft told New Scientist.
Lab test
Steve Giddings of the University of California in Santa Barbara, US, is also sceptical. "Well-understood findings apparently conflict with their picture," he told New Scientist. "To my knowledge, there hasn't been an attempt to understand how they are getting results that differ from these calculations, which would be an important step to understanding if this is a solid result."
There could be a way to test the new theory. The Large Hadron Collider being constructed at CERN in Geneva might just be capable of making microscopic black holes - or, if Vachaspati is right, black stars. Unlike the large, long-lived black holes in space, these microscopic objects would evaporate fast. The spread of energies in their radiation might reveal whether or not an event horizon forms.
Alternatively, colliding black stars in space might reveal themselves, as Vachaspati says they would churn out not only gravitational waves (like colliding black holes) but also gamma rays. He suggests that they could be responsible for some of the gamma-ray bursts seen by astronomers.
Journal reference: Physical Review D (In press)
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
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Comments 1 |2|3|4
Do Black Holes Exist?
Wed Oct 31 23:07:07 GMT 2007 by Jose N. Pecina
The answer is that they do not. Matter can not collapse in a point, since a point does not have dimensions. Before matter collapses formation of particles antiparticles take place preventing a black hole formation.
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Do Black Holes Exist?
Tue Feb 26 21:25:59 GMT 2008 by Anonymous
Black holes do exist, just not to the point of infinite density. The infinite density is the theoretical situation, the black holes as still miles across though. Even so, a few miles across is extremely dense for something as massive as a black hole.
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Do Black Holes Exist?
Fri Mar 07 06:28:03 GMT 2008 by Jose N. Pecina-cruz
Assume you have two neutrons approaching or collapsing one into the other, this process has a limit. Those neutrons never collapses since Heinsenberg uncertainty principle prevent they reach a separation shorter than their Compton wave length. Openheimer and Snyder recognized that their conclusion are based on the validation of Fermi Statics and this fails for distances shorter than the Compton wave length of the assemble of particles.
J n p-c
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Do Black Holes Exist?
Fri Mar 28 04:05:09 GMT 2008 by Roger M. Pecina
Hmmm... Dr. Pecina makes a very good argument.
Hey dad!
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Do Black Holes Exist?
Wed Apr 09 13:23:14 BST 2008 by Matt
Then how do you explain the Bose Einstein Condensate? That appears to do away with certain effects of the Pauli exclusion principle.
Anyway, to reach the density required to reduce the radius of the object to within the Chandraskhar limit, they wouldn't need to be within a Compton wavelength of each other.
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Do Black Holes Exist?
Thu Oct 08 08:44:54 BST 2009 by Mario A. C.
http://www.dermaessence.com
The "point" is non existence, where all matter both stands in and between, shy of four dimensions. If you realize the Higg's field where matter is brought up from a point, you can understand that a black hole is not so curious after all. Energy and matter are interchanged, even as our sun expends her matter as energy, creating more matter, as in plant life, to create more energy, as in food. EM is interlocked eternally, indefinitely, as far as we know. Star light, once was matter, travels forever. Eternity equals no time. No time equals, no space, or something like that.
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Black Hole Paradox?
Thu Feb 21 08:58:51 GMT 2008 by Tony Price
Imagine two astronauts 'A' and 'B' falling into a black hole, 'A' just ahead of 'B'.
As 'A' approaches the event horizon, 'B' sees 'A' travel ever more slowly, but never quite reaching the time frozen horizon.
'B' can never overtake 'A', and so 'B' too will never reach the event horizon.
Yet 'B' relative to 'A' remains an outside observer in our Universe.
In the above thought experiment, the black hole is considered truly massive such that tidal forces are not destructive. Also, 'B' can observe 'A' though 'A' becomes more and more red-shifted.
If matter from the observable universe cannot break through the time frozen event horizon, how can the black hole grow in size or form in the first place? It all seems very paradoxical to me, but I bet someone out there can explain it with mathematical as opposed to human logic.
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Is It Realy A Black Hole?
Thu Feb 21 17:25:18 GMT 2008 by Jesse
Iv been thinking...
Why would it be a hole?
iv been studying black holes for a long time, and i think
i would find a more 3D object in the end. What if a black hole is not a object so dens that it pushes into the fabrick of space and time but only turns into a black spher? and the "event horizon" only a layer of its atmosphere?
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Is It Realy A Black Hole?
Mon Apr 28 05:49:28 BST 2008 by Pete
I would have thought you were more likely to find something like the big bang at the other end.
If this dense singular matter and light sucking super gravity spot reaches a criticle mass at some stage. I would be expecting matter and light to be spewing from it everywhere.
Maybe infinty is finite in our perception of universe or multiple universe, could it be limited to a finite amount of matter available ?
Might be more than one universe and the black hole might be a spot where matter is being depleted from ours and being fed into another universe. Ours started with the big bang and has been dying since that occured, black holes may be part of that evolution of life.
Outside universes and possible finite amounts of matter, maybe things other than matter exsist.
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Is It Realy A Black Hole?
Wed Sep 10 18:31:19 BST 2008 by Jeffrey M. Paich
Why would it be a hole is a very easy and obvious question to answer. It has to be a hole otherwise all the sock's that we lose when doing the laundry would have no place to go, sheesh. One final note - there is no such thing as a black hole is space - please get over yourselves and give the grant money back.
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Is It Realy A Black Hole?
Fri Sep 19 08

57 BST 2008 by Nate
To answer your question on why it's called a black hole.
Black hole is actually just a slang term for "Gravitationally completely collapsed object"
If you look at how it appears on a 3D grid it appears to be a hole in space and time. The high density sucks up “almost" everything in it's reach.
Hawking has come to theorizes that black holes do radiate they're own energy. This can be proven due to the discovery of the 6 different quarks and the laws of quantum physics. (More or less barrowing energy from the future) This theory I can wrap my head around, but can't articulate well enough here to explain.
There may be some newer theories out there that I'm not aware of. Some of you seem to be well versed in them. Feel free to throw them out there for me to read. I've never really heard of any one saying with any sort of credible knowledge that “No, there is no such thing as a black hole." So those of you that believe there to be no such ting please include links.
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Is It Realy A Black Hole?
Mon Sep 22 03:02:53 BST 2008 by Jn P-c
The only black hole that really exist is the one that some people, in the academia, have made to the NSF (irreversibe research money). Quantum mechanics trough hup preclude the existence of a black hole.
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Is It Realy A Black Hole?
Mon Oct 05 15

15 BST 2009 by Aricu
Agree
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Is It Realy A Black Hole?
Wed Feb 18 19:40:10 GMT 2009 by Mir SHajee
The Black hole is just the surrounding unit with infinite density (which is still a theory). However it is not so much a "hole" as it is a Point.
Do black holes really exist? - space - 18 June 2007 - New Scientist