Time to rewrite all that science fiction

Gotta rewrite much of physics too. Black holes cannot actually exist, according to mathematical proof.

Black holes are so entwined in the established scientific narrative these days that it's easy to forget that their existence is still completely theoretical. No black hole has ever been directly observed. In fact, a direct observation of a black hole is technically impossible.

Nevertheless, due in large part to a number of theoretical calculations, a wide consensus has formed in both the scientific world and in the popular scientific narrative that black holes are real. But now a breakthrough new mathematical proof threatens to change everything, according to Phys.org.

The conclusion of the new proof by Laura Mersini-Houghton, a physics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill in the College of Arts and Sciences, is universe-altering: black holes, she argues, do not and cannot actually exist.

Click to expand...

No black holes nor wormholes, merely the usual assholes. But I digress.

Remember all the old SF stories set on the habitable-by-humans surface of Venus? Before we found its atmosphere was an impenetrable layer of 1000f sulfuric acid, sure. I think Larry Niven won his first Hugo for a black hole story. Must he return the award? And the Starship Enterprise zipping through wormholes to distant sectors -- gotta reshoot all those episodes. Bother. At least science evolves and adjusts to new understandings. Unlike religion.

Any kind of new "proof" is basically a straw dog until enough acknowledged experts have beaten on it and found that is still holds up. I wouldn't rewrite anything yet.

Without black holes, then how will be ever reach the end of time?

NotWise said:

Any kind of new "proof" is basically a straw dog until enough acknowledged experts have beaten on it and found that is still holds up. I wouldn't rewrite anything yet.

Click to expand...

Or use alternate-universe settings. Maybe black holes *can* exist somewhere besides our imaginations. They really are still theoretical, y'know. Like a perfect political system -- none have been observed.

Without black holes, then how will be ever reach the end of time?

Click to expand...

Wait long enough. What goes around, comes around.

no black holes

I have to say I agree with NotWise's assessment of a new proof.
I took a quick gander at the research - it's been years since I've had any dealings with the hard math behind black hole theory, and I'm not an astrophysicist - but, if I read correctly, her paper mentions in the conclusions that the phenomenom would still be observed from a distance as a black hole (due to time dilation effects?).
And there seem to be a few assumptions she uses to come up with her conclusions. For example, Hawking radiation, as I understand it, are opposing particles that suddenly form near a black hole. One zooms off into space and the other drops down through the event horizon. Hawking hypothesized that this effectively boils away black holes over a long time period. This researcher uses this Hawking radiation to remove mass from the collapsing star prior to complete collapse to a singularity, and if enough mass is removed then the collapse doesn't occur, the star doesn't shrink within the Schwarzschild radius and there is no black hole. Instead, the release of energy and neutralization of the mass in the star effectively cause a massive explosion of matter and energy.
Caution: I'm getting old and I only gave the research a quick read. Please check it for yourself.
I'm still going to have the odd black hole in my fiction. And, I think it's likely they are real. I have faith the universe is just a little too complicated for a barely sentient species like ours to figure everything out.
Maybe someone with real expertise in this field will correct my thinking.
However, math never really answers everything, and there's always going to be some deviation from the calculations that causes something unexpected. Even if that researcher's numbers are correct, is the Hawking radiation always going to prevent black hole formation? The universe is stranger than we can imagine.

Hypoxia said:

And the Starship Enterprise zipping through wormholes to distant sectors -- gotta reshoot all those episodes.

Click to expand...

Yeah, they didn't use wormholes in the Star Trek universe. So no re-shoot needed.

Hypoxia said:

Gotta rewrite much of physics too. Black holes cannot actually exist, according to mathematical proof. No black holes nor wormholes, merely the usual assholes. But I digress.

Remember all the old SF stories set on the habitable-by-humans surface of Venus? Before we found its atmosphere was an impenetrable layer of 1000f sulfuric acid, sure. I think Larry Niven won his first Hugo for a black hole story. Must he return the award? And the Starship Enterprise zipping through wormholes to distant sectors -- gotta reshoot all those episodes. Bother.

Click to expand...

Science never believed in matter-traversable wormholes and black holes connecting them. Science never believed venus was habitable, either. (1950's scifi might have, but very little scifi of the era was hard-flavored.)

As for black holes not existing, here's a quote from phys.org:

The paper, which was recently submitted to ArXiv, an online repository of physics papers that is not peer-reviewed,

Click to expand...

At which point you stop reading. Until this is peer reviewed, it's not worth quoting. Anyone can write formulae; now let's see it get backed up by the observations we have.

Zeb_Carter said:

Yeah, they didn't use wormholes in the Star Trek universe. So no re-shoot needed.

Click to expand...

What? Apparently you've never seen Deep Space Nine.

Not that I'm supporting the claim that they need to reshoot anything. Science fiction is fiction, after all.

Carnevil9 said:

What? Apparently you've never seen Deep Space Nine.

Not that I'm supporting the claim that they need to reshoot anything. Science fiction is fiction, after all.

Click to expand...

Yeah and that wormhole was controlled by ethereal beings from another dimension, so it might not even be a wormhole. Any other wormhole they encountered was unstable and unusable. They didn't depend on them, they were an aside in the history of the Trek universe.

Now the series, three actually, that will have to be rewritten is Stargate. Although those wormhole weren't a natural occurrence, they were man made.

Zeb_Carter said:

Yeah and that wormhole was controlled by ethereal beings from another dimension, so it might not even be a wormhole. Any other wormhole they encountered was unstable and unusable. They didn't depend on them, they were an aside in the history of the Trek universe.

Now the series, three actually, that will have to be rewritten is Stargate. Although those wormhole weren't a natural occurrence, they were man made.

Click to expand...

Really?
MAN-Made ?

If what this proof says is correct, then what have these folks been watching:

http://news.discovery.com/space/galaxies/spinning-black-hole-nustar-x-rays-130227.htm

http://www.inquisitr.com/2596012/scientists-observe-first-ever-black-hole-burp/

Say it ain't so.

Next you'll be telling me that the Millennium Falcon didn't ACTUALLY make the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

Handley_Page said:

Really?
MAN-Made ?

Click to expand...

Wouldn't that make them manholes?

TxRad said:

Wouldn't that make them manholes?

Click to expand...

we're getting closer to an ass hole joke, I can feel it.

But seeing the genre is science fiction does it matter if Black Holes exist or not? We're making shit up anyway.

lovecraft68 said:

we're getting closer to an ass hole joke, I can feel it.

But seeing the genre is science fiction does it matter if Black Holes exist or not? We're making shit up anyway.

Click to expand...

That depends. While things such as FTL and time travel are, as far as we know, impossible, many of the other writings are based on reality. Going back to Heinlein and Clarke, Heinlein was instrumental in designing the first space suits and related items and Clarke, as we all know, foretold satellites (among other things).

The original genre of science fiction did rely on much made-up stuff, though the more modern versions rely on reality or near-reality items.

someoneyouknow said:

That depends. While things such as FTL and time travel are, as far as we know, impossible, many of the other writings are based on reality. Going back to Heinlein and Clarke, Heinlein was instrumental in designing the first space suits and related items and Clarke, as we all know, foretold satellites (among other things).

The original genre of science fiction did rely on much made-up stuff, though the more modern versions rely on reality or near-reality items.

Click to expand...

Amazing our reality now was sci fi a few decades ago. I always love the fact the flip phones looked like Star Trek communicators.

Den

I miss my Dick Tracy watch!

LIVINRFANTASIES said:

I miss my Dick Tracy watch!

Click to expand...

I have a friend who collects all the old decoder rings from back around the 40's cool stuff.

Handley_Page said:

Really?
MAN-Made ?

Click to expand...

Yes the Ancients, the inventors of the Stargate, were the first evolution of the human form, we are the second. Man made. You need to study up on you Stargate history.

AMoveableBeast said:

Say it ain't so.

Next you'll be telling me that the Millennium Falcon didn't ACTUALLY make the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

Click to expand...

And seeing as how a parsec is a measure of distance not time, he actually didn't.

A parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure large distances to objects outside the Solar System. One parsec is the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arcsecond. A parsec is equal to about 3.26 light-years (31 trillion kilometres or 19 trillion miles) in length.

Click to expand...

Zeb_Carter said:

And seeing as how a parsec is a measure of distance not time, he actually didn't.

Click to expand...

Never tell me the odds, kid!

Of course we can sexualize this. We live in a black-hole-less universe. But in an adjacent universe (swirling beside us in the multiverse's cosmic froth) are natural and artificial black holes galore. Travelers from an alt.Earth somehow transit to our Earth via a hyper-wormhole. The physics of their universe is *almost* like ours -- close enough for biology and history -- so they are *almost* like us humans. Ah, but with hotter pheromones and sexuality, more endurance, etc; sexual superstars. Does their DNA supplant our humanity?

Considering that nothing can be observed - but may be inferred beyond the event horizon, and that quantum theory suggests that the more we know the less certain (predictable) that knowledge, how can one be certain that the concept of existence has any validity in this context?