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Black holes?
Aard Bol
In his interesting and controversial article Big bang, black holes, and common sense,
David Pratt argued, to my surprise, that both the big bang and black holes are
theoretical constructs, pure inventions. This was somewhat disillusioning, for I have
quite a lot of confidence in modern scientific research in this field. But his views offered
the opportunity for further discussion.
His arguments about black holes the big bang will not be dealt with here can be
summarized as follows. No one has ever seen a black hole; they are theoretical objects.
The basic idea behind a black hole that gravity can become infinite and compress a
large volume of matter to an infinitesimal point (or singularity) is irrational and
illogical; nothing finite can ever become infinitely large or small, for these are
mathematical abstractions.
A study published in 1995, based on Hubble Space Telescope observations of 15
quasars, showed that 11 of them had no surrounding material that could fall into any
hypothesized black holes, yet they were somehow producing intense radio emissions.
(Comment: the observations of the 15 quasars show only that 11 are producing radio
emissions, for which no explanatory mechanism is suggested; the details about the
other quasars are not mentioned and are therefore also unexplained.)
Galaxies M87 and NGC 6605 are emitting jets of material and are supposed to have
supermassive black holes at their centres. According to D.P., black-hole supporters
thought the jets were fed by a doughnut-shaped dust cloud around the M87 black hole
and an accretion disc of attracted matter around the NGC 6605 black hole, but
observations have failed to find evidence of either.
(Comment: these observations are from 2001 and 2003 respectively; this year one of
the websites referred to presented a NASA report (16 Feb. 2004) showing that the
smoking gun proof has been found for the existence of a supermassive black hole that
is tearing a star apart; see report below.)
David Pratt says it is significant that matter is nearly always seen moving away from
galactic nuclei, instead of towards them as the black-hole theory requires. This is also
true of our own galaxy, and the radiation coming from its centre does not match that
expected to come from a black hole. Several scientists have concluded that the centres
of active galaxies are regions of matter creation rather than matter destruction. D.P.
refers to G. de Puruckers remarks about laya centres, which energy can flow both into
and out of. He adds that every point of space is in a sense a laya centre, and that every
entity, every atom, every human, and every celestial body has a laya centre at its core,
for every physical form is animated from within outwards.
(Comment: on the one hand D.P. sees matter nearly always moving away from galactic
nuclei instead of towards them, and on the other, every celestial body is said to have at
its core a laya centre, which, according to GdeP, can have a two-way circulation.)
David Pratt adds that one in six spiral galaxies are currently passing through an active,
explosive phase. At the same time, galactic nuclei exert a strong attraction on
surrounding matter. However, in his view, the idea that matter can disappear from our
plane by being crushed to an infinitesimal point is not a serious proposition.
(Comment: in contrast to his assertion that matter is nearly always seen moving away
from galactic nuclei, he says here that matter can also move toward the nucleus, but
does not offer an alternative explanation to the supposedly nonexistent black holes.)
His interesting article is broader than this summary suggests and is supported with
references to thirty scientific and esoteric studies. Nevertheless, I doubt whether his
conclusion that black holes do not exist is correct. He bases his position on studies by
nonorthodox cosmologists, which appear to be based on observations that mostly
predate 2000.
My doubts are strengthened by reading newspaper and magazine articles and several
books on this subject. Here are two reports taken from the Dutch daily, NRC.
NRC, 19-10-02, Supermassive black hole in centre of galaxy is for real:
Ten years of accurate measurements of the star that is closest to the galactic
centre and follows an elliptical orbit has eliminated any remaining doubt. An
international team of astronomers headed by Rainer Schdel of the Max
Plank Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has determined the mass of the
supermassive black hole to be 3.7 million solar masses, with a margin of 1.5
million (Nature, 17 Oct.).
Astronomers think that the centres of nearly all galaxies house a black
hole with a mass millions to billions of times greater than that of our sun. A
strong piece of evidence for these supermassive black holes is the x-rays
emitted from their immediate vicinity, and the speed with which nearby stars
move round that centre leads to the same conclusion ...
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it
is not utterly absurd. Bertrand Russell
Mainstream scientists tell us that black holes form by the gravitational collapse of
extremely massive stars, and some speculate that large volumes of interstellar gas can
collapse into supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. During this process,
gravity allegedly becomes infinitely strong, crushing matter to an infinitesimal point of
infinite density and infinite spacetime curvature. This singularity, as it is called, is
surrounded by a gravitational field so intense that nothing entering a black holes
boundary can ever escape, not even light. Theorists predict that black holes can emit
extremely tiny amounts of heat radiation, so that a typical black hole will evaporate in
about a million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years.
As pointed out in Big bang, black holes, and common sense, the existence of black
holes as defined above can be rejected simply on the grounds of logic and common
sense. In the real world, nothing finite can become infinite or infinitesimal; nor can the
boundless universe originate from an infinitesimal point, as the big-bang theory claims.
As for the notion of curved space, which Einstein invented to explain gravity, several
scientists, and also G. de Purucker, have dismissed it as a mathematical delusion.
Inside a black hole, spacetime supposedly becomes so distorted that space becomes
time and time becomes space. Aard Bol is silent about all this which is not surprising,
as its unlikely that he has found a way to turn the finite into the infinite, or space into
time!
Leaving aside the weird theories about what goes on inside a black hole, what evidence
is there that such objects exist? Black holes can never be observed directly, so
scientists look for indirect evidence of them: namely, their gravitational effects on matter
in their vicinity, and radiation coming from their direct environment (attributed to material
falling into them). However, as Fred Hoyle and other critically-minded astronomers have
noted, the available evidence merely points to the existence of highly condensed
aggregates of matter which produce very strong gravitational fields but these objects
generally appear to be undergoing explosive activity rather than swallowing things up.
The black-hole theory has great difficulty explaining why gas is universally seen moving
radially outward from galactic nuclei. It insists that matter must first be attracted towards
a hypothetical black hole from surrounding space, and some of it may then somehow
get flung in the opposite direction. In the previous article, I mentioned several
observations showing that the postulated disks and clouds of gas and dust surrounding
black holes are often missing; this implies that the gas or radiation speeding outwards
originates within the central object itself which would, by definition, be impossible if it
were really a black hole. After space-telescope observations in 1995 failed to detect
material around hypothetical black holes at the centre of many quasars, the astronomer
heading the investigation called the discovery a giant leap backward; this major
problem for the black-hole theory has still not been solved.
While failing to give any serious attention to evidence contradicting black holes, Aard
Bol insists that if any gas at all is moving towards galactic nuclei, this can only be
because they house a black hole. It goes without saying that a galactic nucleus exerts a
strong attraction on all the solar systems, gas clouds, etc. that make up that galaxy, but
this hardly proves that the central mass must be a black-hole singularity of zero volume!
Furthermore, evidence suggests that gas is prevented from approaching too close to
the centres of active galaxies by the tremendous energy they radiate, which counteracts
the inward pull of gravity, and by its own angular momentum, which causes it to orbit the
centre at a considerable distance. In 2001, x-ray telescope observations showed that
matter is orbiting the centre of our own galaxy at a distance 1500 times further from the
centre than predicted by black-hole believers (LaViolette, 2003: 175, 224; 2004: 241-2).
This seriously undermines the hypothesis that the intense energy coming from the
centre of our galaxy is fuelled by matter being sucked into a black hole.
However, evidence that undermines the black-hole dogma is very quickly forgotten, and
the following year, as Aard Bol mentions, a team of scientists claimed to have proven
that the mysterious object at the centre of our galaxy known as Sagittarius A* was
indeed a black hole (Nature, 419, 2002: 694-6). Their reasoning was very simple:
measurements of the orbital speed of the star closest to it shows that the mass of Sgr
A* is so great that a black hole is the only theoretical possibility assuming, of course,
that current theories about gravity, curved space, imploding stars, singularities, and the
possible states of physical matter are complete and correct. Bol must be confident that
they are, given the uncritical way he parrots any claims that black holes exist.
According to the second report quoted by Bol, astronomers have unambiguously
witnessed a star being ripped apart by a giant black hole in the centre of galaxy RX
J1242-11. Unfortunately, the bare facts are rather less dramatic: all that has been
observed is a powerful x-ray burst in the centre of that galaxy
(http://chandra.harvard.edu). The entire story about what supposedly caused the blast is
pure speculation! But because black-hole propaganda often fails to make a clear
distinction between observation and interpretation, the unsuspecting public is easily
misled.
Plasma physicist Wal Thornhill presents a critical analysis of this farcical news report in
his article Black holes tear logic apart (www.holoscience.com, News & views). The
black-hole theory focuses exclusively on gravity, which it fancifully treats as the warping
of spacetime, while ignoring electric forces, which are a thousand trillion trillion trillion
times stronger and would prevent a black hole from forming. According to the black-hole
model, x-rays are emitted when gases are heated to millions of degrees by being pulled
into a black hole at very high speed. Thornhill comments: Using gravity to heat gas is
the most unlikely method imaginable to produce X-rays. We use almost infinitely more
efficient electric power to do it. And Nature is not known for being inefficient. He
concludes: The gravitational black hole model is fictional and worthless.
The strong evidence that matter is being generated in the core of galaxies shows that
they do not contain black holes, which, by definition, can only destroy matter. This
problem has been known for decades. In the mid-1980s, for instance, astrophysicist and
black-hole opponent Phillip Morrison said: We dont see things being swallowed up for
the most part, we see things being spat out ... Galactic nuclei can even eject embryogalaxies, which tend to have far higher redshifts than their parent-galaxy. The bigbang/black-hole model is totally unable to cope with this, and efforts have been made
for decades to deny and suppress the abundant observational evidence (Arp 1998,
2003). Astronomer Paul LaViolette, who rejects the notion of black holes with their
irrational singularities, proposes that galactic centres house mother stars highly
compact objects which continuously convert etheric energy into physical matter-energy.
In theosophy, the term central sun is used to refer, among other things, to the galactic
centre. If we draw an analogy with our own sun, we can conclude that Sgr A* comprises
subtler states of matter than the four states known to scientists on earth, that it is an
alchemical laboratory, and that it contains a laya centre. A laya centre is a region,
large or small, where energy-substance materializes or dematerializes, but these two
processes need not always be taking place simultaneously or to the same degree.
Our own physical sun, for example, is clearly emitting huge quantities of radiation and
plasma (the solar wind). According to theosophy, it is powered mainly by an influx of
energy from inner planes, and not of course by the relatively small amount of physical
matter it absorbs from its environment; even when it dies, it will not devour its planets
and implode instead, it will explode. Some of the energies that the sun is shedding are
said to circulate through the solar system before returning in one form or another to
the heart of the sun. All these processes could equally well apply to a central sun. H.P.
Blavatsky says that the central sun is in a laya (highly ethereal) condition, and calls it
an ever-emitting life-centre (The Secret Doctrine, 2:240fn). The radiation coming from
the galactic centre indicates that the central sun is millions of times more powerful than
our own sun.
Theosophy also suggests that when physical matter dematerializes or etherealizes,
attractive and cohesive forces weaken the opposite of what allegedly happens in a
black hole. Whether matter can also dematerialize while undergoing compression is
unclear. What we can rule out with absolute certainty is the possibility that gravity can
become infinitely strong and crush matter to an infinitesimal point a defining feature of
the modern logic-defying black-hole doctrine. Even Einstein himself refused to believe
that the singularities allowed by his equations could exist in reality. It seems likely that,
in time, more and more scientists will come to openly admit that singularities cannot
form, that the idea of stars and gas clouds imploding needs rethinking, and that the
objects at the centre of galaxies do in fact generate and eject matter-energy just as
observations (and theosophy) suggest.
If Aard Bol were to take the trouble to acquaint himself with the work of dissident
cosmologists, he would discover that far from basing their theories on obsolete data,
they take account of data that conventional scientists prefer to ignore. Moreover, the
fact that prominent astronomers make observations with the latest equipment is no
guarantee that their interpretations and conclusions are correct even if they are
published in eminent journals such as Nature. This magazine has in fact played a
shameful role in the censorship of evidence challenging the big-bang theory (Arp, 1998:
190, 245). And when Rupert Sheldrake published A New Science of Life in 1981 in
which he argued that many biological facts require the existence of nonphysical
morphic fields the editor of Nature denounced it as an infuriating tract ... the best
candidate for burning there has been for many years!
In pursuing what H.P. Blavatsky called free and fearless investigation, the best
approach is to examine a subject from different angles. In this way, blind faith in the
latest scientific fashions can give way to critical, independent thought.
Sources:
Halton Arp, Seeing Red: Redshifts, cosmology and academic science, Apeiron, 1998;
Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations, Apeiron, 2003; www.haltonarp.com
Paul LaViolette, Genesis of the Cosmos: The ancient science of continuous creation,
Bear and Company, 2004 (2nd ed. of Beyond the Big Bang); Subquantum Kinetics: A
systems approach to physics and cosmology, Starlane Publications, 2nd ed., 2003;
http://etheric.com
In a response to the preceding article, Aard Bol says that he advocates a more
balanced approach to scientific research with more pros and cons than David Pratt
adopts. However, in his earlier article, Bol starts from the assumption that black holes
exist, makes no effort to distinguish between observations and interpretations,
disregards the challenges facing the black-hole theory, and even repeats the claim that
a powerful x-ray burst in a distant galaxy is unambiguous proof of a black hole. This is
certainly a novel interpretation of balanced; it could easily be mistaken for the uncritical
parroting of official black-hole dogmas!
Aard Bol also says that Pratts articles might lead astronomers to classify theosophists
as troublemakers and believers. This seems to mean that if we make an in-depth study
of the redshift controversy, for example, and come to the conclusion that the prevailing
expanding-universe interpretation is wrong, we should either reject our own conclusion,
or at least keep quiet about it, for fear of what the scientific majority might think of us.
Such mindless servility to orthodoxy is a far cry from free and fearless investigation.
As the following example shows, its not just members of the public who often prefer to
put their faith in scientific authorities than to exercise their critical judgement ...
Weird science
As astronomer Tom Van Flandern has said: Something is wrong with science
fundamentally wrong. Theories just keep getting stranger and stranger. He cites the bigbang theory as a prime example:
This theory requires us to accept the following: time and space have not
always existed; both began a finite time ago; and both the age and size of
the present universe are finite; also that all matter and energy in the entire
universe were contained in an infinitesimal point at the beginning; that for
some unknown reason it all exploded; that space and time themselves
expanded out of that explosion; that at first space expanded faster than the
speed of light; that the explosion was so uniform it emitted an almost
perfectly uniform radiation everywhere; and the same explosion was nonuniform enough to create the observed, quite irregular matter distribution in
the universe; ... that all matter in the universe expands away from all other
matter as space itself continues to expand, although there is no center; that
the expansion of space itself occurs between all galactic clusters and larger
structures, but does not occur at all on scales as small as individual galaxies
or the solar system ...3
The big-bang theory claims that during the first fraction of a second after the primordial
explosion, spacetime inflated exponentially, doubling its size roughly once every 10-43
or 10-35 second.4 In just one ten-billion-trillion-trillionth of a second the universe
expanded by over a thousand trillion trillion per cent. And this hyper-rapid inflation, says
Hawking, produced all the contents of the universe quite literally out of nothing.5 A truly
remarkable achievement! No wonder Pope Pius XII, another believer in ex nihilo
creation, gave the big bang his blessing!
Equally extravagant ideas are found in the black-hole theory. Black holes allegedly have
a singularity at their centre a point of infinite density and infinite spacetime curvature
where matter is crushed to an infinitesimal point by an infinite force of gravity. Within a
black holes outer boundary or event horizon (located at a distance where the escape
velocity equals the speed of light), spacetime supposedly becomes so distorted that
space becomes time and time becomes space. The event horizon itself is said to be
simultaneously stationary and yet flying outwards at the speed of light. One black-hole
theorist remarks:
If all of this sounds very strange, dont worry. It is strange. ... Its a bit like
Alice in Through the Looking-Glass: she has to run as fast as she can just
to stay in one place.6
In other words, its another case of pure twaddle being passed off as science!
Infinity games
Elementary logic tells us that no finite object or force can ever become infinitely large or
infinitely small for these are mathematical abstractions not maximum and minimum
sizes that can eventually be reached. Thus singularities whether at the origin of the
universe or in the centre of black holes cannot exist. Aard Bol responds to this as
follows:
David Pratt claims that the existence of black holes must be rejected simply
on the grounds of logic and common sense. Well now, what he actually
means is on the basis of his own common sense and that of a few
alternative astronomers ...
Bols pretence that there are no fundamental logical problems with the black-hole theory
is not very convincing. Even mainstream scientists admit that at singularities the laws of
physics break down. It would be more accurate to say that their own theories break
down. Some big-bang/black-hole proponents are honest enough to admit this. For
instance, the author of a pro-big-bang article confessed: ... theory predicts that, at the
big bang itself, the temperature was infinite. Infinities warn physicists that their theory is
flawed.7
Aard Bol informs us:
Unfortunately not everything can be explained with common sense and
logic. For example, light can be described as waves and as particles, even
though the descriptions are mutually exclusive. Yet it continues to shine
without any trouble.
Mainstream scientists have certainly failed to come up with a consistent theory of light,
but this hardly proves that no consistent, logical theory is possible or that light itself
behaves illogically! There are in fact more sensible theories of light already available.
One of the most detailed and notable models, which is based on meticulous
experimentation, is that photons are short-lived, vortex-like standing waves in the ether,
and are generated locally when matter particles shed the kinetic energy gained from
interaction with massfree electric waves a form of electric radiation which is emitted by
the sun and whose spectrum has been identified.8
Light was of course first observed before a theory was sought to explain it. The opposite
is true of black holes: general relativity theory predicted the existence of black holes and
scientists then went looking for some evidence. Interestingly, Einstein himself held that
although singularities existed in his equations, they did not exist in physical reality. He
argued that matter cannot be concentrated arbitrarily, so that black-hole singularities
could never form.9
space, expanding space, etc. The latest craze is multi-dimensioned branes, including
zero-branes and anti-branes (dreamed up perhaps by the brainless).
Abstractions have their uses but a problem arises when they are treated as if they were
concrete things that can directly influence or compose matter and explain physical
events. As G. de Purucker puts it:
The Occidental mind loves abstractions, loves to entify abstractions, to look
upon them as concrete realities; and this psychological bias or habit is the
cause of most of the philosophic and psychological confusion so noteworthy
in the West at the present time.10
The infinities that plague various scientific theories arise from this infatuation with
mathematical abstractions. As well as being evident in the big-bang/black-hole
paradigm, this can also be seen in the standard model of particle physics, which
describes electrons and quarks as structureless, infinitely small particles. Since
infinitesimal points are abstractions and the objects we see around us are obviously
composed of abstractions, this cannot be literally true. Moreover, an infinitely small
electron would be surrounded by an infinitely strong electromagnetic field and would
therefore have an infinite mass, whereas an electron has a measurable mass of 10-27
gram.
To get round this embarrassing problem, physicists use a mathematical trick: they
simply subtract the infinities from their equations and substitute the empirically known
values. As physicist Paul Davies remarks: To make this still somewhat dubious
procedure look respectable, it is dignified with a fine-sounding name
renormalization.11 Physics Nobel prize winner Murray Gell-Mann says that
renormalizability is a wonderful property of the standard model, but admits that there is
a price to be paid: the occurrence of more than a dozen arbitrary numbers that cannot
be calculated and must be taken instead from experiment.12 Quantum gravity theory,
however, is not renormalizable: to obtain finite answers requires an infinite number of
infinite subtractions with a correspondingly infinite number of undetermined finite
remainders.13
There is widespread recognition of the need to move beyond the standard model, but
the current preference for inventing extra curled-up dimensions and fictitious entities
with either less than or more than three dimensions, as in string theory and brane
theory, does nothing to advance our understanding of the physical world. More
promising are efforts to model subatomic particles as condensed finite structures
vortices, tori, or standing waves in an underlying ether.
According to general relativity theory, gravity results from matter curving or warping the
fabric of spacetime in some inexplicable way. There are, however, plenty of
credentialed scientists who dismiss this attempt to reduce gravity to abstract geometry,14
and who share De Puruckers assessment:
[Einsteins] ideas with regard to the nature of gravitation as being ... a
warping or distortion of space in the proximity of material bodies seem to be
a mathematical pipe-dream, purely and simply, although doubtless very
creditable indeed to the gentlemans mathematical ability ...15
Here, too, there is a need for more concrete models of gravity and other natural forces,
and several ether scientists are working on this task.16
Redshift battles
The tired-light hypothesis scores better than the expanding-universe hypothesis on a
number of observational tests, but neither hypothesis alone is sufficient to explain all the
data.18 Over the past few decades abundant observational evidence has emerged that
galaxies at the same distance can have very different redshifts. In particular, there is
evidence that low-redshift parent galaxies can eject high-redshift embryo-galaxies
(usually quasars), whose redshift declines as they age.
This undermines the expanding-universe hypothesis, as it contradicts the assumption
that redshift is invariably a measure of velocity and distance. Moreover, while the blackhole paradigm can accommodate matter being flung away from around black holes, it
cant handle the ejection of embryo-galaxies from galactic nuclei, and that is why such
evidence has been banished from major professional journals for several decades.
Those who have an idealized picture of how science works may find this hard to
believe, but the evidence is readily available for anyone willing to take a look.19 Again,
this does not happen because the scientists concerned are trying to conceal the truth
but because they are absolutely convinced that they already know the truth.
Astronomer Halton Arp has played a pivotal role in bringing redshift anomalies and
galaxy ejection processes to light and he has paid a very heavy price in his
professional career. Arps own colleagues at the Mount Wilson and Palomar
Observatories became so disturbed and disbelieving of the results he was getting that in
the early 1980s they recommended that he should not be allowed to make any further
use of these telescopes to pursue his worthless observing programme. This
recommendation was implemented, and after taking early retirement, Arp moved to
Germany, and now works at the Max-Planck-Institut fr Astrophysik.
One leading astronomer objected that if Arps results were correct, we would have no
explanation for the redshift. Hoyle, Burbidge and Narlikar comment:
In other words, if no known theory is able to explain the observations, it is
the observations that must be in error! ... Thus, Arp was the subject of one of
the most clear cut and successful attempts in modern times to block
research which it was felt, correctly, would be revolutionary in its impact if it
were to be accepted.20
Figure 3 This CCD image of NGC 4319 and Markarian 205 was taken by an
amateur astronomer at an English observatory in 1998.23
Figure 4 This image shows x-ray filaments emerging from Markarian 205
and ending on two quasars with much higher redshifts (.464 and .633).
Dismissing the possibility of active galaxies ejecting higher-redshift objects,
the experts insist that the luminous connections must be due to either
noise or instrument defects!24
holes or neutron stars are orbiting the alleged supermassive black hole at the centre of
our galaxy (known as Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*).28
What Chandra has actually observed is four x-ray sources with a highly variable x-ray
output within three light years of Sgr A*. These are regarded as good candidates for xray binaries, consisting of either a black hole or a neutron star orbited by, and pulling
matter from, a companion star. The figure of 10,000 or more black holes or neutron
stars close to Sgr A* is a rough estimate based on the assumption that massive stars
collapse into either neutron stars or black holes when they die, and will then spiral
inwards towards the galactic centre as a result of dynamical friction with other stars. It
is further hypothesized that several hundred of these black holes or neutron stars then
capture a star from ordinary binary star systems, but that only 1% of these black
hole/neutron star binary systems are x-ray active in any particular year, thereby
explaining why only four highly variable x-ray sources have been observed near Sgr
A*.
Figure 5 Chandra has discovered four bright, variable x-ray sources (circles)
within 3 light years of Sgr A* (the bright source just above Source C).
The core assumption behind this exciting tale is that when a star of between about 1.5
and 3 solar masses dies, it collapses under gravity to form a highly dense neutron star,
but when more massive stars die, gravitational collapse continues until gravity becomes
infinite, producing a black-hole singularity of infinite density and infinite spacetime
curvature. If gravity cant become infinite then there are no true black holes, let alone
10,000 of them near the centre of our galaxy and 100 million in our galaxy as a whole!29
In his article Astronomy by press release news from a black hole,30 Halton Arp
relates an instance in which the equating of x-ray sources with black holes left blackhole proponents looking rather foolish.
Accretion processes onto Black Holes are supposed to enable them to
radiate high energy X-rays. When X-ray telescopes found strong X-ray
sources in galaxies they said, aha, this is too strong to be an X-ray star so it
must be a black hole in orbit around a star a binary with a massive Black
Hole revolving around it. Discovery of these now MASSIVE Black Holes was
so exciting that innumerable papers have appeared showing the X-ray
positions and deep photographs at the positions of the objects.
Strangely, when these objects were seen optically, no one took spectra in
order to see what they actually were. Finally a paper appeared in a refereed
journal31 where the authors showed the spectra of two of them to be that of
high redshift quasars! Just to cement the case, they looked at previously
identified quasars in or close to galaxies, and in 24 out of 24 cases the
quasars belonged to the class of Ultra Luminous X-ray Sources. ...
This result is a double disaster in that the massive Black Holes turned out
to be high redshift quasars, not a Black Hole in a binary star. Perhaps worse,
they have been accepted as members of nearby galaxies and therefore
cannot be out at the edge of the universe.
In other words, conventional astronomers were so sure that the x-ray sources in
question were black holes that they didnt even bother to check their spectra (including
their redshifts). It was Arp and his colleagues who took the initiative to do that. (Note
that Arp is an observational astronomer par excellence; as Van Flandern says, Arp
knows the extragalactic sky perhaps better than any other living astronomer.32) The
outcome was most embarrassing for the black-hole establishment but, not surprisingly,
This result was not put out as a press release. Arp concludes his article as follows:
... I remember an Astrophysics lunch at Cal Tech about 30 years ago.
Stephen Hawking sat across the table from several of us who were
discussing observations of ejection of new galaxies from the compact nuclei
of active galaxies. Nothing of this ever crept into Hawkings assumptions
about Black Holes. Only very recently has he abandoned his dictum that
nothing comes out of Black Holes and famously now concedes that a little
bit does come out. Meanwhile, in the many intervening years, stunning new
evidence has emerged on the White Hole propensities of nature. Its only
failure I can see is not getting into the press releases.
***
Flawed scientific theories cannot survive for ever, but powerful vested interests often
prolong their demise. Recognizing how difficult it is for the old guard to admit to
fundamental errors and radically change their views (something that can also apply to
members of the public), Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics, once said:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light; but rather because its opponents eventually die
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
References
1. Stephen Hawking, The direction of time, New Scientist, 9 July 1987, pp. 46-9;
John Boslough, Masters of Time: Cosmology at the end of innocence, Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992, pp. 179-82.
2. Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and other essays, New York:
Bantam Books, 1994, p. 75.
3. Tom Van Flandern, Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets, Berkeley, CA:
North Atlantic Books, 1993, p. xv.
4. Cosmos, Encyclopaedia Britannica, CD-ROM 2004.
5. Black Holes and Baby Universes, p. 88.
6. Ted Bunn, Black holes FAQ,
http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html.
7. Marcus Chown, The big bang, New Scientist, 22 Oct 1987, Inside science, p. 1.
8. Paulo N. Correa and Alexandra N. Correa, Experimental Aetherometry, vols. 1 &
2A, Toronto: Akronos Publishing, 2001 & 2003, and vol. 2B,
www.aetherometry.com; Earths meteoric veil, section 3, davidpratt.info.
9. Tom Van Flandern, Physics has its principles, in: Konrad Rudnicki (ed.),
Gravitation, Electromagnetism and Cosmology: Toward a new synthesis,
Montreal: Apeiron, 2001, pp. 87-101,
www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/PhysicsHasItsPrinciples.asp.
10. Dialogues of G. de Purucker, Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press
(TUP), 1948, 3:324.
11. Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth, New York: Simon &
Schuster/Touchstone, 1992, p. 244.
12. Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, London: Abacus, 1995, p. 200.
13. Black Holes and Baby Universes, p. 54.
14. See: Space, time, and relativity, davidpratt.info; Infinite Energy, nos. 38 & 39,
2001, and no. 59, 2005.
15. G. de Purucker, The Esoteric Tradition, TUP, 2nd ed., 1973, p. 861fn.
16. See Gravity and antigravity, davidpratt.info.
17. Paul LaViolette, Genesis of the Cosmos: The ancient science of continuous
creation, Rochester, VE: Bear and Company, 2004, pp. 279-83
(http://etheric.com).
18. See Exploding the big bang and Cosmology and the big bang, davidpratt.info.
19. Universe the cosmology quest, DVD, 2003, www.universe-film.com; Halton Arp,
Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, Berkeley, CA: Interstellar Media, 1987;
Halton Arp, Seeing Red: Redshifts, cosmology and academic science, Montreal:
Apeiron, 1998; Halton Arp, Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations,
Apeiron, 2003 (www.haltonarp.com); Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge and Jayant V.
Narlikar, A Different Approach to Cosmology, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000, pp. 117-62; David G. Russell, Evidence for intrinsic redshifts in
normal spiral galaxies, 2004, http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0408348.
20. A Different Approach to Cosmology, p. 134.
21. Halton Arp, Research with Fred, www.haltonarp.com/?
Page=Abstracts&ArticleId=5; Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations, pp.
202-4.
22. Halton Arp, Rebuttals, www.haltonarp.com/?Page=Abstracts&ArticleId=6.
23.
24.
25.
26.
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32.
Trends in cosmology
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