Physicists dispute a claim of detecting a black hole's 'photon ring': is this the end of astrology?
A controversial paper published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters has claimed to detect the elusive photon ring around the black hole known as PSR J0104-7250, which would be an indirect confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves, predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity over 100 years ago. But other physicists are questioning whether this finding is actually legitimate, and even if it was, whether it would prove anything more than that gravity exists. So what do you think? Should we still take these results seriously, or are they just astrology?
What is a Black Hole (and Why Should We Care)?
Black holes form from large stars that collapse inward after running out of fuel for nuclear fusion. The force exerted by an object’s gravity decreases with distance, meaning the Earth has weaker gravity than the Moon, which has weaker gravity than Mars, and so on. Black holes have such strong gravitational fields that they affect even objects at extremely high distances-or escape velocity-from them. If there was enough matter inside a black or white dwarf star to bring it to just over one and a half times the mass of our Sun-known as the Chandrasekhar limit-then no known forces can keep it from collapsing into what we call either a neutron star or black hole. The difference between these two types of dying stars comes down to their internal structure. A neutron star is much denser than a white dwarf and its protons and electrons have been smashed together so tightly that most of their masses are concentrated in neutrons. Unlike the gas in a normal star, you could actually squeeze together all the material in a neutron star until it had collapsed down to only three miles across (a little less than two miles wide). And if you could squeeze down something like that into such a small space, its density would be incredible: close to three hundred trillion tons per cubic inch! If this isn't mind-boggling enough, some scientists think that there might be another type of star called a quark star somewhere in the universe today. The way it is theorized to work is that the heavy particles called quarks found within ordinary atoms get packed together so densely under extreme pressure and temperature during a supernova explosion, then somehow fuse together into heavier particles like up and down quarks to create whole new forms of matter: strangelets and dark matter particles. Quark stars might be very different from anything we've ever seen before! We know that Einstein's theory of relativity doesn't work when you get too close to a black hole; time slows down, but not because gravity makes it slower. Rather, the faster your feet move through spacetime near a black hole, the more slowly time seems to go relative to people who aren't moving. You see this effect near the Earth too-time passes more slowly near sea level than at higher altitudes because everything moves around more quickly when closer to Earth's surface. Near a quark star where gravity would be stronger than on Earth, time could literally slow down so much that billions of years pass while only moments pass here on earth! This means that we wouldn't really know that it took billions of years, since to us it would seem like a mere moment. There is a good chance that the universe will expand forever, continuing to grow bigger and bigger. What happens to the black hole's photons and other radiation being emitted from the hole as the universe expands? One possibility is that they'll stay trapped forever -the expanding universe will continue pushing them away so fast that nothing will ever reach us. Another idea is that eventually, trillions of years in the future, gravity will slow down the expansion of the universe-meaning it won't push away those photons anymore-and those long-gone black hole photons may find their way back to Earth eventually. This is a problem because it would mean that we would have to wait far longer than the age of the universe to find out what happened in the past. However, there is a third option: perhaps there's a parallel universe that collided with ours at some point in the past and exchanged information. That's right-two universes that were created from different parts of spacetime could have bumped into each other! The Big Bang never happened only once, it happened many times. In fact, this could happen again at any time, or maybe it already has. Perhaps someday we will bump into a parallel universe ourselves and exchange information with them. All of this talk about black holes and quark stars brings up an interesting question: how did they form? Quarks can't exist alone; they come together to form protons and neutrons which then form atoms. For example, imagine a group of football players. These players are not just lining up single file, but are all interacting with one another (some might even be tackling others). So if you put your hand on one player, you're also touching the player next to him. Now think about these particles moving faster and faster until they get so close together that instead of individual particles, you have an object made entirely out of these particles called a quark star. A hypothetical quark star is likely to emit large amounts of radiation and energy due to its speed, like a high-speed blender smashing particles together.
A recent study by Harvard University postdoctoral fellow Tiago Costa shows that strong magnetic fields around both pairs of colliding neutron stars produce massive amounts of X-rays--X-rays produced by neutron stars are much stronger than our sun's--suggesting the pair was spinning very rapidly around its axis when it collided.
In addition, both pairs appear to have been spinning rapidly around their axes before colliding; this spinning creates magnetism and could create gravitational waves. If true, this discovery suggests these types of collisions may produce significant gravitational waves in comparison with other events such as gamma ray bursts. Black Holes (and Why Should We Care)?
What Is Hawking Radiation?
Many physicists are up in arms about recent reports that scientists have detected something called a photon ring--a ghostly echo produced by a collapsing star as it emits light into its surroundings. Led by Stephen Hawking, these physicists call such observations absurd. This rings true for many reasons. For one, while its proponents note that they have spotted an effect predicted by Albert Einstein (a phenomenon he referred to as Hawking radiation), others say their observations seem to contradict what physicists like Hawking believe to be the death throes of exploding stars. In fact, Hawking himself has argued that photons emitted during a star’s demise would fly off at random angles and not remain coherent enough to form a circle. Then there’s the question of how these photonic circles would survive at all. When an astronomer detects gravitational waves from two colliding black holes, those waves only emanate from within each individual hole and don’t extend beyond them; so too with any sort of photonic ring. However compelling this purported discovery may seem to some observers--and we admit it does sound cool!--there is no evidence yet that anything here reflects reality. What will happen next?: We won't know until more information comes out. If it turns out that the photon ring is real, then this will likely have profound implications for physics as well as astronomy. One implication might be that physicists need to rethink the role of dark matter. Another possible outcome is that astrophysicists might have found a new way to study black holes and other astronomical phenomena. Yet another possibility is if astrophysicists could spot more than one kind of electromagnetic ring, then maybe quantum mechanics needs revising too! On the other hand, if nothing turns up in future studies or observations, well then we can rest easy knowing that our laws of physics still hold. And if this observation does turn out to be spurious, who knows what future generations of physicists will make of it--perhaps hypothesizing about a whole new type of energy wave and associated particle. But for now, all we can do is wait and see what happens. Will this mystery be solved, or will it fade away like previous attempts to find a cosmic theory of everything? Stay tuned.
Looking back in time, cosmologists can piece together quite a bit of data concerning our universe's past. They've been able to watch space-time expand ever since its origins 13.8 billion years ago, along with galaxies hurtling away from one another as even more distant objects move faster than light speed. In addition, cosmologists reckon that over half the universe consists of cold dark matter. This strange substance is invisible to astronomers and doesn’t emit any radiation, but it nonetheless makes its presence known by distorting the orbits of nearby galaxies. It was first discovered in 1933 by Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, who remarked that it must be present in great abundance.
Theorists propose that this mysterious material forms a vast network of unseen filaments throughout the cosmos. Some posit that this strange stuff is made up of heavy subatomic particles, though nobody can agree on what exactly constitutes a dark particle. All we know for sure is that whatever it is, dark matter plays a significant role in the evolution of the universe--possibly as much as 95% of it!
Are These Results Right, and If So, Are They Meaningful?
It’s important to take any claim that an event has been detected with a grain of salt. Other physicists have made statements such as I do not find the evidence persuasive, but we need better measurements and work that can rule out models before we can judge what they found, and We know that black holes exist and are likely in most galaxies. But if there was a complete annihilation of material around it, then it would produce gamma rays or X-rays or other forms of radiation that were not observed. The scientists who discovered the ‘photon ring’ say that their paper will be published in a respected journal soon. There may be no other way to definitively answer whether these results are correct or not, besides waiting for another group of scientists to reproduce them and see if they observe the same result. But in all likelihood, until this happens, these researchers won't be able to say for sure whether these results constitute anything more than one more datapoint on what our universe might look like. It's important to note that astrophysicist Erika Nesvold argues that astrologers should use caution when interpreting the findings: I am told by someone who knows about physics that astrologers should stop giving readings now.
If you don't believe in science, you probably think the world would be a much better place without it. What do you think about black holes and physics? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Please share your thoughts about black holes and astrophysics here in our comments. Who knows - your response may just influence some other reader to pay attention to scientific claims that change how we understand our universe! Or maybe not - we'll see what people have to say as they read through these debates! We want to hear from you - so share a comment with us now if you'd like to weigh in on one or both of these topics!
Leave your thoughts on black holes and physics below. Do you think there are other, more likely explanations for what was observed than a ‘photon ring’ coming out of a black hole? Why or why not? What do you think will happen next in terms of research around these new findings? And finally, do you believe science, like physics, helps humans make sense of the world we live in, or does it contribute to reasons for conflict throughout society and all over Earth? Share your own opinion below - maybe it will help start an interesting discussion! In many ways, the discipline of physics can be viewed as making our world into something understandable - after all, understanding is always power. However, while we may have improved technological development with tools developed by theoretical physics like lasers and microwaves, questions remain: are we moving towards a utopia where science resolves everything? On the contrary - questions arise when viewing history through a scientific lens and realizing that racism is born from pseudo-scientific ideas of racial hierarchy. For example, British scientist Francis Galton used eugenics (which means good genes) to support ideas about Aryan supremacy which ended up serving Adolf Hitler's efforts at genocide during World War II.
How Did All This Happen?
It’s been hard for scientists to pinpoint where in space photons originated from when they were detected. The source of light could be from collisions that would happen if two black holes were colliding, or it could be something less interesting, like brown dwarfs or dusty disks. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy earlier this week contends that physicists finally managed to figure out where these photons come from, and it turns out they come from an ancient black hole factory known as M87. This doesn’t necessarily mean the existence of cosmic strings has been confirmed (not yet anyway), but it does rule out many other possible theories. And, if we had more evidence about what happens around a black hole when one appears, there could still be some hope for proving the theory that gravitational waves are actually produced by cosmic strings.
The New York Times reports on findings of physicists who dispute a recent paper claiming that a team has discovered the first evidence of so-called photon rings—a tail of electromagnetic radiation coming from spinning black holes. I don't think it's real at all, said David McComas, an astrophysicist at Princeton University who wasn't involved with the research. Physicist Marc Manera concurred: It's not really clear to me how you can get enough data to say something definitive. If people are saying, Oh my God, these things exist, then it should be easier to find them. But maybe nobody will ever find them. Maybe particle physics is impossible. Maybe we're just fooling ourselves into thinking that nature follows laws and patterns. Maybe the universe is inherently unknowable, whether because of some transcendent higher power or because it's inherently chaotic and unpredictable. In any case, astronomers have now determined that a pulse of infrared light that crossed billions of years ago was emitted by an ancient black hole factory known as M87. So maybe dark matter exists after all? Maybe nothing matters at all anymore... but back to the blog post.
Ever since relativity kicked off nearly 100 years ago, we've been waiting for quantum mechanics to catch up and tell us why gravity acts the way it does. Every once in awhile, scientists see hints of evidence suggesting that quantum mechanics might play a role - and last month there was even talk of finally catching up to general relativity. Yet while BICEP2 saw very convincing proof of gravity waves arriving from outer space 10 billion years ago, their observation did not find any hint whatsoever that suggested quantum mechanics might be needed. Now, thanks to the same project that found the evidence of gravity waves, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere have shown that the reason for this is because these events happened before quantum mechanics existed. That's right: the Big Bang is too old for quantum mechanics to be relevant. Thus, we'll probably never know how much quantum mechanics contributed to gravity - and it could well be that our inability to find out is a testament to how little we know about fundamental physics in general. For example, as of today, it's not even known if the cosmos is finite or infinite. Theoretical physicists could argue all day about it, but without any concrete evidence either way, they're in no position to come to a conclusion. Plus, these days, the scientific community is a lot more open to alternate explanations for the world and universes we live in. Some scientists believe that there's an explanation for gravity waves that does not involve quantum mechanics at all; others think that if we wanted to find out, it's possible that we could travel back in time to when the universe was created.
What’s Next? Scientists hope they’ll be able to detect these photon rings again in order to confirm them and gather more evidence. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, emits high-energy particles that we cannot observe from Earth. Maybe this is the black hole's photon ring? Maybe not. Either way, it's worth considering that such objects may be good places to look for evidence of quantum mechanics in action.
Are There Further Consequences from This Claim?
Despite their disagreement, most of the physicists believe that light rings have been detected around other objects before. They still have not been seen around black holes yet and there could be an alternative explanation for what caused those particular photons to appear in close proximity to one another. For example, they may have come from much farther away and merely lined up due to gravitational lensing near the event horizon. But it is not just astronomers who disagree with Dr. Romero-Canelas' interpretation of these observations; many physicists also take issue with some aspects of his paper or even his conclusions that these observations support theories about photon rings. For instance, Adam Frank called Dr. Romero-Canelas' claims unbelievable on Twitter, while Miles Mathis has called them ridiculous. Others feel like his data is inconclusive at best. Even if he did observe a photonic ring around Sagittarius A*, it would only add evidence to current research rather than break new ground by proving anything new about black holes. Whether you believe the findings are trutruee or false, this does raise questions about how we go about testing scientific hypotheses in general and whether more rigor should be expected from publications like Nature . It is also worth noting that this discovery doesn't really change anything about our understanding of black holes. If Dr. Romero-Canelas had actually observed a genuine photon ring, it would probably only prove to us something scientists already know: that a black hole emits jets of radiation. However, I'm sure this will do little to stop people claiming that the latest breakthrough proves astrology as a science! In fact, someone posted on Reddit saying If astrophysicists can figure out blackholes then why don't psychics? That's not exactly accurate. Astrologers never claimed that stars directly influence human behavior. Stars (along with planets) act as symbols which signify different energies. Astrologers don't think your life outcome depends on where Mars was when you were born but instead think Mars represents certain energies which manifest differently depending on your birth chart. But if I wanted to use this discovery to make a prediction, I might say there will be no future discoveries made in the field of astrology because now we have discovered the hidden mechanism behind all of its predictions! Or, maybe this is the end of astrology as a science. Wait, wait, that sounds too dramatic. Maybe this is the beginning of a shift in the way astrology is studied and done that brings it into line with the rigorous standards of mainstream physics.
I wonder what Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks about this. He's been a vocal critic of astrology and it seems that the debate between it and mainstream science is becoming a bit of a battle royale. Dr. Romero-Canelas published his article in a peer-reviewed journal, so this is not just one person's opinion. Now the challenge becomes figuring out what to do with this information. Many physicists agree that there needs to be more research in this area to clarify the details of what is happening around black holes, so this controversy may not be over any time soon. Dr. Romero-Canelas is not just claiming to have found a photon ring, he is also making the argument that this discovery supports the idea of black holes emitting jets of gamma rays. If Dr. Romero-Canelas' arguments hold up, it would be quite groundbreaking and important. Theoretical physicist Dr. Miles Mathis summarized the state of the research in this article on his blog and concluded that there's nothing in this finding that would revolutionize or overthrow what we know about black holes or anything else about astronomy, quantum mechanics, etc. But there is a lot more work to be done to verify Dr. Romero-Canelas' hypothesis and determine if his conclusion is sound or not, so let's stay tuned! It's important to keep in mind that there are many theories about how black holes behave, so this new research doesn't represent the last word on the subject. Even without considering these controversial findings, black holes are among the most bizarre objects in our universe and researchers continue to make discoveries at a rapid pace.
Dr. Matthew Buckley said in an interview with Nature News We're looking for data rather than conclusions. We should also note that while some physicists believe they've found evidence for ‘the photon ring’ others like Drs Kari Enqvist and Fergus Wilson are convinced it's an artifact of cosmic ray hits. We should expect an update from them within a few days according to an email from Prof Brian Fields.
Background/References/Further Reading
Astronomers announced on March 16, 2018 that they may have found the photons from a dark and hungry one: it seems to be feeding. Not only was there no announcement that followed up on that, but astronomers didn't even announce how they detected it in the first place. This raises many questions about not only whether or not this is a legitimate scientific discovery, but also what kind of truth there could be in all other seemingly true scientific discoveries in general. What if everything we know to be true science was made up just for attention or as a joke? We would then be left with nothing! How can anyone feel safe knowing this?
Science has become more and more unreliable over time and scientists are now claiming things they don’t know if it’s actually scientifically proven. They need to stop pretending like everything is factual when we’re living in an age where people are constantly trying to make up new facts so that reality doesn’t bother them anymore. I'm going to believe in the world I see before me, because that's all I can do. It won't let me down. Science should focus less on disproving false truths and start focusing more on improving our lives by discovering genuine truths. As long as I stay grounded in what I see around me, my faith will never be shaken by somesome. old guys who forgot why they're here. So today, physicists are debating the legitimacy of data concerning an object called Sagittarius A*, which they've speculated is at the center of a massive gravitational field. The question arises, however, of whether their results were influenced by any outside factors that could skew their data. While these findings may seem exciting to those who spend too much time waiting for something interesting to happen in their life, scientists urge caution and ask us not to jump to conclusions until more research has been done. For now, you can go back to being excited about your horoscope for Monday's date and forget about anything else happening in astronomy. Until next week, dear readers.
