By merging two seemingly conflicting theories, physics professor Laura Mersini-Houghton has proven, mathematically, that black holes can never come into being

http://phys.org/news/2014-09-black-holes.html

Experimental evidence may one day provide physical proof as to whether or not black holes exist in the universe. But for now, Mersini-Houghton says the mathematics are conclusive.

mind blowing 'eh, I went on a googling spree to find a black hole picture. turns out, there are none, that or I am terrible with googling.

until there is some more information i'll take those statements with a big grain of salt because
the most interesting sentence in that article: "The paper, which was recently submitted to ArXiv, an online repository of physics papers that is not peer-reviewed ..."
and only some sort of summaries are linked (maybe one has to register for that site to get more)

but somehow it reminds me of a lecture in theoretical physics where the professor (a nobel prize candidate btw) after having smeared the whiteboard with a sequence of formulae explained
"actually here is a singularity and we cannot integrate across it but the mathematicians have proved how it can be approached so let's just ignore it and go on"

my question about that formula is:
does it take into consideration for every black hole in existence or just the 1 in question because i believe if you cant account for every 1 in existance the math wont come out.

This post was edited by redneckraindear on Oct 9 2014 10:27am

Its been proven that they exist hehe. Astronomers have discovered an empty are of space but things around it seen to be being pulled into it also what if black holes dont exist in our space time as it is theorized that even time aswell as light can be sucked into them

Bit of a sensationalist article tbh...

All it proves is that either the math is wrong or that black holes are a little different from what we think they are. As we actually don't know that much about them yet I would say not much has changed.

Kay God.

This post was edited by HighschoolTurd on Oct 10 2014 05:19pm

You would disagree that grass grows or that the sun shines it's light upon the earth were I the one to make the claim.

hes right tho aswell as 90% of the rest of our astronomical knowledge alot of it is just theory seeing as how we dont have technology to study it up close and we prolly wont ever really know more than we do now until we send a probe into one and see what data it sends back...thats if it doesnt get ripped to pieces. the actual defintion of one is a massive distortion of space time which if you refer to my above post could put them in a state of temperal flux which mean it could be there and not be there if you get what im saying.

Technically if we found a black hole, and sent a probe to research it, as long as it did not go past the event horizon it shouldn't be harmed.. if we were to try and study one with probes, it would probably be wise to send two, one to go beyond the event horizon and one to stay outside of it. Once a particle goes beyond the event horizon, it cannot come back and no information may be gained by anything that occurs inside. A distant observer would not be able to view/receive any information of any changes that occur within the event horizon. Also, due to the gravitational time dilation caused by the black hole, a distant observer would notice that as an object gets closer to the event horizon it slows down, seeming to take an infinite amount of time to reach the black hole. Every process on the object or particle slows down as well. As for the probe being pulled into the black hole, it crosses the event horizon after a finite amount of time without noticing any changes to the space-time continuum. Not only that, but the object being pulled in cannot determine exactly when it crosses the event horizon. Once it crosses, no information can be gained and we would never know what happened to the probe or ever receive a report from it.

If a black hole were ever found, I do not think that we would be able to gain any information about it other than the mass, size, and angular momentum. We can obtain all of this information without sending a probe in, and if we sent a probe in, we would never know what happens to it. We cannot see past the event horizon as a distant observer, and no particles may leave the event horizon, therefor sending a probe at all would be pointless if what we think we know is true.

I still think sending two probes would be smart, because obviously we really don't know anything about black holes since we don't even know if they exist. I'm thinking that the article in the op is true simply because the idea that a black hole radiates heat contradicts the idea that no particles may leave the event horizon. But, like I said, we've never had physical evidence that one even exists, so who knows.

This post was edited by TheCrimson on Oct 13 2014 09:51am