April 04, 2005

A Hole in the Theory

Nature Magazine has published an article by physicist George Chapline disputing the existence of black holes as we have thought about them for years. Rather than a collapsed star that sucks in and destroys everything that falls within its event horizon, they may instead be masses of that elusive 'dark energy' that astrophysicists have been looking for all these years. The article mentions that the matter sucked into a black hole may instead be converted by this dark energy and bounced back as anti-matter (electrons become positrons - reverse-charge electrons), colliding with inbound matter.
Considering that even Stephen Hawking has admitted to being wrong about black holes (albeit in a different theoretical discussion regarding preservation of informational state) we quiet observers of the science world should remember to keep our eyes and ears tuned to current research. We teach these elements of science to our children, and we should make sure that they get the current theory when we're talking to them, so that they understand just what is meant by the word 'theory'.

No comments: