Since the force of gravity varies as the square of the inverse distance between
objects why not make the ultimate extrapolation and let the distance
go to zero? You get a LOT of density. Maybe it goes BOOM! But wait a
minute, maybe it goes in the opposite direction and goes MOOB! Whatever.
Most astronomers decided anyway that this was the only source that could
explain the observed jets and explosions in galaxies. Of course it gets very
complicated. Also there are a few annoying details right from the beginning:
1. If you watch a Black Hole form, it takes an infinity of time for something
to fall in. So Instead of everything falling in it looks like nothing ever
falls in. The orthodox answer is that, well, it comes as close as you want.
(But maybe not in a Big Bang Universe that is only 15 billion years old.)
Then again how would you like a black hole of 10 billion solar masses
(the mass of a whole galaxy) completely formed only a billion years from
the Big Bang beginning? The discoverers spoke freely in the popular press 1
but typically only mentioned in one sentence in the the journal paper as:
...formation of such a high M black hole after ~ 1Gyr is difficult to
understand. 2
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 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 referred
Journal 3 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 quasar in or close to galaxies and in 24 out of 24 cases the quasars
belonged to the class of Ultra Luminous X-ray Sources.
2. 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. Bye bye Big Bang and all that
fundamental physics. (This result was not put out as a press release.)
What was put out recently as a press release was the observation of Xray
outbursts at the center of a galaxy. This was heralded as gas spinning
around a Black Hole 4. This is the classical interpretation of + and - redshifts
as orbital velocities instead of opposite ejection velocities. I noticed they say
the photons go own in frequency (translation: they are redshifted) by
climbing out of the gravitational hole. If so, the lines would be smeared out
by gravitational gradients. It sounds to me like good old fashioned intrinsic
redshifts.
Ironically, the galaxy is a well known, very active galaxy called NGC
3516. Previously published results 5, reprinted here in
Fig. 1, show apparently
ejected X-ray sources are really high redshift quasars. Perhaps those
quoted in the news story should consider whether they have instead observed
ejection of new quasars which are evolving into new galaxies as they travel
outward.
Ever more recent press releases report the finding in cosmic microwave
backgound radiation, of cooler spots about one degree radius around supposedly
very distant galaxy clusters 6. One of the authors was quoted as
saying Our results may ultimately undermine the belief that the Universe
is dominated by a cold dark matter particle and even more enigmatic dark
energy. Well that is standard closing for many press releases. But seriously,
the 1 degree radius agrees with observed quasar families evidentially being
ejected from active parent galaxies 6. and example in
Fig. 1 here. How does
this connect?
Ejections from Black Holes are hypothesized to come about when a star
or other object falls splat against the surface of a black hole (or accretion
disk). But whole quasars and proto galaxies which evolve into normal galaxies
out of the fraction that escapes coherently are too much to ask for. Hence
the rejection of Ambarzumian's observational conclusion around 1959 that
new galaxies were born out of old galaxies. And thus leading to the importance
of ejection of low particle mass seed galaxies which also accounts
for the high redshifts 7. It would be natural to think that nearby cool spots
on the sky as large as the 1 degree radius observed have something to do
with the associations of nearby parent galaxies with evolving quasars and
galaxies.
But to get down to the fundamental assumptions involved, 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 Hawkin's 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.
References:
1. Malik, T. (2004). Massive black hole stumps researchers, MSNBC News, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5318411
2. Romani, R., Sowards-Emmerd, D., Greenhill, L., Michelson, P. (2004). Q0906+6930: The Highest Redshift Blazar. Astrophysical Journal 610, L9-L11
3. Arp, H. , Gutiérrez, C., López-Corredoira (2004) . New Spectra and general discussion of the nature of ULX's. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 877-883
4. Shirber, M. (2004). Black Hole's Lunch Reveals its Mass, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/blackhole_lunch_041005.html
5. Arp, H. (2003) Catalog of Discordant Redshift Associations. Apeiron, Montreal p. 7
6. Bond, P. (2004). Corrected Echos from the Big Bang. Roy. Astr. Soc. Press Notice PN04-0, http://www.ras.org.uk/html/press/pn0401ras.html
7. Narlikar, J. and Arp, H. (1993) Flat Spacetime Cosmology - A Unified Framework for extragalactic redshifts. Astrophysical Journal 405, 51-56
Figure 1
1998 - The Rosetta Stone. Six brightest X-ray sources are quasars aligned along minor axis in descending order of quantized redshift. Very active seyfert has z = .009
1998 - The Rosetta Stone. Six brightest X-ray sources are quasars aligned along minor axis in descending order of quantized redshift. Very active seyfert has z = .009
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Pseudo Science
Stanley Robertson, Ph.D.
Although the public at large is captivated by black holes, their interest is nurtured by theoretical physicists and astronomers intoxicated by the mystique of black holes. There is almost a religious fervor in some of the articles that report observations of new black holes, or report on things that they do that ought to be impossible for a black hole. For example, in astronomy, radio emitting jet outflows are ubiquitous, occurring in young stellar objects, neutron stars, stellar mass black hole candidates and galactic nuclei. In the case of the first two of these, there are detailed computer simulations that show how the spinning magnetic field of the central star drives the jets. But when the same kinds of jets and synchrotron emissions are found in black hole candidates, it is reported as amazing and different and mysterious and they build these models that effectively use tooth fairies to do what a spinning magnet does naturally. In this essay, I will try to explain some of how this has occurred. Part of the explanation is that it is all too human to want to enjoy a special status as practitioner of a science that encompasses something as bizarre as a black hole within a bedrock theory. I have, in times past, enjoyed a bit of this smug satisfaction for myself.
The existence of black holes remains an article of faith among most physicists for several reasons. With Special Relativity theory, Einstein revolutionized physics. When his General Relativity (hereafter,GR) theory correctly predicted three (later, four) small effects that were not part of Newtonian gravity theory, it created a strong sense among both physicists and the public at large that it must also be correct. Because of this prevailing bias in its favor and the fact that it is very difficult mathematically, it has not been subject to the same degree of testing as, for example, quantum mechanics. It Is also not part of every physicist’s studies. Many know no more than they have read in the popular press, including the prediction of black holes. Also, the most striking features of GR only appear where gravity fields are extremely strong, but it has only been tested in controlled experiments within the solar system, where gravity is weak. It is ironic that Einstein hated black holes, but if you speak ill of them it is considered to be an attack on Einstein and you become an instant pariah.
Little did I suspect that my confidence in black holes would be shaken by a 1996 astrophysics publication that offered “proof” of the existence of event horizons. This is the same as a proof of the existence of black holes, because the very essence of a black hole is the event horizon - the boundary from which nothing can escape. The proof was conceptually simple. There are binary star systems in our galaxy that episodically flare brightly in x-rays from a compact source. Some of the compact sources are known to be neutron stars and others are believed to be black holes. The x-rays are produced when gas from the companion star swirls in toward the compact object and is compressed and heated to millions of degrees by its own viscosity. As the flares subside and the systems revert to quiescence, gas flowing at lower rates would merely pass through the event horizon of a black hole and disappear. But the flow into a neutron star surface would end with x-ray emissions from a surface impact. They should be tens of thousands of times brighter than the quiescent black holes. Unfortunately, the scholarship of the “proof” article was so poor and the treatment of observational data was so dishonest that I expected it to become the butt of crude jokes. Instead it has become the proof of what everyone wanted to believe and it is still cited several hundred times per year.
I analyzed the “proof” observations of quiescent luminosities and tabulated the minimum luminosities reported for five neutron stars and five “black holes”; (all of the measurements available at the time). The data were scattered, but with means not different by more than about 10x; and certainly not 10,000x. I re-plotted these data in a way that clearly destroyed the “proof” and submitted the plot and a note to the same journal, but it was rejected. The referee chosen was the author of the "proof" article. That made me angry. I have seen similar shenanigans in other sciences, but never in physics.
That made me determined to try to find out what are the compact objects that are believed to be stellar mass black holes. I spent a year digging through x-ray astronomy data before concluding with some certitude that the objects are very similar to neutron stars, though more massive, and are strongly magnetic. Since being magnetic is not a possible attribute of a black hole, it was pretty clear that the objects were something else, but exactly what, I still don't really know. Since black holes are apparently the offspring of Einstein's general relativity theory, my first thought was that GR theory would have to be replaced by something that didn't predict such monstrosities. GR sets an upper limit of three times the sun's mass for compact (i.e. nuclear density) stars. The objects more massive than that are called black holes, though none of the distinguishing attributes of a black hole have ever been measured. There are some other candidate gravity theories, one of which I used to model the properties of compact stars. In this theory the black hole candidates were essentially fat neutron stars. In support of this calculation, I offered a table of observations and analysis that strongly implied that the observed objects were magnetic and submitted a paper for publication.
It was eventually published in Astrophysical Journal, (which means that the conclusions cannot be easily rejected by the establishment, or they surely would have been) but for the response it got, I might as well have mailed it off to a black hole. Only Darryl Leiter, a theorist who began an e-mail correspondence, showed interest. He took the evidence seriously, and we worked together via e-mail exchanges for a couple of years trying to put some rigor into the gravity theory that I was using. We finally both gave up. That suited him fine. He is a General Relativity theorist from a long ways back; a Ph.D. student of Nathan Rosen, one of Einstein's most important co-authors. Eventually, we found that although GR, as presently used, seems to allow black holes as solutions of the field equations, this is not a physically realizable result. This conclusion has been published by others in several forms over the past twenty years, but it has not made a dent in the establishment that controls grants, grad students, jobs and journals.
Only after several years of study have I learned that the very concept of a black hole is ill founded and not really an essential part of GR. The first solution of Einstein’s GR field equations was obtained one year after Einstein published the equations. It is the solution for the gravity field of a point mass and was obtained by Karl Schwarzschild, a soldier in the German army in WW1. Schwarzschild died at the Russian front in WW1, but Einstein saw to it that his solution was published – in German. Ironically, the solution known as Schwarzschild’s solution is believed to predict the existence of black holes, though it did not. In a paper published in 1979 in The Physical Review, America's most prestigious physics journal, Leonard Abrams showed that David Hilbert, the most famous mathematician of the first half of the last century, had reworked Schwarzschild’s solution and made a mathematical error in the process. To give Schwarzschild due credit for the first solution, Hilbert called this erroneous solution the "Schwarzschild solution". Unfortunately for Schwarzschild, his name has been attached to Hilbert's error. In the erroneous solution there is a distance from the point mass such that time stands still and space becomes infinitely stretched out. This is known as the "event horizon". Einstein commented that the event horizon “just didn’t smell right” and he rejected the notion of black holes.
Although Hilbert’s erroneous mathematical solution of the Einstein field equations would lead to a black hole condition, there is more to the GR theory than that. Also encompassed by the theory is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But the "black hole" solution would require this part of the theory to be violated by anything falling into the black hole. So what we really have is an inconsistency between an apparent solution of the equations and other requirements of the theory.
In Hilbert's erroneous solution, any mass that becomes compact enough to reside entirely inside its event horizon would be a black hole. So the practice that has become the norm in astrophysics is that any object that has such a compact mass is called a black hole without verification of any further properties of a black hole. Only about one in ten authors now a use the more appropriate term, “black hole candidate”, and Hilbert’s theoretical error is the basis for calling astronomical objects black holes.
There are two classes of objects that appear to have this compactness and even neutron stars are within about a factor of two of being compact enough. Neutron star masses appear to all be less than about 1.5 solar mass. But there are similar compact objects over 5 solar mass that, at neutron densities, are too massive to be neutron stars according to Hilbert's solution. These are, of course, called black holes. There are also galactic nuclei that have million to billion solar mass that are also variable sources of light from x-rays to infrared. To account for their rapid and large variations of brightness, the object sizes must be not much larger than the distance light would have to travel to get from one side to another. Thus these objects are compact enough to also qualify as black holes, if such exist.
There are several reasons why I do not like the practice of uncritically calling these compact objects black holes. First, it is simply sloppy science; a biological equivalent might consist of identifying every organism with a cylindrical body as a snake, or calling every creature that produces eggs a chicken. Secondly, General Relativity has been tested only under weak gravity conditions. There is a dimensionless parameter, a gravitational potential energy that would have the value 1/2 at an event horizon. It has the value 6.9X10^(-10) at the earth surface, 1.7X10^(-6) at the surface of the sun, and about 0.2 at a neutron star surface. To get from the solar system, where the theory has been tested, to the realm of neutron stars and black holes require an extrapolation by about a factor of a million. Such a long extrapolation ending in a bizarre state of stretched space and time standing still should not be trusted. Thirdly, every other stellar mass and larger object is known to possess a magnetic field. But this is something that a black hole cannot possess. In my work, I have shown that the spinning magnetic field of the neutron stars drives a great deal of their radiation. I can account quantitatively for their x-ray emissions and jets. The same methodology applied to the stellar mass black hole candidates also accurately accounts for their similar emissions. Fourth, the accepted theory of how black holes produce these emissions relies on matter passing through an event horizon. This theory cannot apply to the neutron stars. They have surfaces that would light up from the surface impact of matter falling in. So to account for what we see, somehow, a bit of matter falling in would have to know what lay at the bottom of the well and know not to radiate if it reached a neutron star surface at the bottom. This is absurd. Fifth, there are other profound similarities between the neutron star systems and the stellar mass black hole candidates. I can show multiple instances of published statements that essentially say that "…we can rule out the involvement of surfaces and magnetic fields as explanations of these phenomena, because we see the same things from neutron stars and black holes..." ; i.e., we cannot see what the theory says that we cannot see, even when what we are seeing is synchrotron (magnetic) or surface radiation. This is simply appalling.
I think that I have demonstrated that it is possible to publish contrary views in top-flight journals if there are no holes in your logic or facts, but you may wind up being ignored anyway. Especially if you make the mistake that I made early on of suggesting that GR might be less than perfect. This is unhealthy, but it is reality. Things changed a little with Darryl Leiter on board, and this is where the story begins with three of my recent papers, which are listed below. The 2002 Astrophysical Journal article analyzes the same data, plus extensions, as my first published paper on the subject, showing magnetic effects, but not trying to explain them with any theory at all. In the second one (2003) we found new solutions of the Einstein equations and showed that GR actually allows some magnetic beasts that are about as compact and even more bizarre than black holes. They are composed primarily of an electron-positron pair plasma. We could not take the entire power output of all nations on earth and produce a cubic micron of a pair plasma! So we have an object compatible with GR and observations that is not a black hole. This is likely the most hated hypothetical object in all of physics at the present time, but it is being taken seriously. Lastly, the MNRAS article shows how these objects can produce the jets and correlated radio and x-ray emissions of all of the black hole candidates, whether star-like (GBHC) or active galactic nuclei (AGN can be millions to billions of times more massive than the sun). The last of the last sentence of the abstract ends with "....GBHC and AGN have observable intrinsic [magnetism] and hence do not have event horizons." This is a deliberate thumb in the eye of the establishment. I doubt that it would have been possible to get such a sentence into print four years ago. I may not live to see this widely accepted, but I think that eventually it will be.
I am not sure what will happen in the near future. I can get my heretical ideas into the "best" journals, but I am often ignored anyway, just as Abrams was and several others have been. The black hole machine keeps rolling along. They find new “black holes” every day. At present it is merely rude to question their status as black holes. In time it may become impossible. If remembered at all, I may merely be a "flat-earth" kind of physicist. There is an orthodoxy that controls grants, jobs, grad students and journals. Who knows how long it will continue? So, is it possible to get good science published in good journals? Maybe, but maybe not. Questioning the existence of black holes makes me a flat-earth sort of physicist and I would have problems obtaining grants or working in a graduate department. Now imagine what questioning aspects of evolution must be like in Biology. One really can't work as a normal biologist with grants, grad students and a job while questioning what are regarded as the foundations of biology. Never mind that a lot of the foundations have distinctly ad hoc qualities. We invoke evolution to explain changes that took place over time, but no one really knows if the appropriate and necessary biochemistry changes took place. The rapidity with which some species changes occurred certainly suggests mechanisms beyond random point mutations. With respect to knowledge of the biochemical basis of life, we are in our infancy.
The one thing that can be published, in any field, is reproducible observations and these are also freely shared. Interpretations are a different matter. There are prevailing orthodoxies in most sciences that control interpretations in the absence of compelling data. For example, if it can be reproducibly and reliably shown that Carbon-14 is found in pre-Cambrian diamond, that result can be published in the best of geology or physics journals. You can bet that it would engender discussion and testing until the interpretation issue it raises was settled! But if you need grant money and facilities for making the measurements, then you might be out of luck. Objectivity may not stretch that far.
Here are five recent references:
1. Evidence for Intrinsic Magnetic Moments in Galactic Black Hole Candidates. Stanley L. Robertson & Darryl J. Leiter, 2002. The Astrophysical Journal V565, p447. In this paper, we showed that the similar quiescent x-ray spectra of
neutron stars and black hole candidates in x-ray nova systems can be quantitatively explained as driven by spinning magnetized objects.
2. On Intrinsic Magnetic Moments in Black Hole Candidates. Stanley L. Robertson & Darryl J. Leiter, 2003 The Astrophysical Journal Letters, V596, pL203.
Black holes cannot possess intrinsic magnetic fields, consequently if the black hole candidates are magnetized, they must be exotic objects of some other kind. Here we propose that they are hot, collapsing and slowly radiating away their mass. We call them magnetic eternally collapsing objects (MECO) and show that they are permitted by General Relativity.
3. On the Origin of the Universal Radio-X-Ray Luminosity Correlation in Black Hole Candidates. Stanley L. Robertson & Darryl J. Leiter, 2004 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, V350, 1391. We show that the MECO model provides a quantitative explanation of x-ray and radio emissions from neutron stars, galactic black hole candidates and active galactic nuclei (quasars and Seyfert galaxy nuclei).
4. The Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Object (MECO) Model of Galactic Black Hole Candidates and Active Galactic Nuclei. Stanley L. Robertson & Darryl J. Leiter, Nova Science Publishers, chapter of book, Black Holes Research, in press. This is a full exposition of the MECO model, including its consistency with relativistic gravity theory and quantitative aspects of broadband spectra, temperatures, jet emissions, interactions with accretion disks, etc. We provide scaling laws from neutron stars to stellar mass black holes to galactic nuclei. The MECO model is thus the first unified, consistent model of gravitationally compact objects.
5. Observations Supporting the Existence of an Intrinsic Magnetic Moment
Inside the Central Compact Object Within the Quasar Q0957+561
Rudolph E. Schild, Darryl J. Leiter and Stanley L. Robertson, submitted to
Astronomical Journal, May 2005 The image of quasar Q0957+561 is split into four by gravitational lensing by an intervening galaxy. Within the multiple images are light fluctuations caused by microlensing by objects of planetary size within the quasar's own galaxy. The analysis of these fluctuations permits a determination of small scale structures, such as the accretion disk and compact jets of the quasar. These features match the predictions of a MECO model that is scaled up a billion fold from the realm of stellar mass black hole candidates.
Coauthors:
Darryl J. Leiter is a General Relativity theorist, the last Ph.D. student of Nathan Rosen, who was one of Albert Einstein's frequent and important coauthors. In a continuation of Rosen's work, Leiter is author of several papers dealing with the role of gravitational potentials in General Relativity. These functions determine both the geometry of space and time and gravitational forces that affect matter.
Rudolph Schild is a Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard University's Center for Astrophysics (CFA). He is a recognized expert in the analysis of microlensing within the multiple gravitationally lensed images of distant quasars. He has found that the MECO model (above) of Robertson and Leiter provides a consistent description and explanation of his observations.
Black Holes...Not!
 |
| New Picture of Quasar Emerges |
 This artist's conceptual drawing shows the core of a quasar known as Q0957+561. Observations indicate that the quasar contains a 4-billion solar-mass object that astronomers Rudy Schild (CfA), Darryl Leiter (Marwood Astrophysics Research Center) and Stan Robertson (Southwestern Oklahoma State Univ.) have dubbed a magnetospheric eternally collapsing object, or MECO for short. A rotating intrinsic magnetic field (shown in pale yellow) anchored to the MECO generates a magnetic propeller, sweeping out a large region (shown in black) of the inner accretion disk. The magnetic propeller also creates radial outflows of atomic nuclei (shown in indigo blue) and relativistic jets of electrons (shown in red) along the rotation axis. A bright blue-white ring forms where the MECO's rotating magnetic field sweeps the inner edge of the accretion disk, creating a hot, thin boundary layer that pushes matter outward against the intense inward pull of gravity. Outer gas clouds (shown in grey-green) gather together and flow into the accretion disk, heading for the highly redshifted, rotating MECO at the quasar's core. Credit: Christine Pulliam (CfA) |
| The seething core of a quasar currently is pictured as containing a disk of hot gas spiraling into a supermassive black hole. Some of that gas is forcefully ejected outward in two opposing jets at nearly the speed of light. Theorists struggle to understand the physics of the accretion disk and jets, while observers struggle to peer into the quasar's heart. The central "engine" powering the jets is difficult to study telescopically because the region is so compact and Earth observers are so far away. Astronomer Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and his colleagues studied the quasar known as Q0957+561, located about 9 billion light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, near the Big Dipper. This quasar holds a central compact object containing as much mass as 3-4 billion Suns. Most would consider that object to be a "black hole," but Schild's research suggests otherwise. "We don't call this object a black hole because we have found evidence that it contains an internally anchored magnetic field that penetrates right through the surface of the collapsed central object, and that interacts with the quasar environment," commented Schild. The researchers chose Q0957+561 for its association with a natural cosmic lens. The gravity of a nearby galaxy bends space, forming two images of the distant quasar and magnifying its light. Stars and planets within the nearby galaxy also affect the quasar's light, causing small fluctuations in brightness (in a process called "microlensing") when they drift into the line of sight between Earth and the quasar. Schild monitored the quasar's brightness for 20 years, and led an international consortium of observers operating 14 telescopes to keep the object under steady around-the-clock watch at critical times. "With microlensing, we can discern more detail from this so-called 'black hole' two-thirds of the way to the edge of the visible universe than we can from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way," said Schild. Through careful analysis, the team teased out details about the quasar's core. For example, their calculations pinpointed the location where the jets form. "How and where do these jets form? Even after 60 years of radio observations, we had no answer. Now the evidence is in, and we know," said Schild. Schild and his colleagues found that the jets appear to emerge from two regions 1,000 astronomical units in size (about 25 times larger than Pluto-Sun distance) located 8,000 astronomical units directly above the poles of the central compact object. (An astronomical unit is defined as the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, or 93 million miles.) However, that location would be expected only if the jets were powered by reconnecting magnetic field lines that were anchored to the rotating supermassive compact object within the quasar. By interacting with a surrounding accretion disk, such spinning magnetic field lines spool up, winding tighter and tighter until they explosively unite, reconnect and break, releasing huge amounts of energy that power the jets. "This quasar appears to be dynamically dominated by a magnetic field internally anchored to its central, rotating supermassive compact object," stated Schild. Further evidence for the importance of the quasar's internally anchored magnetic field is found in surrounding structures. For example, the inner region closest to the quasar appears to have been swept clean of material. The inner edge of the accretion disk, located about 2,000 astronomical units from the central compact object, is heated to incandescence and glows brightly. Both effects are the physical signatures of a swirling, internal magnetic field being pulled around by the rotation of the central compact object - a phenomenon dubbed the "magnetic propeller effect." Observations also suggest the presence of a broad cone-shaped outflow from the accretion disk. Where lit by the central quasar, it shines in a ring-like outline known as the Elvis structure after Schild's CfA colleague, Martin Elvis, who theorized its existence. The surprisingly large angular opening of the outflow that is observed is best explained by the influence of an intrinsic magnetic field contained within the central compact object in this quasar. In light of these observations, Schild and his colleagues, Darryl Leiter (Marwood Astrophysics Research Center) and Stanley Robertson (Southwestern Oklahoma State University), have proposed a controversial theory that the magnetic field is intrinsic to the quasar's central, supermassive compact object, rather than only being part of the accretion disk as thought by most researchers. If confirmed, this theory would lead to a revolutionary new picture of quasar structure. "Our finding challenges the accepted view of black holes," said Leiter. "We've even proposed a new name for them - Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Objects, or MECOs," a variant of the name first coined by Indian astrophysicist Abhas Mitra in 1998. "Astrophysicists of 50 years ago did not have access to the modern understanding of quantum electrodynamics that is behind our new solutions to Einstein's original equations of relativity." This research suggests that, in addition to its mass and spin, the quasar's central compact object may have physical properties more like a highly redshifted, spinning magnetic dipole than like a black hole. For that reason, most approaching matter does not disappear forever, but instead feels the motor-like rotating magnetic fields and gets spun back out. According to this theory, a MECO does not have an event horizon, so any matter that is able to get by the magnetic propeller is gradually slowed down and stopped at the MECO's highly redshifted surface, with just a weak signal connecting the radiation from that matter to a distant observer. That signal is very hard to observe and has not been detected from Q0957+561. This research was published in the July 2006 issue of the Astronomical Journal, and is available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505518 Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics |
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