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
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