Time Captives

Preface

Back in 2016, I wrote a Swedish blog post in which I addressed the severe lack of philosophical competence in modern science, and as the Nobel Prize in physics 2020 demonstrated, the situation, unfortunately, hasn't improved much in the last five years. 

Out of curiosity I read through the 21 page background paper, by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. As I have already invested a lot of time* digging into the chicanery going on in particle physics and cosmology, it didn't come as a surprise that the powers that be continues to re-enforce the model which has been promoted for almost a hundred years. 

The prize was split: one part going to two astronomers for cosmological observations, and one part going to Roger Penrose, for, as the Nobel Prize committee put it: "the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity"

In this post I'm going to focus on the philosophical aspects of Mr. Penrose's theoretical discoveries. The so called Penrose diagrams, together with certain paragraphs from the committees paper, will serve as the objects of interest. 

My conclusions will also serve as fodder for a deeper critique concerning the intellectual and existential prison brought upon us by the old world of classic European imperialism. 

Diving into Darkness

I will now quote text and pictures from the paper followed by my own comments. 

 

Comment: I mentioned in my post The Hole Story, that the concept of time as well as space are both abstract ideas, which to this date have no physical definition. One can ascribe them a number and put them into an equation, but as they are not physically understood, one has to wonder how meaningful a term like [fabric of space-time] is, and how one can be sure that they (time, space) can exist independently of each other, as depicted in above diagram. The term [singularity] is also not clearly defined in any tangible sense. 

Please note the description "Inside [...] the radial direction is time-like". 

Q: Exactly what is time-like? 

"To visualize space-time, Penrose introduced a technique using conformal transformations (Penrose 1963). Such transformations can change the scale but they always retain angles. This means that points infinitely far away in space, and events in the infinite past or future, can be brought in from infinity to fit inside a diagram of finite size. [...] Such diagrams are called Penrose diagrams, and they are indispensable tools in the study of curved space-times"

Comment: "The study of curved space-times" ... One has to wonder as to the nature of this research. Not only do they study the bendable aspects of an abstract, but they're also certain that there are many of these space-time-fabrics; which by the way, the diagram/figure above fails to consider, as it clearly shows space and time as existing separate from each other. 

Worth noting is the spear-like form of the singularity, and of course the intriguing phenomenon referred to as [trapped surface]**

Comment: My favorite for last. Now take a good look at this diagram and contemplate just for a minute the definition of the term [past] and [future]. The simplest way to explain them is: set of events happening before or after a certain point in time. This means that both of them have an end and/or starting point. 

Q: How can one in any meaningful way talk about an infinite finite set of events? 

One could just as well make the case for sweet salt or dry rain. The absurdity of it all only gets underlined by the illustration, showing both infinites as finite lines. 

Q: How do you distinguish two infinite measures of time from each other and where does infinite present fit into the diagram?

Also, please note the description "time runs upwards". 

Before moving on, here's the last sentence of the paper in question. I urge you to read it slowly and think about it for a moment.

If you feel the first sentence is opaque, here it is, in plain English: 

How much A actually match the predictions of B is unknown. 

This implies that the predictions of B are murky and that even though they award a Nobel Prize for A matches B, they admit that, in the end, it could be of insignificant importance, further accentuating the limited practical aspects of the discovery. 

In regards to the last sentence: Very humble indeed.

Widening the Scope

So how come there's no reaction from philosophers and physicists alike? How come they get away with murder? I would speculate that the problem is a deeply rooted cultural one, in which we (mainly modern western society) have been conditioned to think of time in a very specific way, mainly: that it can exist as a separate object and that it is linear with pre-, now and post-qualities - perhaps that it even has a direction.

Because we are so used to think of time in this way, we accept the ideas above, as we think we grasp the gist of them. Or so we fool ourselves to think. Because if one's understanding is fundamentally flawed, everything that follows will inevitably be contaminated. 

In reality, this way of thinking about time is very new. Following the enlightenment and the deconstruction of the grand Cosmos as nothing more than a gigantic clockwork. In the spirit of that era, the British empire invented Greenwich Mean Time in 1675, which still serves as the standard reference time globally.   

Time Zones, in their brilliant splendor. 

Imagine Sumerian or Aboriginal culture concocting something similar ...  To give some extra food for thought I'm going to give a last example of a completely unrelated field that has been compromised because of  this messed up notion.

Our current environmental narrative tells us that we are (almost) out of time if we want to preserve some fuzzy ideal state of being for our planet as we head into the coming ages.

Hardly do many realize that by stipulating it in this way, we apply our artificial time concept on nature itself, which in turn becomes, in our confused understanding, an object of far lesser eminence than what is due. 

Regardless of the man-made mechanisms actual effect on our heavenly sphere - the framework in which we view the problem, obfuscates most if not all positive potential to the outcome. Climate doesn't have an ultimate way of being; in fact, we can safely deduce from looking at the Earths history, that climate is ever changing and cyclical in nature. In every moment unique. 

There is no secret that not only the ancients, but many humans of today, has viewed and continues to view time in a very similar fashion. In this light our present time conception looks more and more - to paraphrase the author and thinker Gordon White - like a bad spell. 

With this in mind - not to mention being obsessed by what we have done and what we should do - there's no wonder we are stuck in a state of junk science, reckless solutionism and, ultimately, spiritual inertia. 

The Hole Story

Recently astrophysicists around the world declared tremendous success as our most powerful radio telescopes managed to, as they claim, take the first photo of a black hole (from now on: BH).

Curiously, the gravitational pull within the BH's outer edge, i.e. event horizon, is so strong, that even light can't escape from it. Which means the picture in question is more exactly portraying obscured light around a black dot.

The centre of M87, making headlines around the world.

Case closed? Actually, some tantalizing arguments can and has been made against the existence of BHs. The Thunderbolts Project, proponents of the Electric Universe theory, have systematically collected and evaluated much of the scientific progress of the mainstream cosmology during the last decades. They have pointed out several severe shortcomings in the established cosmological model with regards to predictability and actual observations.

This post will highlight some of the content featured in their clip Black Holes Behaving Badly. Ranging from contradicting data to a possible alternative explanation. The purpose of this article is to provide perspective on a topic most people take for granted without having giving it much thought, and which perhaps isn't as cut and dry as it often is portrayed as.

A brief introduction

There are four types of black holes: stellar, intermediate, supermassive, and miniature. The most commonly known way a black hole forms is by stellar death. [...]

If its [star] mass collapses into an infinitely small point, a black hole is born. Packing all of that bulk—many times the mass of our own sun—into such a tiny point gives black holes their powerful gravitational pull. [...]

Supermassive black holes, predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, can have masses equal to billions of suns; these cosmic monsters likely hide at the centers of most galaxies. [...] [LINK]

According to the general consensus, Schwarzschild and Einstein* (indirectly) pioneered the theory of black holes in the 1910s, but it was first in the 50-60's physicists would give the idea a name and some attention. Some years later, Stephen Hawking took it to the next level when he applied a complex mathematical model to the concept and thus provided (theoretical) proof of the first singularity theory. [LINK]

A singularity is a one dimensional point residing in every black hole with an extreme amount of mass (possibly multibillion times our sun) and infinitely small volume[LINK], "where density and gravity become infinite and space-time curves infinitely, and where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate." [LINK].

Of course one could dwell upon the purely theoretical problems considering:
I. Finite mass existing in zero volume, with infinite density and infinite gravity as one object.
II. The rationale of assuming space-time - the combination of two abstract concepts - as something physical.

But rather than doing that, the following segment will focus on observational data published on the most respected platforms in the field. [Please note that the words that appear in bold in the quotes, are edited by me.]

Conflicting data

Nothing can escape from a black hole, but Hawking radiation and so called galactic jets supposedly do.

Jets generated by the centre of Centaurs A.

Magnetic fields have been thought to account for the energy needed for the particle jets to be beamed away from the singularity rather than being sucked in. In this article from 2017 a study of a black hole called V404 Cygni showed that it's surrounding magnetic field was in fact 400 times weaker than predicted. Study co-author Stephen Eikenberry, professor in astronomy in UF's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences admits:

"Our surprisingly low measurements will force new constraints on theoretical models that previously focused on strong magnetic fields accelerating and directing the jet flows. We weren't expecting this, so it changes much of what we thought we knew."

Sophisticated computer models have also tried to explain how, but as Kyle Parfrey, postdoctoral at Berkley Labs explains, they still have a long way to go:

"The results of the new simulations are not radically different from the those of the old … simulations, which is, in some sense, reassuring," [LINK]

Reassuring that they really don't know(?). Magnetic fields outside the event horizon is apparently off the table, so gravity centered cosmology, i.e. the Standard model, has no explanation as to what causes the jets.

Moving on.

The black hole theory supposes that the region close to the BH is extremely harsh, with unimaginable tidal forces, x-ray radiation and ultraviolet light. A milieu completely unfavourable for star formation - a process believed to begin with gas clouds slowly gaining density.

Eleven young stars forming in close vicinity of a super massive BH.

A couple of years ago some observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) showed 11(!) young protostars within three light years of Sagittarius A. In the words of Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, astronomer at Northwestern University of Evanston, Illionois and lead author of the paper.

“Despite all odds, we see the best evidence yet that low-mass stars are forming startlingly close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, this is a genuinely surprising result and one that demonstrates just how robust star formation can be, even in the most unlikely of places.”

Conveniently star formation theory seems to be the problem in this instance. 

Two black holes instead of the predicted one.

In 2012 astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) discovered not one, but two intermediate size black holes close to another in the star cluster M22. To quote Laura Chomiuk, of Michigan State University and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory:

“We didn’t find what we were looking for, but instead found something very surprising — two smaller black holes. That’s surprising because most theorists said there should be at most one black hole in the cluster,” [LINK]

Again, two instead of one.

A year later, in 2013, a similar observation was made in the star cluster M62. Contradicting most theorists once more. Though instead of reconsidering, Chomiuk says

“I think it’s safe to say that we have discovered a whole new hunting ground for black holes,” [LINK]

As it happens, it's also safe to say that most theorists were mistaken.

In this picture published in 2016 we see several super massive black holes spinning out radio jets in the same direction; a finding of utter astonishment to mainstream cosmologists as it doesn't conform to any Standard model predictions. The accidental discovery was made with deep radio imaging by researchers University of Cape Town (UCT) and University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa. A quote from the article sums it up:

Romeel Dave from UWC, who leads a team developing plans for universe simulations that could explore the growth of large-scale structure from a theoretical perspective, agrees: "This is not obviously expected based on our current understanding of cosmology. It's a bizarre finding." [LINK]

Completely unrelated to galaxy alignment I will close with a quote from an article published on msutoday.msu.edu, earlier this year, when predictions not only failed to deliver, but:

The new study finds that massive black holes form in dense starless regions that are growing rapidly, turning upside down the long-accepted belief that massive black hole formation was limited to regions bombarded by the powerful radiation of nearby galaxies. [LINK]

Presented above are six cases (and let me assure you, there are more) of studies made by mainstream cosmologists that contradicts predictions made by BH theorists. Perhaps now would be a good time to remind ourselves that when empirical data fails to correspond with a theory, the theory is by definition, falsified.

An alternative theory

Plasma cosmology offers an alternative to the Standard model. I will refrain from too much extrapolation and instead refer anyone curious to the following two websites, where in-depth presentations of plasma cosmology are accessible: Plasma-Universe, The Big Bang Never Happened. 

Even though plasma cosmology differs from the electric universe theory, they both share the idea of how matter is apportioned in the universe. To give you a very simple understanding of how they differ from the current paradigm, here's an explanatory picture.

Plasma is a state of matter where the atoms and molecules, which are normally neutral, 
have lost or gained an electron thus becoming becoming +/- charged as an ion.[LINK]

They also share the idea of what might lurk in the middle of galaxies: A plasmoid.

Winston H. Bostick was the pioneering plasma physicist who in 1956 would create a plasmoid in a laboratory in 1956. The term refers to a toroidal structure of plasma and magnetic fields.

Above: An actual plasmoid. Notice the similarities between this and the picture of M87.
Under: As the plasmoid breaks down it emits beams very much in line with the so called 'galactic jets'.

He later proposed the idea that plasmoids could very well account for many astrophysical phenomena, not the least galaxy formation [LINK].

"not only the morphology [shape] but the controlling dynamic elements, electric and magnetic fields, are the same in the laboratory as in the galactic phenomena". [LINK]

-Walter H. Bostick 

Having two plasmoids interact with another in a laboratory experiments, he as well as Anthony L. Peratt, who made similar simulations in supercomputer facilities at Maxwell Laboratories and later at Los Alamos National Laboratory, came up with the following results:

"As above, so below."
Both laboratory simulations (Pic 1) and computer simulations (Pic 2 & 3) correspond with cosmological observations.

Thus proposing an alternative explanation as to how galaxies are formed based on observational data in laboratories rather than numbers on a chalk board. Even if the theory so far lurks in the fringes, it should at least be taken into consideration as it has no need for "dark matter" and "dark energy". Not to mention an object with several infinitesimal properties, occupying a finite Big bang universe.

Similar articles on Psydonia: 
The Big Sham
Cause for Con[CERN]

*It's almost impossible to find an article about black holes not mentioning them being predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. In this presentation by Stephen Crothers, a strong case against this possible predicament is made. 

Sources:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/04/harvard-scientists-lead-team-revealing-black-hole/
http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php.id=62&cat=exotic
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/black-holes/
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_theory.html
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/s/supermassive+black+hole
https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/how-big-is-a-black-hole/
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_singularities.html
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_theory.html
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/G/Galactic+Jets
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11490
https://phys.org/news/2017-12-black-holes-magnetism-surprisingly-wimpy.html
https://phys.org/tags/strong+magnetic+fields/
https://www.space.com/43151-how-particles-escape-black-holes.html
https://www.spacetelescope.org/science/formation_of_stars/
https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.05939
https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/vla
https://public.nrao.edu/news/surprising-black-hole-discovery-changes-picture-of-globular-star-clusters/
https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/msu-led-research-finds-another-black-hole-in-a-star-cluster/
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/04/black-holes-mysteriously-align
https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2019/birth-of-massive-black-holes-in-the-early-universe-revealed/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/falsification
https://resonance.is/toroidal-plasmoid-generation-via-extreme-hydrodynamic-shear/
https://www.plasma-universe.com/
https://www.thunderbolts.info
https://www.electricuniverse.info/
http://www.bigbangneverhappened.org/

Pictures (in order):

i. https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/eso1907a.jpg?resize=1350,759

ii. https://phys.org/news/2018-03-strange-physics-jets-supermassive-black.html
iii.https://mk0astronomynow9oh6g.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/nrao17cb32a-768x768.jpg
iv. http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/2012/10/image_630_2.jpg
v. https://msutoday.msu.edu/_/img/assets/2013/black-hole-2_lg.jpg
vi. http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/04/GalaxyAlignment.jpg?mw=600
vii. http://www.everythingselectric.com/wp-content/uploads/plasma-cosmology-debunked-2.jpg
viii. https://resonance.is/wp-content/uploads/MGharib-Fig1B-NEWS-WEB.jpg
ix. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/H_Yousefi/publication/228929203/figure/fig3/AS:300825663557650@1448733835455/Image-shows-the-form-of-the-plasmoid-and-the-particle-jets-created-when-the-magnetic.png
x. https://www.plasma-universe.com/wp-content/uploads/Plasmoids-bostick.jpg

Video: 
Black Holes Behaving Badly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FdWTH08u30