perfidy

A recent survey intended to discover Black Holes has come up short. No where near the expected number was detected, leaving astrophysicists scratching their collective head. It is widely believed that the black hole is difficult to find by its very nature. An object so massive that light cannot escape its gravitational pull is of course going to be difficult to find. Space is black. Black holes are black. You do the math.

The conventional means to search for evidence of the black hole in space is to look for indirect evidence – x rays released by matter falling into the black hole before it reaches the event horizon. Falling down a gravity well that steep is an energetic event, the scientists reason. Supermassive black holes are thought to dominate the central regions of galaxies, and the x-ray output of black holes has been considered a primary constituent of the background hum of x-rays we detect in the universe.

A team of European and American researchers has spent two years probing the nether regions of the galaxies trying to find black holes. They investigated high energy xray emissions using the European Space Agency's orbiting International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral). Another high energy survey, and previous low energy surveys all reached the same conclusion – much fewer holes than expected.

This confuses the big domes. But the answer might not be that the black holes are further away, or more expertly hidden, or taking a long nap after consuming all the nearby gas and whatnot that might have created x-rays upon being eaten.

The answer might be that there are no black holes at all.

A different group of big domes was taking a gander at a quasar nine billion light years from earth. In laymans terms, nine billion light years is really goddamned far away. Happily, there was a galaxy in the way, which allowed the clever science monkeys to use the gravitational lens effect, in which the gravitational field of the intervening galaxy magnifies the light coming from the quasar. Further, as all the individual bits of the galaxy wander in front of the image of the quasar, it makes the light wobble. This wobbling allows the scientists to probe more deeply into the inner workings of the quasar.

Quasars are conventionally supposed to consist of a very large black hole consuming the matter around it and generating the extraordinary amounts of radiation that are the defining feature of the quasar. If these researchers are correct, that turns out not to be the case. Theory prohibits black holes from having magnetic fields. You wouldn’t be able to stick your refrigerator magnets to it. Even not counting the fact that they’d be immediately consumed by the gravitational field and converted instantly to x rays.

But this quasar, rejoicing in the name Q0957+561, shows evidence (detectable thanks to the wonderful gravitational lens effect) of some stupendous magnetic fields. Looking at the disc of material surrounding our friend Q0957+561, they noted a small hole in the middle, approximately four thousand times the distance from the earth to the sun, and evidence that that area had been swept clean by electromagnetic fields. The obvious conclusion, therefore, is that there ain’t no black holes.

The reason this is obvious (at least to these researchers) is that there are two competing, and mutually exclusive theories about large massive objects. One is that they are black holes. The other, lesser known theory, is that they are MECOs. MECO is egghead shorthand for Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Object. In brief, the theory holds that singularities can’t form, and when something really big starts collapsing, it gets very dense and very hot. At this point, subatomic particles start popping into and out of existence, pissing off everyone else and creating large amounts of energy. The radiation pressure from this craziness halts the collapse, and the object remains forever a ball of high energy plasma. Plasma, unlike black holes, is quite capable of maintaining magnetic fields.

While these objects are capable of creating large amounts of energy, they probably aren’t going to go about it in the same way. And that might account for the failure of the other astronomers to detect the job lots of black holes they expected. Perhaps the ones they think they are detecting are merely those MECOs that most closely resemble the profile of the theoretical black hole.

And remember kids, just say no to black holes.